could have sent a text.”
He raised a brow.
“What? I don’t like talking on the phone.”
“Not that,” he said. “Interesting apology . . . since there wasn’t one.”
She grimaced. “I am sorry, okay? You deserved better, much better. But I really did think that you and your mom needed to talk.”
“We didn’t,” he said flatly.
It was her turn to cock her head and study him. He was most definitely doing a good job at deflecting and misdirecting, but she was no longer surprised by their odd connection and ability to see right through each other’s bullshit. And see right through him she did. “What happened?” she asked softly. “What’s wrong?”
“How do you know something’s wrong?”
“I don’t know exactly. I guess I can read it in your eyes and body language. I can . . . feel it. It’s about your mom, right?”
“We’re not . . . close.”
“I’m getting that,” she said carefully. “She just seemed so sweet, and so happy to see you. She was proud of you, and that was special to see. Not that I’ve had my mom look at me like that.” She shook her head. “Honestly? I was a little envious.”
“Don’t be.” Kel ran a thumb over the condensation on the bottle of beer in his palm. “We haven’t had any sort of a relationship for a long time.”
“And that makes you . . . sad.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. For a long time, I resented her for having to lie for her.” At her clear surprise, he nodded. “When I was ten, I caught her having an affair. I kept her secret for her. Two years later my dad died, and my mom sent me and my sister to Idaho to live with our grandparents.”
“And you haven’t spoken much since.”
He shook his head. “At first, that was her doing. But around the time I turned eighteen, she started coming around, trying to make things right.”
“And . . . ?”
“And by then I wasn’t interested.”
Her heart had squeezed hard when he’d first started talking, and it didn’t unclench at the thought of him feeling so abandoned for so long. “So although you knew she lived here in the city, when you saw her last night . . .”
“It was a total surprise.”
“And you don’t like surprises,” she murmured, adding up what he’d said and what she knew of him, all of which now made a lot more sense. He’d been burned by people in his life. His mom, his coworker . . . “I’m starting to understand your comment about not liking liars.”
He gave a low snort, and relaxed a little bit. From talking to her, she realized. Not Caleb, his cousin and best friend, but her. This gave her a rush of both pleasure and terror. Pleasure because she felt proud of being the one he’d chosen to trust. And terror because . . . well, she was the exact kind of person he hated.
A liar.
“I’m sorry I left like that last night,” she said quietly. “I shouldn’t have. Was it awful?”
“She gave me an invite to a surprise baby shower for my sister,” he said. “Remy missed her own first baby shower because she went into early labor with Harper. The party’s on the night before Christmas Eve.”
“Which is right before you go back to Idaho, right?”
He nodded, which had a little stab of anxiety going through her, but it was also a good reminder as well—he wasn’t for her. “Are you going to go to the shower?”
He lifted a broad shoulder and finished his beer. He still wasn’t giving much away, but there was a sense of longing in him that she imagined was much like her own longing for the kind of family she knew existed but had never experienced. “You should go to the shower,” she said softly. “You could reconnect with your family.”
“My sister and I are fine.”
She thought of how his mom had looked at him at the diner, soaking up his face like she’d never seen anything more important to her in her entire life. The way her fingers had shaken as they’d gripped her order pad and pen in a death grip. “I know this is none of my business,” Ivy said cautiously. “And yes, your mom had an affair. That sucks. But as awful as it sounds, lots of people do it. Not that it makes it okay, I’m just saying, maybe there’s a lot more to her staying away so long before trying to have a relationship