Cross (The Gibson Boys 2.5)

“I’m heading now to see Dr. Burns. I just have a little gout but he wants to run all these tests. The man doesn’t have the sense God gave a goat.” Ruby comes down to the sidewalk.

“Oh, Ruby.” I giggle, helping her down the steps. Her hand clasps against my elbow as she steadies herself. “You should listen to him. He is a doctor, you know.”

“Those fancy letters after his name don’t mean he has any sense.” She pats my hand and turns toward the parking lot. “Come by and see me, Kallie, and bring back that book you took out, Nora. The one about the…well, you know.” She flits my friend a knowing look before unlocking her car door. “Kids these days.”

“What are you checking out?” I ask Nora, curiosity piqued again.

“It’s that one with grey in the title.” Ruby shakes her head. “I had to order another copy because she hasn’t brought it back in six weeks. Six weeks!”

“Just put my business out there, why don’t you?” Nora laughs. As my laugh mixes with hers, Ruby shakes her head and climbs in her little maroon car. With a small motion of her hand as a goodbye, she pulls onto the street toward the only doctor’s office in town.

“So, you love that book so much you can’t bring it back?” I tease as we head down the sidewalk again. “You could’ve just bought your own copy instead of stealing from the library.”

“Machlan has it.” She sighs, rolling her eyes. “I took it to the bar one night when I figured we’d be slow and found him kicked back at a table reading it while I made drinks. He refuses to give it back to me. What am I supposed to do?”

“Machlan Gibson was reading that?” Eyes wide, I bite my bottom lip. The vision of one of the infamous Gibson boys—the too-hot-for-their-own-good guys I knew growing up—reading that book makes me shiver. “I don’t think I can deal with that if he’s even remotely as hot as he used to be.”

Nora ponders this for a second. “You know how people age? Like wrinkles and beer bellies?”

“Unfortunately.” Without thinking, my fingers pat at the crow’s feet lining the corners of my eyes.

“Well, Machlan doesn’t,” she says easily. “I have no idea how he’s still single with the women who throw themselves his way every night at Crave. I tell him one night I’m going to have to stage a diversion just so he can get home unscathed.” Pausing to shoo away a dog yapping at the edge of a lawn, she turns to me again. “They’ve all aged well, Kallie.”

I try to remain unaffected, to pretend like discussing our old group of friends is no big deal. It wouldn’t be if we could stop with Machlan, Walker, and Lance Gibson and their cousins, Vincent and Peck, but we won’t. It’ll also include Cross Jacobs, and I’m not ready to do that quite yet.

“If Mach’s still single, maybe you should hook up with him,” I suggest. I know she’ll shoot it down and she does—promptly.

“What?” she barks. “Are you kidding me?”

Laughing, I bump her with my shoulder. “It’s not the craziest suggestion in the world. You’ve known him forever. He’s freaking gorgeous. You like him.”

“All of that’s true, but I didn’t say I was attracted to him.” She makes a face like she’s just bitten into a lemon. “He’s like a brother to me now…sort of.”

“Remember that time…” The sentence trails off as I catch myself, the rest of the words hiccupping in my throat. “Never mind.”

“I know what you were going to say.”

Peering up at her, I try to force the corners of my lips to turn up, but they refuse. “No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do. When is the last time you talked to Cross?” The hesitation in Nora’s tone only feeds the anxiety bubbling inside me, and hearing his name doesn’t help either.

I’ve spent the last three years trying to forget Cross Jacobs. Trying is the operative word.

I don’t have to ask if he still looks the same. I know the creases in his forehead that developed over the last year and a half like the back of my hand. I’ve watched through social media as he started to wear his inky black hair just a little longer than the buzz cut he used to sport, have noticed how he still gets it cut the first Monday of every month, like his father taught him to do. The playfulness I remember seeing in his jade-colored eyes has dimmed, replaced with something more stern. His shoulders are more broad, his body stockier than the man I used to curl up next to every night.

What I don’t know these days is the sound of his voice at two in the morning or if he wears the same woodsy cologne, a scent that stops me in my tracks whenever I get close to someone wearing anything remotely similar. I wonder if he still favors basketball shorts to sleep in and who is there to time his boxing rounds like I used to do when he was training for a match.