Tomboy

Her brain was trying to work through the possibilities when a text buzzed through on her phone, making her ass vibrate. She pulled it out of her back pocket, still in a kind of haze, but one look at the group message changed everything.

Mom: Emergency family meeting ASAP. Battery dying. Can’t give you details yet. Not bad. See you soon.

Lungs squeezed tight, she jolted up and away from the picnic table. Sure, her mom had said not bad, but when it came to their family, there was a lot of space between good and bad when it came to injuries sustained in a fire or a shooting.

“Something happened,” she said, barely able to get the words out. “I gotta get home.”

In a heartbeat, Zach was up with an arm around her, grounding her to the here and now instead of the million horrible possibilities.

“Take my car.” Caleb, who’d given them a ride to the paintball field in his truck, tossed his keys to Zach.

“Don’t worry,” Zach said as he guided her to the truck. “I’ve got you.”

Three words she held onto as they sped down the highway toward whatever was waiting at her parents’ house.

Chapter Nineteen

The Hartigan house was total chaos. The entire family was packed into the living room when they arrived, everyone talking over each other at a volume probably audible from space. Then, just to add to the general insanity, there was a French bulldog chasing an orange tabby cat with one eye and a chunk missing from its ear from one end of the house to the other.

It had been like that since he and Fallon had burst through the doors a minute ago, and it had Zach on edge, but Fallon seemed take it all in stride. As soon as she gave the room a once-over that seemed to assure her that both parents and all six of her siblings—along with their significant others—were alive and apparently unharmed, her vice-like grip on his hand relaxed, but she didn’t let go. Instead, they stood in the doorway to the kitchen and watched the chaos.

Fallon relaxed against him, laying her head on his arm and letting out a soft huff of amused annoyance. “She did it again.”

Surveying the room, he tried to pick up on what and who she was talking about, but this whole family thing was not his game. “What do you mean?”

“Last time my dad got promoted, Mom sent out a similar get-your-butts-here-right-now message.” She shook her head and looked at him with a can-you-ev

en-believe-it expression. “Everyone rushed over, and we found them two glasses into the bottle of celebratory champagne.”

The whole explanation made little to no sense to him because, glancing around the room, it looked like everyone was pissed off. Well, except for Lucy and Frankie, who were both standing in the corner laughing their asses off. What in the hell was going on?

“Really, we should know better,” Fallon said. “I love my mom, but she always thinks it’s gotta be done her way and now.”

The laugh burst out of him before he could think better of it. The irony was just too sweet. “Sounds like someone I know.”

Fallon looked up at him, her eyes big with mock innocence. “I’d never cause this much chaos—and anyway, I am always right.”

Before he could call her on that bullshittery, an ear-splitting whistle from the family matriarch cut through all the noise, and everyone—except for the dog and cat—fell silent. They all turned to Kate Hartigan, who smiled at the crowd as if she hadn’t just caused all the drama and given them a heart attack in order to get them in the family home ASAP.

“Frankie and Lucy have an announcement,” she said, turning to the couple in question.

“We’re getting married,” Lucy and Frankie said at the same time as she lifted her left hand and showed off a gleaming ruby engagement ring.

There was half a beat of silence, and then it was like the Hartigans had won the Stanley Cup, the Norris Trophy, and been inducted into the Hall of Fame all at the same moment. Everyone was screaming and hugging. Kate hustled over to Fallon and him, drawing them both into a quick squeeze strong enough to have broken a rib or two.

“I know you’re about to kill me, Fallon, but they wanted to wait until everyone was together at family Saturday lunch to make the announcement, and I had no chance of keeping something as good as this to myself for forty-eight hours.” The words came out fast and with a hint of guilt clinging to them, “But I did tell you all that it wasn’t anything bad.”

Fallon laughed and shook her head as if this was all par for the course when it came to the Hartigans. “Did he tell you I helped pick out the ring?”

“You did?” Kate asked. “That does not sound like my favorite tomboy’s thing.”

“Well, that girlie-girl stuff is definitely not me, but neither is Frankie helping Felicia pick out a date-night dress to wear, so I guess when it comes to the people we love, we do whatever it takes.”

“Of course,” Kate said as if it was ridiculous to even question it. “We’re Hartigans.”

Another cheer went up on the other side of the room as Faith, Fiona, and Gina gave Lucy huge hugs while Frankie received a million hard back slaps from his brothers. What hit Zach right between the eyes as he watched them was just how genuinely happy everyone was for one another. He could practically feel the shared joy like a warm blast of air on his skin.

The closest thing he’d ever experienced had been the night he’d been drafted, and even then, the excitement was infused with a hefty dose of “we’ll finally get ours now” from his parents. And the kicker was, he’d thought that was just the way families worked—everything was transactional. Growing up, it had been the camaraderie with teams he’d played on, the bond he’d experienced with the other guys on the ice, that he’d thought had been an outlier, not his family. However, watching the Hartigans was like looking through a window at the way things should have been.