“He looks like a turtle,” Poppy said. “With a daddy complex.”
I laughed weakly.
“Can you turn it off?” I asked Poppy.
Her eyebrows bent in a confused V. “You don’t want to see what they say?”
“Poppy,” Greer said quietly, shaking her head.
With a shrug, she changed the channel.
Greer angled closer. “Are we talking about this or not talking about it?”
“There’s nothing to talk about.” The words tasted like ash in my mouth. “I’ll be okay in a couple of weeks. It’s just … fresh right now.”
With a quick glance at my sister’s face, I saw how little she believed me. How sad it made her.
“This is what I wanted, Greer. We agreed to one night before we went into the house.”
It took a week for the marks on my body to fade, and I cried in the shower when I realized it.
Every time I picked up my phone to text him, I forced myself to remember how awful it was when he left.
I dreamed of him four times in the month of April. When I woke, and I couldn’t remember all the details, it hurt just as much as it had weeks earlier when I watched him leave my bedroom.
It didn’t get any better in May.
Emmett
“There’s something wrong with him.”
“I know. He only ate one helping.”
“What do we think it is?”
“Maybe he’s afraid to put on a couple of pounds.”
I gave Malcolm a dry look. “I can hear you.”
Rebecca cleared her husband’s plate, patting my shoulder as she passed behind me. “We know.”
Malcolm settled back in his wheelchair, hands folded over his stomach. He leveled his gaze on me. “You look like shit, Ward.”
“Thanks.”
Gabriela ran through the dining room, a rainbow unicorn headband over her dark hair, and she only paused to plop a matching one on my head. I straightened it when the horn fell sideways by my ear.
Malcolm shook his head. “I cannot take you seriously with that on your head, man.”
“Feel free to come take it off then.”
He grinned. “Give me a few more months and I’ll do just that.”
Since his surgery, Malcolm was able to stand with help and even take a few shuffling steps with a walker. The doctors were blown away, but those of us who knew him weren’t surprised in the slightest.
“I’ll still be able to outrun you,” I said.
“The only time in your entire life you’ll be able to say that, QB.”
“Focus, Malcolm,” Rebecca called from the kitchen. “You were supposed to ask the thing.”
“What thing?”
“Why you look like shit and only ate one helping of her dinner.” His dark eyes never wavered from my face, and it was the same determined look he used to give when he lined up against the opposing team. “Is it Ned?”
“Dumbass,” Rebecca muttered from the kitchen. “Man doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
“Mommy said a bad word,” G sang from the living room.
“Mommy did.”
“So did Daddy,” Rebecca argued. “No double standards in this house, G.”