lose myself in her forever. But tonight’s not the night. I’m hoping she’ll give me another chance. “It looks like the club is hosting a family dinner tonight. I don’t know about you, but I’m starved. Do you want to stay?”
“I don’t want to impose.”
I flash her a grin that causes her to smile in return. “One, that’s too formal. Two, they make enough food to feed an army. Three, you helped us out today. Whether you like it or not you’re a friend of the club now.”
Her eyebrows rise at this, and I’m impressed when she’s bold enough to open her door and slip out. I immediately join her as we cross the field for the crowd near the food.
“What exactly does being a friend of the club entail?” she asks.
I shove my hands into my pockets and silently berate myself. Usually with women I’m as smooth as silk, but Caroline twists me all up inside to the point I feel like a middle school boy working up the courage to ask a girl to slow dance. “It means you get first dibs on Rebecca’s potato salad.”
She laughs, and I love the sound.
“It also means that if you have a problem, we’ll be there for you like you were there for us today.”
She pauses, and the serious set of her eyes freezes me in place. “I did all of that for Addison.”
“I know, and that makes me respect you more. There’s not many people who care like you do. That’s rare, and that makes you a friend of mine.”
She tilts her head, and there’s a soft curiosity there that fires up every cell in my body with the need to touch her. “A friend of the club or yours?”
“Both.”
“Why do you do it?” she asks in bewilderment. “Why do you give so much to these teens? They aren’t your children, yet at every turn I’ve seen you there for them. Tonight with Addison, for Chevy and Violet after the kidnapping, for Oz after Olivia’s death, for Violet’s younger brother Brandon when he’s been picked on relentlessly at school, and then for Razor. Three quarters of the school forgot Razor had a father because they believed you had taken on custody of him. Why do you fight for them so hard?”
I shrug, off balance at the realization that she’s noticed me before. “Why do you?”
She shakes her head like she doesn’t believe she’s as much a fighter as I am.
“You’re hard on them because you demand the best out of them. You see their potential, and you push until they see it themselves.”
“It’s my job.”
“You could pop in a movie for your English class, sit back and do Sudoku all year, but you don’t.”
“There’s more to you,” she counters, evading my comment. “It takes a huge heart to love when that person doesn’t love you back. Teens can be tough that way.”
Adults, too, but I love these teens because they do love. I didn’t understand that type of love at their age, but I’ve been learning how to love like that in the years since. “I guess you’re going to have to hang out with me to get a handle on this ‘more’ you say that I possess.”
She brightens like a supernova, and I will never be the same again. “I feel like there was a challenge somewhere in that.”
“Depends. Do you like a challenge?” I ask.
“I love one.”
So do I. “Then consider yourself challenged. Let’s get some food. You’re going to need the energy.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I plan on asking you to take a ride with me later on the back of my bike.”
“And you’re assuming I’ll accept?”
I want her to accept. “Your choice.”
“That was the correct answer.”
I like that I’m a fast learner. Because I’m just as bold as she is, I take her hand. Nothing in my world has felt right until this moment—the one where her fingers lace through mine and she holds onto me just as tightly as I’m holding on to her.
Chapter 27
Eli
Once again, I’m on the front steps of Dad’s cottage, watching my family as they gather around a bonfire under the spring night sky. Oz finishes a story, and there are a few chuckles, but then Razor adds something to the conversation, and the group breaks out into full blown laughter—Emily holding her stomach as she leans forward in a fit of giggles. Even Isaiah and Rachel, the newest to our clan, join in as if they have always belonged. Oz smiles