This Could Be Us (Skyland, #2)(85)

Her smile fades, and she reaches into the box to lift one of the pasteles out and onto one plate, then does the same with the other. “Me too. It’s our first Christmas with Edward in prison.”

“I hadn’t actually considered that, but yeah. I try to think about Edward as little as possible.”

“That makes two of us.” The sour twist looks incongruous on her sweet lips. “You mentioned that you and the boys fly out to see your parents tomorrow. Where do they live?”

“Silver Spring, Maryland.” I slice my fork into the pastel and lift it, holding it poised at my mouth. “I’ve been working so much, it’s been too long since we visited.”

I grunt at my first bite, then let out an extended groan on the second.

“Damn, this is good, Sol. The boys may not get any.”

“There’s like ten of them in there,” she laughs, but she looks pleased. “Save some for them. Don’t be greedy.”

“I am greedy.” I run a slow glance up the length of her, from her boots hooked over the barstool rung along the lean legs and the full curve of her hips and the subtle swell of her breasts beneath her sweater until I reach her pretty face. Pink sifts into her cheeks, turning them rose gold. “You’re blushing.”

“Because you’re trying to make me blush.” She bites into her grin and then into her pastel. “Are you close to your parents?”

“Yeah, very. They’ve been amazing with the boys, even though they don’t live that close.”

“Who are you most like?” She props her elbows on the counter and leans forward.

“Mostly my dad. My mom is…” I give a vague wave of my hand in her direction. “Like you. One of those glittery people who enjoy being around others all the time. Life of the party kind of person.”

“You mean an extrovert? That is different from you, then.”

I chuff a laugh. “Thanks a lot.”

“You said it first. It’s not bad, just different.” She glances up through a veil of long dark lashes. “I like it. I like you.”

Those words dangle between us from a tantalizing thread, shimmering with the possibility of pleasure we tasted together only a week ago. A pulse of again and more and now clamors through my body, but I subdue it and wait for her to move because she has to control this.

She clears her throat. “Um… sorry. You were saying.”

“Just that I’m a lot more like my father.”

“What do they do? For a living, I mean? Or are they retired?”

“My mom is still going strong as a nurse, but she’ll probably retire in the next couple of years, if only to be at home with my dad. Though right now he’s driving her out of her mind. He’s bored.”

“What did he do?”

“He was an FBI agent.”

Her eyes go wide and round. “Are you kidding me?”

“No. Hundred percent. He’d come home talking about his cases, at least as much as he was at liberty to. The embezzlement stuff always fascinated me the most. Or anything where someone stole something and tried to get away with it.”

“I’m envisioning ten-year-old Judah walking around with a calculator, solving fifth-grade crimes.”

I chuckle and shake my head. “Not quite. I did love numbers. Like they came so easy to me, which actually I think I get from my mother. She’s great at math. And I loved puzzles. Solving things.”

“Like Aaron.”

I glance up from my plate, where only a little of the pastel remains. “Yeah. I guess like Aaron. I got a full ride to MIT and wasn’t sure what I wanted to do at first.”

“It’s hard for me to imagine you not being sure what to do. You always seem to know.”

A self-deprecating smile tips one side of my mouth. “You should have seen me when we got the boys’ diagnoses. I didn’t know what any of it meant. I was kind of a wreck for years, but didn’t realize it until Tremaine insisted I start therapy. Thank God for her.”

“When were they diagnosed?”

“Around two years old, and around the same time. For a while they presented very similarly. As they got older, Adam started making gains that Aaron wasn’t. Well, I don’t know if it’s actually quite that simple.”

“What do you mean?”

“Adam made the gains people pay the most attention to. Like he started talking again. He’s very academically gifted, so teachers were dazzled by his intelligence. They just weren’t always sure what to do with a ten-year-old who could do high school–level math but wasn’t potty-trained and couldn’t tie his shoes. He wears Crocs or slip-on sneakers to this day because he still can’t. Aaron has incredible bodily kinesthetic intelligence but can never learn to ride a bike. There are these… gaps sometimes. Development is not a straight line, and it misses some stops altogether.”

“Sounds challenging,” Soledad says.

“At various points, yeah. Tremaine and I took turns staying home or working from home. There was a time when both of us working outside the house was impossible, but there were things we wanted to do for the boys that weren’t covered by insurance. So we needed money. We got calls from school constantly because of Adam’s seizures or Aaron’s meltdowns or any number of things. Not to mention driving back and forth to after-school therapies.”