Bliss Brothers: The Complete Series Boxed Set, page 37
“A nursery!” I cry, because apparently I lose the power to do anything other than basic descriptions when I’m this overwhelmed by love. “A baby nursery! You guys.” I turn around to face them. All four of them. Driver, who gave them permission to change everything while we were gone. Roman, who probably micromanaged the whole enterprise. Charlie, standing quietly in the back, who organized the budgeting. And Beau, who undoubtedly hung around bothering the construction crew and supplying them with free drinks. “This is amazing. What can I do? Can I buy you a pizza? Let me buy you a pizza. I’m not going to make it, but where can I order it from? Do you have—Driver, what’s the best pizza place?” I pull my phone out of my pocket and drop it on the ground, then realize I never followed through on my intended hug. I get them all in my arms as much as I can, squeezing tight. “Thank you. I’m going to get you a lot of pizza. Thank you so much.”
“I think she likes it,” Beau says in a strangled voice. I release his neck, then kiss each of them on the cheek. Except for Driver. I bite his lip. It’s been a long car ride back to the Bliss Resort, and I want him. As soon as his brothers are out of the way…look out.
I snatch my phone off the floor and go back downstairs. There’s so much to see, and already it feels exactly right. It feels like I belong here. And most importantly, it feels like I could go anywhere, for any amount of time, and still find home in these rooms.
That’s what it’s about. Not hiding from the world, and not subjecting myself to living arrangements I don’t like for the sake of…
For no sake at all, really. There was never a sake when it came to living in the city.
“Are your other brothers coming?” I call back up the stairs to Driver. “Huck, and Asher?”
“Asher’s never coming,” one of the twins calls down to me. I can’t tell which one, and then they’re all thundering down the steps to the main floor. “Maybe you should ride his ass about that, Roman.”
“Maybe I will,” says Roman, and Driver laughs.
“I’ll believe that when I see it.”
I look up the number for the pizza place and dial, making my way back through the living room, taking a detour through the den, and ending in the kitchen. It’s bathed in the kind of evening light that used to make me sad. I was sad because I’d spent another day not being the person I wanted to be.
Those days are over.
I order three pizzas just to express my gratitude and look out the kitchen window. Driver’s brothers mowed the lawn and put in a little playset while we were gone. The miniature swing fills me with anticipation and nervousness and…hope.
So much hope.
Arms wrap around me from behind and I lean into Driver’s chest. “Do you like it?” he says into my hair.
“I love it.” I lean down and kiss the backs of his hands. “But I love you more.”
“You scared?”
I know he’s not asking about the house.
“Oh, I’m terrified.” He laughs, his chest shaking against my back. “It’s going to be a wild ride. Worth it in the end, though.”
“Worth it without end.” Driver kisses me one more time, smiling at his own clever play on words.
He’s got that right.
Epilogue
Charlie
The pizza arrives with Jenny and Claire, who clearly accosted the delivery man at the end of the sidewalk. They ring the doorbell too many times and pile in through the front door of Driver’s house.
“We helped him so much,” Jenny says, balancing the three pizza boxes on her hands. “This is hot.”
I take the boxes from her and bend down to kiss her cheek, then Claire’s.
“So serious, Charlie,” says Claire. “Aren’t you impressed with us? We tipped double, too. He’s going to love coming here.”
“I hate to break it to you, but all the drivers from that pizza place love coming here. The Bliss family has a reputation for tipping well.”
Claire flicks my chest. “Don’t steal my thunder.”
Beau sticks his head into the entryway. “Is that the pizza? Thank god.”
“I love you so much,” Claire tells him, and he laughs.
“Driver!” shouts Jenny. “Show us the new house!” Somehow, they all push past me and I’m left standing in the entryway with the pizza boxes.
More for me.
I go down the hall and cross through the living room, where everybody is gathered, exclaiming over the new paint job. I’m not even going to mention that it’s more than a paint job. Most of the drywall in Driver’s house had to come out. And still, thanks to yours truly, the project got done on time and only slightly over budget.
I lay the pizza boxes on the kitchen counter, opening each one. I’m not sure if anyone notices that I’m the one who does this kind of behind-the-scenes stuff, but it might be better that way. It’s hard to concentrate with people around.
“Thanks for doing this.” I turn my head in time to see Holiday rising on tiptoe to reach into one of the open-front covers for plates. “The pizza took forever to get here, didn’t it?”
“Forever. Ruby Bay needs another pizza place.”
“I bet you could start one.” She stretches her arms above her head.
“Here—I’ll get them.” I lift the plates down from the shelf and when I set them down next to the pizzas, I feel her eyes on me. “Is…everything all right?’
“Is everything all right with you?” Holiday watches me. She has eyes in a shade of gray I’ve never seen on a person before. “You’re really quiet and serious.”
“Everybody here plays a part.”
“Do you wish you were playing a different one?”
My breath catches. Most of the time, no. I’m invested in my work, and I want to keep the family legacy alive for at least another five generations. But when I see the rest of them gathered together like that, all paired up…
“Not always.” It’s as much of the truth as I’m willing to give her.
“Charlie. You’re holding out on us,” Beau calls from the living room. “Bring it on out.”
“Come get it yourself, you lazyass,” I shout back, giving Holiday another smile. “Sometimes you need the right person to play a different part. I haven’t found one yet.”
She pats me on the arm, nodding like she can possibly understand.
I don’t tell her that I don’t think I’ll ever find that person.
Or that I’m slightly terrified I might have already found her…and let her go.
Who tells someone their secret fears at a party? Not me.
Not now, anyway. And probably not ever.
I focus on the pizza instead.
If you have to know what happens with Charlie, read CRAZY ON YOU now!
It has everything:
✓ a reunion romance
✓ some serious opposites-attract sparks
✓ a mystery of missing money
Turn the page now!
Crazy on You
1
Charlie
The silhouette is the last straw.
If it weren’t for the long and frustrating day I spent in my office, which is supposed to be a place of relative refuge from the incessant hum of Roman’s main office, I might have been able to sleep.
I might have been able to shut my overpowered and yet somehow still-stupid brain off, close my eyes, and drift into temporary oblivion.
Instead, the sheets wrap themselves around my knees like there’s someone else in the bed with me—cruel fucking joke, sheets—and every time I get the urge to turn over I’m fully awake.
Roman thinks the mystery of the missing money, which sounds like a Nancy Drew novel in the worst possible way, is keeping him up at night.
He has no idea.
We’ve been back and forth on this at least a month now, with me printing him endless spreadsheets and him frowning in that fatherly way that says I’m disappointed that you haven’t done better, even though he’s not the one sifting through financial records every day of his life. Oh, no. Roman’s the one striding across the office every morning after his workout. Sometimes it wakes him up an hour early, he told me last week. So he…visits the gym. Visits his girlfriend in the bed next to him, more like.
Not that I blame him for that.
Much.
I do, however, blame the world right now for making me the one on call for club-side emergencies tonight. Roman likes the personal touch, but it means one of us is always at risk of getting woken up in the middle of the night by an old woman wondering about a cat scratching at her door or some such.
I have one trick in my arsenal for trying to fall asleep, and it’s the one our mother gave Beau and I when we were younger. Just pretend to be asleep, she’d say. Right now, she’s probably somewhere in the Bahamas, but it’s anyone’s guess. She’s got Driver’s obsession with travel and Asher’s obsession with being a missing person. I don’t know which one of us heard from her last.
And I’m not going to think about it. I will let my mind go blank. I will relax all of my muscles. I will—
Hear the faint echo of one cheer bounce off my wall, then become painfully aware of the ghost of a beat dropping over and over and over and over and over again.
I whip the covers off and hurl myself out of bed, finally transformed into a crotchety old man. I stalk across the bedroom and wrench the curtain back. It’s pointless, because I already know where the sound is coming from—a party on the beach. Heart pounding, I served the empty street with a vicious glare.
Directly across the street is Roman’s house. The house of the silhouette.
A light on the second floor is on, and he and Jenny are outlined in shadow against the curtain. And from what that shadow is doing—
“Disgusting.” I slam my own curtain back into place. At least I try to slam it, but it slides across the curtain rod with a disappointingly gentle whisper.
I used to have a person like that. She was nothing like Roman’s Jenny. But our silhouette would have looked similar.
You know—in terms of the passion.
I have to get out of here.
On the porch I take stock. The first week of September means that it’s still warm, but the air has lost some of the oppressive humidity of August, and I take a big breath of the clear night air and bend to tie my shoes.
Over on the club side, the neighborhood is quiet. The wind breathes. The houses breathe. The streetlights give off an electric hum. And my mind circles around the missing money another pointless time.
The Bliss Resort is bleeding money. That’s what Roman would say, and that’s what Roman has said. To me. Every day for a month. He sees the same spreadsheets I do, and those columns and rows should make everything clear.
Except they don’t make it clear. They make it patently unclear, and that’s not how I want to live my life, second-guessing everything. I want to be able to trust the numbers, but the numbers, as I’ve discovered, are not trustworthy. There’s a flaw in the system. Hell, maybe there’s a flaw in the whole setup of the resort. Roman can see the big picture, but I’m the only one who can see all the underpinnings. Because my finance department—all three of us—are the ones with our hands in the endless stream of numbers. Expenses out. Profit in. And somewhere, a leak.
It would be easier, I think, if reservation records randomly disappeared. That’s something you can fix with a profuse apology and a promise to reschedule. But missing money?
Missing money means there’s someone taking the money. Money doesn’t just disappear from my ledgers. It has to go somewhere, and it has to go there at a person’s bidding. Or maybe a conspiracy of people. A vast shadow network of…
Of nothing. I shake my head to clear the thought. It’s not supported by data, and anyway, it’s the middle of the night. No problem-solving ever takes place in the middle of the night.
I jog down the steps of my cottage on the club side and ease into my pace. I run in the middle of the road, in the September moonlight, and pay attention to the rhythm of my footsteps. It works. For five seconds.
Roman’s not happy about the resort, but then again, I don’t know how he could be. With every day that goes by that we haven’t solved this, it gets worse.
That I haven’t solved it. The weight is on my shoulders this time.
Down toward the corner, Driver’s house is dark. His girlfriend Holiday is pregnant, which I gather makes a person ungodly tired, even at the very beginning. I don’t know what’s weirder—the fact that he changed his life to be with her, or the fact that they’re asleep by ten most nights. Beau and Claire’s house is dark, too. But that silhouette in Roman’s window still stings for a variety of stupid reasons.
I start down the hill toward the gatehouse. I wasn’t imagining the beach party. With every step I take the sound gets clearer—the throb of the music. The scattered cheers. It’s like the lake takes the noise and tosses it back onto the club side. It’s a miracle more people don’t complain about it. Or maybe they do—Roman would know. A few months ago, before everything happened with Jenny, I might’ve seen the light in his window and knocked on his door. He would have come out onto his front porch to listen for signs of trouble with one of Beau’s events. Roman always blamed it on Beau’s party attitude, but he was rarely as drunk as he seemed. Everybody has their secrets. Beau’s weren’t mine to tell, twin brother or not.
I skirt the gatehouse and run across onto the official resort property. There’s one gate between me and the beach and I leap over it, proving once again that the gate is pointless. Not that anyone particularly cares.
The sand sinks under my feet and my calves burn, but there it is, out on the accessible surface of the beach: the party that’s being reflected back at my house by the water and the sky.
I slow to a stop and take it in.
The entire scene is bathed in firelight from a massive beach bonfire that’s half burned out and a ridiculous number of tiki torches. Everyone’s dancing. Somehow, the crowd looks almost united. This should be wrapping up any moment now, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at them.
I move closer, a human moth to a flame.
It’s creepy.
I know it’s creepy, standing here in the sand, looking at a party. It’s not up to the standards of the Bliss Resort. And I turn away.
At least, I start to turn away, and that’s when I see her.
It’s a flash of hair flying behind someone, stirred up in the breeze, and the only thing I can really discern about it in this light and at this distance is that it’s not a natural color. There’s something about the way the firelight and the color meet, a split second, and I’m back there.
I’m right back there, back at the end of college, sitting in the warmth of a bonfire with a beer in my hand. I don’t even like beer, but that’s what was always available, and Leta loved to go to parties. So we went to parties.
Leta.
I’d say I haven’t thought about her for years, and maybe that’s true. Maybe it’s true that, on some level, I haven’t let her enter my thoughts. I’ve kept the ghost of relationships past at least the length of the beach away. But it doesn’t matter if it was true before this moment. In this moment, I’m sitting by the bonfire again, watching the light play over her blue hair and memorizing the way she looked when she laughed. The heat of the firelight on her skin was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, back then. It might still be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I sat near her at so many parties, in the light of so many fires, and it never got old. My heart races. My head struggles to catch up. It could be her, my mind whispers.
No, it could not. Leta’s not coming back to Ruby Bay. She has no reason to come back here.
“Did you come to babysit me?” Beau’s voice cuts into my thoughts. It doesn’t exactly startle me. I must have sensed that he was nearby. “Because if so, Charles Bliss, you screwed up. I’m not in charge of this party.”
“Hilarious. And no, I didn’t come here for you.” I cut a glance at him across the sand. He’s barefoot in the sand, his hair pressed up on one side like he’s been sleeping. “What are you doing here, if this isn’t your party?”
“I let Claire do this one,” he says. “She brought on some more staff to shut it down in…” He pulls his phone from his pocket and checks the time on the screen. “…fifteen minutes.” He shoves his phone back into his pocket and throws an arm around my shoulders. “What are you out here for, my man?”
I shrug his arm off and roll my eyes. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“Still working on that mystery shit?”
“It’s serious, Beau. The resort is losing money, and I don’t know why.”
He nods. “I wasn’t trying to make light of it. I’m still half-asleep.”
“At least you could fall asleep in the first place.”
“Well, I had help.”
I hold up a hand. “I don’t want to know.”
“See, when a man and a woman love each other very much, the way I love Claire and she returns my affections—”
God, he is so loud. “Are you sure you need to be out here? I don’t think this crowd is interested in an impromptu sex-ed class.”
“I wanted to make sure it went okay.”
We both consider the crowd. “That’s the most responsible thing I’ve ever heard you say. What happened to you?”
“The miracle of love,” Beau says. “But seriously. Does it look like a decent party? Nobody’s blackout drunk. No insane incidents. The security Claire hired looks like they can handle it.”
I didn’t notice them before, but now I see them—matching polo shirts and dark pants, at the edge of the light.
“Yeah. They do.”
Beau falls silent as the music shifts and changes into another song. It’s faster, more frenzied, and my heart beats along with it even though I don’t love this kind of club beat. It reminds me of a time I did love club beats. It reminds me of a time I didn’t grimace when I thought of the phrase club beats.
