I knew the end hadn’t been peaceful for Liam Ballard.
Heavy footsteps sounded behind me and I turned, expecting to see Michael. I let out a small gasp of surprise when I looked up into Kaleb’s blue eyes.
“Michael’s chewing Cat a new one for scaring you. I thought you could use these.” He sat down, handing me a bottle of water and placing a wet paper towel on the back of my neck. It was so saturated that rivulets of water ran down the back of my shirt. “Are you okay?”
“Me? What about you? Are you okay? Cat compared your father to …” I trailed off, not wanting to finish the sentence. I took the dripping towel from my neck. Crumpling it into a small ball in my fist, I watched as the water squeezed out through my fingers and ran down the inside of my wrist. The sensation made me shiver.
Kaleb noticed. Placing his elbows on the back of the bench, he lowered the arm closest to me, resting it lightly on my shoulders. I resisted the urge to relax into the curve of his body.
The sun, low in the sky, filtered everything around us through a soft yellow lens. The garden looked like it belonged in a storybook, not like the kind of place in which to have a conversation about death. Pain.
“Kaleb, how could she say something like that in front of you?”
“She didn’t mean it,” he answered, his expression carefully blank. “Her intention was to make a point, and I’m guessing by your reaction she did.”
“I reacted because of you. I’m guessing the two of you are close. I caught the look she gave you after she asked you about last night.”
He turned his head away, his gaze skimming over lily pads and cattails to the far edge of the pond. A fish jumped, and tiny waves did a dance with the shoreline. “My relationship with Cat is unusual. Always has been. She’s my legal guardian.”
“But you don’t live with her.”
“I’ll have to, now that my mom’s not at the house anymore. I’m moving some of my stuff in tonight.”
“Oh.” I inwardly flinched at the pain I saw on his face. “Are you okay with that?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I love Cat, but she doesn’t know how to deal with me these days. I sure as hell don’t make it easy for her. And when I try to read her—her emotions are all over the place.” His voice sounded vulnerable, completely wrong for someone with an exterior as tough as Kaleb’s. “Fear, guilt, anger, regret. I guess over my dad, or over the fact that she’s not even thirty and now she has a ward who’s almost an adult.”
“I’m sure she doesn’t think of you as a ward,” I said reassuringly, rolling up the damp paper towel to give my hands something to do. “I think she’s genuinely worried about you. How long have you known her?”
“It feels like I’ve always known her. She’s always been there. She’s like a sister to me. But she shouldn’t have to act as my guardian. Things shouldn’t have to be this way.”
“She cares about you. A lot of people do.”
“What about you, Shorty?” He smiled down at me. “Do you think you could?”
He wasn’t talking about friendship. The water from the paper towel practically turned into steam that rose from my skin. “Kaleb, I—things are—I mean, this isn’t the right time for—”
I heard the sound of a throat clearing, and I whipped my head around. Michael stood behind us. I wondered how much he’d heard. I realized how we looked from his viewpoint, Kaleb’s arm around my shoulders, me looking up at him. I stood so quickly I almost fell over my own feet. Shoving the paper towel into my jeans pocket, I faced Michael.
“Hey!” I said, my voice too loud and too bright for the situation. “What happened with Cat?”
“She wants to think about it.” He seemed uncomfortable, looking back and forth between Kaleb and me. “We’re all supposed to meet up at the house tomorrow afternoon so she can give us her answer. And so she can apologize.”
“She agreed she’d said the wrong thing to Emerson?” Kaleb asked. He stood, too, moving to stand behind me. Close behind me.
“She agreed she said the wrong thing, period,” Michael answered, his voice tight. “To all of us.”
A cell phone started ringing, and Kaleb jostled to pull his out of his pocket. A picture of a girl with her glossy lips puckered in a seductive kiss popped up on the screen. He held up the phone and gestured awkwardly. “I probably need to take this.”
He turned his back to us and answered in a low voice, “Hey, baby.”
I wanted to know more about what Michael and Cat discussed, but suddenly all I could think about was escape.
“Okay.” I pulled out my keys and began anxiously spinning the ring around my finger. “I’m … uh … going to head out. Michael, I’ll touch base with you later about tomorrow.”
I gave half a finger wave to Kaleb’s back. Then I turned tail and ran like a coward.
At least as fast as I could run in my heels.