Big Man for Christmas - Penny Wylder Page 0,40
of him and nothing but them is fucking mouthwatering. It’s almost enough to make me forget about the food again.
Almost.
“Get your guitar,” I say. “Sing for your supper.”
He chuckles. “Yes, ma’am.”
The calming sound of his guitar and voice fill the kitchen as I cook, and I’m trying very hard to ignore the domestic, comfortable feeling of it. I can’t afford to dwell on it for too long.
Pounding on the door makes me jump, and my stomach plummets to my toes. I know exactly who that is, having heard that same pounding on my bedroom door as a kid. Fuck.
Casey is already walking toward the door. “Put a shirt on,” I whisper desperately. The last thing I need is for my mother to figure out that we just had sex. Snatching my jeans off the floor, I wiggle into them faster than I ever have in my life, grateful that I didn’t decide to cook completely naked.
He’s grabbed a shirt, and I hear him answer the door with a charming word. Followed by two sets of harsh footsteps. My mother finds me in the kitchen, followed closely by Jessica.
She holds up my phone, which I left on purpose because I didn’t want incessant text messages about when I would be back. “Where have you been? You need to keep your phone on you. You scared us to death. We thought you were dead in a ditch or…God knows where.”
I raise an eyebrow and look between the two of them. “Clearly, you knew exactly where I was.”
Jessica looks at me with anger in her eyes. “You missed dinner.”
Gesturing to the stove and the steaming pots and pans, I say, “I’m making dinner with Casey. I’m sure he’ll let me have a few bites so I don’t starve.”
“More than a few,” he says from behind them, smiling. His hands are in his pockets, and I can tell he’s trying to diffuse the tension. But it doesn’t work.
“Casey is a grown man and can cook for himself. You need to come home right now,” Mom says. “You need to talk to your fiancé and get your life back on track. Tyler has called you and texted you all day. When you didn’t answer, he called us and talked to the family. He said he made a huge mistake.”
I frown. That doesn’t sound like Tyler. “He called you? And apologized?”
“He was so sad, Carley,” Jessica says. “He said he was really, really sorry and that he misses you. That he needs you, wants you, and is planning to make it up to you. Mentioned something about a car that you’d loved that would look good on the Chicago streets?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Casey shifting uncomfortably. It is just like Tyler to offer to buy me a car as an apology. That makes me think that he actually might have talked to them and it’s not just a ploy to get me back home.
I take the phone from her and scroll through the messages he sent. There are missed calls too.
Carley, I need to talk to you. Please pick up.
Please, I’m so sorry baby. I really fucked up. I realize that now.
You are so good for me, and it took you leaving for me to see how much I took you for granted. Please, I’m so sorry.
I love you so fucking much. You don’t even know.
We’ll go to couples’ therapy together. I’ll do whatever I have to to make myself better for you. I want to make this work.
A cool sense of relief washes over me. I didn’t realize how much anxiety I’d been holding in over his silence and lack of awareness. But this…Tyler never talks like this. If he is at the point of texting like this, he is desperate.
Maybe we can make it work. I can go back to my life in Chicago where I’m comfortable, and this time I can actually be happy. There’s a twinge in my gut, and I look at Casey, whose face is carefully blank and neutral. I swallow. “I need to call him. That,” I gesture to the dinner in the pan and smile, “only needs a little more time. Even you can’t mess it up.”
I don’t wait for him to speak. I shove my boots and coat on and head outside. I feel Mom and Jessica at my heels, but I let them pass me on the porch. “Alone,” I say.
They go stand by the car—pulled up way too close to