The Bromance Book Club - Lyssa Kay Adams Page 0,14
course, being impulsive was partly to blame for how she got here. One throw-caution-to-the-wind romp in the back seat of Gavin’s car was all it took for sperm to meet egg. And just like that, the mistakes of her own family were repeated. An unplanned pregnancy. A shotgun wedding. A move to the suburbs. A husband who was never home.
Speaking of . . . “You RSVP yet?” Thea asked. Their father was getting married for the fourth time in December.
Liv snorted. “What’s the point?”
Thea nodded. “I’m thinking about writing maybe next time on the card, but that just seems mean.”
“Which makes it perfect.”
“What the hell is wrong with these women? How does he convince them to totally ignore his track record?”
“He shows them his bank account.”
It really was the only thing that made sense. No woman in her right mind would look at his pattern of chronic infidelity and think, Oh, yeah, husband material.
Liv downed the rest of her wine. “She’s thirty-two.”
“Who?”
“Our new stepmother-to-be.”
Thea’s mouth dropped open. That was only six years older than her. “Oh, Mom is going to love that,” Thea said with a snort.
“Speaking of our lovely mother,” Liv said, “she called me twice today.”
Thea straightened. Neither she nor Liv had talked to their mother in months, each for their own reasons.
“I haven’t called her back,” Liv added.
“Think she knows about the wedding?”
Liv shrugged and took a drink of water. “No idea, but I am not going to be the one to tell her.”
Thea winced. Yeah, that wouldn’t be pretty. But neither would the alternative explanation. “Maybe she heard about Gavin and me.”
“Doubt it. She would’ve said something about it in her voicemail.”
“Or called me directly.” Nothing would have made their mother happier than the failure of Thea’s marriage.
All your years of judging me, but you’ll see. You think you’re so in love now and that nothing will ever go wrong. But someday he’ll break your heart, and you’ll have to apologize to me.
That had been her mother’s advice on Thea’s wedding day.
Thea let her head fall back against the cushion, eager to change the subject. “How’s Alexis coming with the café?” Liv was helping craft the menu for a friend who was opening a cat café and coffeehouse.
Liv gave her a knowing look but played along. “Good. She’ll be open sometime in late January, I think.”
“Have you decided if you’re going to let her use Gran Gran’s sugar cookie recipe?”
“Not yet. Part of me still wants to save them for . . .” She shrugged. “You know.”
Her own restaurant. It had always been her dream.
Well, always was a stretch. There were several years when the only thing Liv dreamed about was finding new and inventive ways to rebel. Bad grades. Bad attitude. Bad boys. Liv reveled in them all during her teenage years. Restless like a man chasing a worm with a bell on it, as Gran Gran used to say. Which, honestly, Thea never quite understood but figured it meant Liv was in search of something that didn’t exist.
And that was really something to which Thea could relate. Neither one of them had emerged from their messed-up childhood unscathed. They’d just hidden from their scars in different ways.
But no matter how much Liv wanted to open her own business, she had repeatedly turned down Thea’s offers for a loan. Liv did things on her own or not at all, even if it meant enduring the hellish abuse of her tyrant boss.
“Thank you for being here,” Thea said, rolling her head to look at Liv.
“You don’t have to thank me. You were there for me more times than I could ever repay you for.”
“That was my job. I was your big sister.”
“You were a child.”
Thea finished her wine and then stood with a sigh. “I think I’ll go to bed.”
Liv caught her hand as she walked by. “Everything is going to be fine, Thea.”
“You and me against the world, right?”
Liv smiled softly and squeezed her hand.
Upstairs, Thea crept into the girls’ rooms to check on them. She bent over Amelia’s bed first and smoothed her hair back to drop a soft kiss on her forehead. Then she crossed the room to Ava’s bed and repeated the gesture, but she lingered over Ava. Even in sleep, she was more serious than Amelia. She clutched her favorite stuffed animal tightly against her chest, and her tiny pink lips formed a tight line. It was as if the one-minute age difference between them officially made her the big sister