Eat Crow (Cheap Thrills 6)

Rubbing the back of her neck, she lifted one shoulder. “The guy said to get the walls done in there before he comes, so I just… wrapped everything up. The bags around the furniture I’m keeping are the type you put mattresses in when you move, so I figured they’d protect them, too.”

Turning around in a circle, I took in the area behind us where there was a dining room and another living room. Back in the old days, they had a formal living room and a more informal parlor, I guess, but her grandpa had made it into his man cave. The racks with old rifles on them were empty and had been taken down, but the floors hadn’t been covered yet.

“What about the rest of

the place?”

Following where I was looking, she threw her arms up in the air. “I don’t know. I want to get the floors done all at once, but Pops had so much shit that I’m running out of places to store it. I can’t even lift half of it and trust me, I’ve tried. It took our dads and your grandpa two days to pull down all the wood paneling and check for damp in the walls, and it’s starting to freak me out. I just don’t know what to do with it all.”

Reaching out, I hooked my arm around her waist and pulled her into my side. “Did you think to ask the rest of us to help, Bex?”

I already knew the answer.

“No,” she sighed, “but I’ll do it. I need to get a storage unit for a little bit so I can get the house fixed up, and then I’ll sort through it while we’re putting it all back. I’ll repurpose a lot of it because I love it, but I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by it all right now.”

Squeezing her, I pulled my phone out and shot a text off to both of our dads asking for a hand this weekend. Then, knowing he’d have some space, I text Ren Townsend to see if we could store some of it at his place in town. They’d expanded it recently and had large garages out the back that he was looking at ideas for, so he might be okay with it.

I quickly got a yes back from all of them, and Ren was even throwing in help from his brothers.

“Let’s eat before it gets too cold, and then we can get a plan in place for all of this.” I waved my hand at the area around us.

Just as I turned to go to the kitchen, she caught my hand and tugged at it. The expression she was wearing when I looked over my shoulder made my gut hurt. It was sad, wary, relieved, but just plain lost.

“Thank you. I know I should be handling this better than I am, but changing Pops’ house and even thinking about throwing out things he touched hurts more than I can put into words, Logan.”

Squeezing her hand, I smiled sadly. “It’s going to be hard for a while, but you’ve got a lot of people behind you, Bex. You just have to let them know when you need them to hold you up.”

Blowing out a breath, she stared down at the floor. “My parents are grieving as well, though—Dad lost his father, for Christ’s sake. I need to be less selfish and let them start healing instead of taking on my grief and inability to act like a mature adult. I’ve been doing that for seven fucking years now. When does it end?”

Tilting my head to the side, I watched her as she looked around the room, avoiding my eyes. “Bexley, you were dealt a blow that shattered any illusions of security you had here, and I was the one who did it. Staying away was how you protected yourself and found ways to get that security back. Was it the right idea not to come home? Fuck knows. We can’t predict what would’ve happened if you’d come back straight after college—”

“I lost time with him, Logan.” She sounded as tortured as she looked when she finally met my gaze. “If I’d come home right after college, I would’ve had at least one or even two of those years back.”

The guilt was almost suffocating me. “It’s my fault, and I’ll never be able to put into words exactly how sorry I am, honey. I fucked it up for everyone. The shittiest thing is that I didn’t even mean what I said, I was just a massive dick back then.”

Closing her eyes, she shook her head slowly. “I know that, and it would’ve come out sooner or later. At least it happened when I had to leave for college and not once I came back. I don’t know if I could’ve handled the blow from that and losing Pops too.” Lifting her free hand to move a chunk of hair that’d fallen out of the messy bun and onto her face, she gave me a small smile. “He never blamed you, you know. He always said there was a reason for everything happening and that what didn’t break you made you stronger.”

“He said the same thing to me as well. I kept asking him why he didn’t beat the tar out of me, but he’d just repeat that the reason for it all happening would make itself clear in time, and that at least you were pursuing your dreams with fire in your soul instead of just going through the motions until you graduated from college.” I stopped and then decided to fill her in on a funny part of the story. “Although, most of the time when he saw me, he’d pull his finger across his neck and whisper, ‘you’re a dead man.’ Then there were the erectile dysfunction pamphlets, natural cures for it, emails, boxes of the magical little blue pills, and shit like that which kept arriving. I’m thinking what he had to say about it depended on the day.”

Bexley burst out laughing at this, and I knew I’d made the right choice adding it in. “He sent you erectile dysfunction stuff?” she wheezed.

“Sure did. And also taught his dog to hate me.”

Still laughing, she nodded her head quickly. “He did a thorough job there.”

Tugging her with me to the kitchen, I didn’t let go of her until we were in front of the bag of food. Pressing my palm against her stomach, I gently pushed her in the direction of the cupboard behind her. “Get some plates, baby. I really don’t want this to go to waste.”

Snorting, she did as I asked. “You always hated your food going cold. Remember that time we drove to the new Mexican restaurant in Palmerstown and reheated it when we got home?”

“How could I forget? I ended up in the hospital with food poisoning. That’s why I don’t reheat takeout.”

“I told you to have the beef, but you just had to go for the chicken and seafood tacos.”

Shuddering, I pulled out the tacos I’d bought for us—ironically, they were chicken—and made sure they were still warm enough for me.

“They got shut down six months after they opened for repeated violations and multiple reports of food poisoning. I think you need to maybe change your way of thinking to you being lucky not to get food poisoning, too.”

“You’re probably right,” she murmured, unwrapping two of the tacos and putting them on her plate. “It wasn’t even good food.”