“I know you’re there. I can hear you breathing,” I called out with a snort.
Nothing.
I rolled my eyes and climbed up on the love seat, one of the two couches in the living room, and hung over the back of it. Then I reached down and smacked one of the two bony butt cheeks sticking up in the air. “Get up before you can’t,” I laughed at my grandfather, who was on his hands and knees. Hiding. To try and scare the shit out of me.
He grunted and looked up with a frown. “You heard me?”
“Your sinuses are acting up. Your nose is wheezing.” I peeled my jacket off and dumped it on the armrest of the couch.
He muttered something like “damn it” under his breath as he struggled, just a little, to his knees and then up to his feet. At seventy-five years old, his bones only reminded him every once in a while that he was closer to a hundred than twenty now, but it wasn’t enough to make me sad. He had barely slowed down over the years, and he sure didn’t look his age. Grandpa was a vampire and would end up outliving me.
I got off the couch with a snicker and shook my head again as he came around. “How long have you been down there?”
“I heard you pull in,” he replied, still frowning at being caught as one hand went down to rub a circle into his left knee.
Because this was our game.
Hiding and scaring the crap out of each other. Or at least trying to. We’d been doing it for so long that we could both usually pick up on signals that said something was up. Example: the silence.
With a snicker, I dropped the bag of burritos on the coffee table and spotted the paperback sitting on the surface. It wasn’t just any book, but one with a bare-chested firefighter—or two—on the cover; I couldn’t tell from this distance. And just like always, it fucking made me laugh even though my stomach was knotted up at why I was home.
Because my seventy-five-year-old, four-time world champion boxer of a grandfather loved the hell out of romance novels, and it tickled the shit out of me. It always had and always would. And it was a perfect example of what made up his personality: a mixture of a thousand what-the-fucks.
“How’s the book?” I asked him, hearing the weirdness in my voice and pretending like I didn’t, as he lowered himself to the couch and opened the bag of food. I didn’t need to give him more reason to be suspicious.
“I just started it. It’s about two firefighters right after 9-11. I’ll let you read it before I return it.”
Yeah, I wasn’t sure that was going to happen after this upcoming conversation. “How long have you been down here?” I watched him pull out the container of guacamole and do a little shimmy in place.
Good. It was working. Guacamole always put him into a good mood. I’d bought it on purpose.
“Thirty minutes,” he answered, setting his treat aside. “I think we’ve got ten or fifteen more max before ‘The General’ is up again.”
The General.
Right.
I held my breath as he handed me over one of the burritos without glancing at my face, fortunately. I thought my plan was working. I thought I was buttering him up before I lit the firework that was his temper. I thought I knew what I was doing.
I didn’t apparently.
Because he let me get as far as ripping the foil off from around my veggie burrito and get all of two bites in before he turned to me as he chewed, raised his graying light brown eyebrows lazily, and went straight for the kill.
“What’s going on?”
Of course he’d known.
I wasn’t a coward enough to slow down eating to drag out the time, so I swallowed what I had in my mouth as quickly as I could without being too obvious. I took a peek at him, planning on making eye contact, but he was looking at the guac. So I did it. Just like when I was a kid, I counted to three and went for it: one, two, three.
“Have you heard of Jonah Collins?”
I would never admit it to fucking anyone, but my heart started beating faster as soon as I said his name out loud to my gramps.
He, on the other hand, didn’t stop eating, but he did narrow his eyes as he chewed, his expression still on the guacamole. “No,” he said after a moment, finally glancing at me in this squinty little way that confirmed he was getting wary. “Why?”
Yeah, he was on to me.
I didn’t know how to answer his question without just blurting everything out, and that wouldn’t be a good idea with Count Dracula next to me. I had to feed him information. Ease him into it. The guacamole he was currently dipping his chip into had been the lube to ease us into this just a little.
I dug through my purse and pulled out my phone and did a quick search, my fingers feeling heavier than normal as they moved. My heart was still beating too fast, but I ignored it. Once the search results came up, I held the phone out toward Grandpa Gus so he could look at the image on the screen.
He took the phone from me with his free hand and brought it closer to his face. “He’s a soccer player? No. He’s too big. Football? No. He’s not wearing pads or a helmet—”
Shit. I had to do it.
“Look at his eyes,” I cut him off, ignoring the nerves bubbling up in my stomach.
Grandpa stared at the picture for a few more moments, his chewing slowing, and I could see when something in him clicked. I knew when those gray irises shot to me for a moment before going back to the screen. This man who wasn’t just my grandfather, my dad, my brother, and my best friend all rolled into one body, typed something on my phone with one hand, then started swiping at the glass. Over and over again.
I knew what he was doing. It was the same thing I would have been doing if our positions had been switched. It didn’t help that I was too much of a chicken to say the words that needed to be said.
He recognized the eyes on the screen. I’d been counting on it. He had seen them even more than I had. He had watched them change over the months from a greenish hazel to the lightest brown that reminded me of raw honey with its flecks of yellow and gold in them.
The most beautiful eyes in the world, I thought.
My favorite. Grandpa’s favorite too, I would say. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were Peter’s too, now, even though he was partial to DeMaio gray.
“This is him?” Grandpa Gus asked after another moment in that tone I had only heard a handful of times in my life. Usually when he was furious. Which the last time that had been was… sixteen months ago. Yay.
I nodded, not that he saw it because he was staring at the phone. “Yeah, Grandpa. That’s him,” I confirmed, wincing at the squeakiness in my voice.
Lord, he was breathing in and out through his nose already. I needed to get this over with, quick, quick, quick. Now.
“I didn’t think I would ever see him again,” I started to explain. “I tried reaching out to him over and over again but never heard back. I just thought he didn’t want to have anything to do with… us.” Maybe that comment didn’t help, but… it was the truth.
Jonah hadn’t bothered trying to call, period. If he really wanted to get in contact with me, he would have found a way. He would have found someone to pass a message along. He could have called me from a different number. He could have set up a fake account and messaged me. There was always a fucking way if you needed or wanted something. Always.