Gone - Anna Brooks Page 0,58

what I’d do.

And right now, I don’t have to worry about that. All I need to do is focus on getting her to bed and keeping her comfortable.

I walk around my SUV and open her door and then grunt when she rolls out, forcing me to catch her.

She giggles uncontrollably, and I smirk at how cute she’s being right now. “I feel like I’m drunk,” she mumbles as I carry her dead weight up the porch steps.

“You’re acting like it.” I unlock the deadbolt and nudge it open, then set her on her feet with my arm around her waist so I can lock the door again. As soon as I’m done, I swoop her up and carry her to the bedroom.

“Tired.” She groans as I set her on the bed.

Before she can lie down, I take her shoes and jeans off, then unclip her bra. After I fight with it for a minute, I finally pull it out from beneath her T-shirt. “Get under the covers, honey.”

She mumbles something unintelligible and then practically crawls up the bed, and after she’s situated, I pull the sheet up to her chin. Her eyes are closed, and I rush through the house to let Judy out and also feed her since I ran out earlier before I fed her dinner. By the time I get the house locked up and back to the bedroom to crawl in bed, Izzy’s passed out.

At least I thought she was. “How did you know I was at Gio’s?”

“Lucky guess.” It wasn’t hard to figure out.

“Okay,” she whispers as she snuggles into me more, and I let her, wanting her to burrow into me so she’s as close as she can be without me actually being inside her.

* * *

We’re eating a late breakfast or early lunch the next day, depending on what way you look at it. Her hand is still sore, but the swelling has gone down significantly and she’s feeling much better, which I’m thrilled for. But she’s a little pissed at me because I called her work and told them she needed a few days off. I wish I could say that I care she’s mad at me, but there is no way she’s going into that place with her hand the way it is.

She’s been silently stewing since she woke up, but I’m hoping I can change that.

“I was going to go see my grandma today, kind of felt bad about how fast I left her yesterday.”

“Oh, cool. Tell her I said hello.”

“Do you want to come with me?” I want her to say yes, but I’m not sure if she’ll want to after the scene she made at dinner because I know she’s embarrassed about it.

She tucks some loose strands of hair behind her ear, and I see her fighting herself. “If you think it’ll be okay, I will.”

“Why do you think it wouldn’t be?”

“Um, hello… I don’t think I made a very good first impression, not so sure she’d want me around.”

“Listen.” I grip the leg of her chair and pull it so she’s facing me. “I try to protect my grandma and keep her out of all the family drama, but she’s not stupid. She knows there’s tension between me and Jordan. I mean, Christ, he’s married to my ex-wife. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that’s a messed-up situation. And for my parents, she’s my dad’s mom, and I think she’s aware of some of the hostility. There seems to be an unspoken agreement between my father and me that we don’t want her upset, so we hide that from her as best as we can.”

She rests her good hand on top of mine on her thigh. “I’m sorry you have to go through that. I can’t imagine how hurtful it must be to—”

“It’s not. Not anymore at least. I struggled for a while with it, but at the end of the day, I have to look at myself in the mirror. And my father has to do the same. The difference is, I can go to sleep with a clear conscience. He can’t.”

“Was it always this way between you two?”

I shake my head. “I don’t remember it being like this when I was a kid. We did things together as a family and we had good times, but as we got older, it changed. Jordan wanted to be a doctor, and I didn’t, so I was basically shunned.”

“That’s terrible.”

My shoulders rise and fall as I