Chapter 10

10

Roman

I had absolutely no idea what I was walking into tonight, and to be honest, I’m not disappointed. What appears to be absolute chaos is… exactly what it is. At least, according to Riley’s rundown. “I still can’t tell if Dylan’s actually let his guard down or if he’s playing it cool,” she says.

“Does Dylan ever let his guard down?”

“True.”

I’ve hung out with the same people plenty over the past couple of years and known most of them in one way or another for most of my life.

“So, you spent the day with Juan, right?” Riley asks, bringing my attention from Jake and Logan, in the middle of a dramatic thumb war battle, to the girl beside me.

“Yeah, it was a good time,” I answer.

“I like Juan,” she says.

I chuckle. “So do I.” Juan—as strange as it is considering our fifteen-year age difference and completely opposite upbringings —is my best friend. He’s also the closest thing I have to family… besides my sister, Addie, of course, but that’s another story.

“Were his kids there?”

I nod. “Wife, kids, parents, in-laws, brothers, sisters, cousins, random strangers.” I laugh once. “There was so much food, and they just kept making more and more, and his mom… she kept making me plate after plate, and I was so full, but I couldn’t say no to her, so I just kept eating.”

Riley giggles.

“Swear, I could barely move by the end. I don’t think I can eat for days.”

“Well, I’m glad you were around people who love and take care of you.” She leans into my side. “You deserve it.”

I don’t know about that, but I appreciate the sentiment. “How was—” My phone vibrates in my pocket, cutting me off. I already suspect who it is, and because of that, I don’t answer it in front of Riley. I take out my phone, hold it up between us, facing away from her and say, “I have to take this. I’ll be right back.”

She smiles, then rolls her eyes as she looks over at Dylan in the kitchen, who’s making a slingshot with Cameron. I assume for the cookies that no doubt resemble rocks now.

Instead of returning the call, I send a text instead:

I’ll be outside.

Then I step out of the house, momentarily freezing when I see Heidi sitting on the porch steps, a glass of wine in one hand, her phone in the other. She looks up when I close the door behind me. “Hey.” She smiles. Soft. Sweet. Exactly the way I remember her.

“Hey,” I reply, shoving my phone in my pocket.

“It’s Roman, right?”

I nod in response, but don’t say anything more. I don’t expect her to remember me. It’s been over a decade since I’d seen her last, and besides, we didn’t exactly run in the same circles.

“So how do you know Cam and Lucy?” she asks, and I realize it’s the first time she’s ever spoken to me.

“I work with Cam.” I take a step forward and lean against the handrail, half turned to her, half looking out at the darkness in front of us.

“You work construction with the Prestons?”

“Yeah.” I pause a beat. “Technically, he’s my boss. So is Dylan.”

Her eyes narrow, confused, and I get it. I would be, too.

“I work four days with the Prestons, two at Mayhem Motors.”

“Ohhh…” she drawls, nodding slowly. She brings the glass to her lips, downs two giant gulps, then asks, “So you got kids, huh?”

“ What ?”

She rushes out, “No, I just mean you work a lot.” She shakes her head now, laughing to herself. “That was such a weird conclusion to think, let alone say out loud.” She looks at her glass as if the wine is at fault, then shrugs, takes another sip.

“No kids,” I answer. “I just work a lot.” Honestly, working as much as I do keeps me out of trouble. In more ways than one.

“So, you work with Cam and Dylan, and you know the rest of the gang through them?”

I grimace. “Actually, I went to school with them.” And you , I don’t say, but she’s quick to put the pieces together.

Eyes wide, she almost gasps, “We went to school together?”

I nod, pushing down my laughter when she covers her face with her hands.

“Oh, my god, I’m so embarrassed.”

“No, it’s fine,” I assure, finally sitting down beside her.

Face still in her hands, she refuses to look at me, even when I tap her leg with mine. “I left when I was sixteen, so…”

Heidi looks up, her blue eyes even brighter against the porch lights. “Oh, so you were just there for two years of high school?”

“Yeah…” I hesitate to add, “And middle and elementary.”

Face back in her hands, she shakes it slowly. “I’m the actual worst.”

Maybe I shouldn’t laugh at her reaction, but I do. And she doesn’t seem to mind it. I settle my hand on her back, duck my head so it’s closer to hers. “It’s fine,” I repeat. “It’s not like we had the same friends back then.”

Heidi peers up at me, just one eye open. “We didn’t?”

“No,” I assure. “I played baseball with Jake.”

“ You did ?” she almost yells.

“But Dylan played basketball, right?” Everyone knows Dylan and Heidi got together sophomore year. From what I understand, they stayed that way until college, when Dylan joined the Marines. He met Riley when he came home on medical, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Heidi groans now, sitting up straight. “Thank you for trying to make me feel better. I appreciate it.” She offers a smile that has me pulling away slightly. Heidi Stanford has always been beautiful… in that untouchable kind of way. Even without being Dylan’s girl, very few boys had the courage to speak to her, let alone look in her direction. To be honest, it’s hard to believe I’m even doing it now.

“You know what it is?” she says, then runs a finger along my arm. “It’s the tattoos. I bet you didn’t have them in school.”

“Actually…”

“No, you didn’t!”

I crack a smile. “You’re right. I didn’t.”

Her eye roll makes me want to smile wider. I don’t. Instead, I glance toward the door, then back at her, and ask something I’ve wanted to since I stepped out and noticed her here. “What are you doing out here?”

After emptying the rest of her glass, she mumbles, “The wheel fell off.”

“The wheel ?”

She sighs, long and loud, her shoulders dropping with the force. “I’ve been the ninth wheel for a long time, and sometimes I just need to…”

“Fall off?”

Nodding, she rests her back against the siding and faces me completely. “I have to say, I’m glad you know -know the guys, otherwise the paranoid part of me would assume that you’re here for me.”

“Uh…”

“I mean, like, they wanted to set me up with you.”

“Oh.”

“No offense. I just?—”

“ Definitely don’t need help in that department,” I cut in.

Her mouth opens, shuts, opens again. For a second, I think I may have said something wrong. “If it makes you feel any better, I never confirmed that I was going to come tonight.”

“Same,” she says.

“So, technically, the whole pimping us out to each other thing is very unlikely.”

She taps her temple. “I like the way you think.” Her eyes are right on mine for the first time in what might be ever, and the longer she stares, the harder it is to breathe . Ridiculous, I know, but it is what it is.

I clear my throat, break the stare. “Riley mentioned you live in Atlanta?”

“Riley mentioned me?”

“She likes to sit in the cars I work on and update me on everything.”

“Everything?”

“Let’s just say I know way more about reality TV than I should.”

She laughs at that, and it does something unfamiliar to my insides.

“So, Atlanta?” I push. “Are you just home for the holidays?”

“Yeah…” She lowers her gaze, toying with a button on her coat. “I wasn’t sure if I wanted to, so I told my parents I’d try to make it. I flew in last night to surprise them, and turns out, they surprised me by flying to Greece a few days ago.”

I hiss in a breath, my face scrunching. “Sucks.”

“Yeah, I was kind of in my feels about being alone, and I honestly hadn’t planned on coming tonight?—”

“Because of the ninth wheel thing?”

“Yep.”

“So, what changed your mind?”

“Riley called.”

I can’t help but smile. She called me, too.

“I figured I spent Christmas Eve alone, and I didn’t want to spend Christmas night the same way…”

I feel that. I got home from Juan’s a few hours ago, showered, then parked my ass on the couch, where I planned to stay for the rest of the night. But the longer I sat there, switching in and out of movies and TV shows, the more my mind wandered, and I kept coming back to one thought—my little sister, Addie. I wondered what she was doing and how she spent the day. She had a new family now, a much better one, but I wondered if she thought of me at some point. A part of me hoped so. But an even bigger part of me hoped I was nothing more than a blip in her past.

I looked around my shitty one-bedroom apartment, no Christmas tree set up, no decorations, no laughter, no life . It was a huge contrast to how I’d spent the day, how I hoped Addie had spent hers. I picked up my phone and almost called her, but that would’ve been a disaster. So, to avoid said disaster, I came here.

“So, I spent the day cooking,” Heidi says, pulling me from my thoughts, “and I brought it all here, and?—”

“Wait,” I cut in. “ You made all that food in there?”

“Most of it, yeah.”

“I’ll be right back.” I enter the house, go straight to the kitchen, where I grab a plate and make quick work of adding one of everything I presume she made. By the time I rejoin her on the porch steps, I have a heaping pile of food on a plate and absolutely zero room in my stomach. Still, I’ll eat it all. If she went through all that effort, I want to show her it’s appreciated. And the smile that overcomes her only urges me on.

“That’s a hash brownie, by the way,” she tells me, and I put it aside for now.

Then I dig in. Deviled eggs first, then some stuffed bread thing. “Holy shit,” I murmur around a mouthful of food. “Are you a chef?”

“No!” she laughs out.

I swallow, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “Don’t laugh. With food like this, you could be.”

Heidi eyes me sideways, doubtful. “What does your diet consist of?”

I clear my throat, look away. “Meat and potatoes, mainly.”

She laughs again.

“But that doesn’t discount the fact that your cooking is good. Don’t sell yourself short.”

“Maybe I should cook for you again.”

My pulse kicks up, and I try to come up with a response. Luckily for me, rustling from a nearby brush saves me. I stand when Lucas Preston appears in all black with his brother, “Little” Logan, right behind him. I meet them halfway, the plate still in my hand. Lucas motions to Heidi, his eyes narrowed, questioning.

I turn to Heidi. “Please tell me you can keep a secret?”

She pretends to zip her lips, throw away the key. Speaking of keys, I fish the one out of my pocket and hand it to Lucas.

“Cam’s doing it now,” Little Logan says, tapping at his phone. Then he notices my plate. “Ooh, brownie!” He’s quick to grab it, and I’m just as quick to knock it out of his hand. It falls to the ground unceremoniously.

“No.” It’s all I say.

And all he needs to know.

We all turn toward the house, wait for our cue. A few seconds later, “Jingle Bells” blasts through the speakers loud enough it rattles the windows.

“Go!” I urge, flicking my wrist.

Lucas and Little Logan run toward Dylan’s truck, quickly hopping in and bringing the engine to life. They drive away quickly, not turning on the headlights until they’re a good distance away.

Inside the cabin, everyone is yelling for Cam to switch off or turn down the music.

I watch until the taillights disappear completely, and the music cuts out. Then I start back toward Heidi, who waits until I’m close enough to whisper, “Mayhem?”

I nod, confirm. Then offer my hand to her. “Come on,” I say, motioning toward the door. “Let’s go be lonely, only singles together.”