Home > Heart & Soul (Lost & Found #5)(11)

Heart & Soul (Lost & Found #5)(11)
Author: Nicole Williams

“I feel better now,” I answered at last, winding my arms around her as I tucked my chin over the top of her head. My response had less to do with what she’d said and more to do with having her in my arms. She knew that too.

We sat like that for a moment, her running her fingers up and down the back of my forearm for so long that I felt a wave of sleepiness hit me. The moment she stirred in my lap, that passed.

“I still can’t believe he tried that thing with Colt though.” She shook her head against my chest. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Josie so pissed. And I’ve seen her pissed. A lot. In fact, I think that might be her favorite emotion. It’s her most convincing one at least.”

That blood-boiling sensation flooded back in full force. It didn’t even need two seconds to achieve maximum lift-off. “He can try to set Colt up with the rest of the town for all I care.” I glared through the window across from us. “Just so long as it doesn’t involve my family.”

“I take it from that tone and steely expression that you haven’t gotten over Colt Mason being Lily’s boyfriend?”

“He’s not her boyfriend,” I said, feeling my jaw lock into place at the thought of Lily being Colt’s . . . girlfriend. “They’re dating. They’ve been on dates. That’s it.” My fists were curling. “That’s enough.” All I could see was Colt and Lily together, talking, touching . . . “More than enough.”

“It didn’t seem like you had the see-red bug at the thought of Colt that Garth had a while ago.” She lifted her head off of my chest to look at me, but I just kept glaring out that window.

“That was before he decided to ask my little sister, who happens to be way younger than him, out on a date.” My eyes narrowed a fraction more. “That’s bad form. Where I come from, that’s not the way we do it. Since Colt’s got about as much country in him as he’s got honor, I guess I shouldn’t have expected him to follow the same code.”

“Is Garth channeling you right now?” She shifted a bit, framing my face with her fingers and squeezing one of her eyes shut as she focused on me. “Because I swear to God what you just said, in that same exact self-righteous-meets-self-loathing tone he’s perfected, with that so-close-it’s-seriously-freaking-me-out expression . . . Garth, are you in there?” She stopped framing my face long enough to knock on my forehead. “Don’t make me perform an exorcism because, so help me god, I will if you do not leave my sweet, accepting, thoughtful husband alone. Be gone, evil spirit,” she said with a palm shoved into my forehead.

Winding my fingers around her wrists, I lowered them back into her lap. Although her lap had changed. The soft flatness of it had been exchanged for a rounded firmness that still made me almost jump when I felt it without thinking. Instead of letting my hands slip away, Rowen grabbed my wrists and settled my hands on her stomach. After spreading my fingers on both hands, she smiled down at the picture. I studied the same image and smiled too—my smile was just more touched with sadness than hers.

My view had changed too. When she’d first started framing her stomach with my hands, all of my fingers had overlapped. By a lot at first, then less and less. I liked being able to look down and see that—my hands on her, my fingers touching, almost as if I could keep all of us together. Last week, my fingers had stopped touching, and yet another, albeit misplaced, sentiment of control slipped out of my grasp and another thimble of hope drained out of my bucket.

It had the opposite effect on Rowen though. My fingers being unable to touch seemed to be some kind of landmark to her. Something to celebrate.

Looking down, I saw a noticeable difference in how far apart they were this week over last. That would be the trend from here on out though. Each week, each day, this would slip further and further out of my grasp. I couldn’t keep us all together and safe. I couldn’t catch her or the baby if they fell. I couldn’t protect them if I couldn’t reach them. Even as I stared at her stomach, my hands framed around it, I realized what an odd thought that was to have, but acknowledging that didn’t lessen the reality of what I was feeling. Unfortunately.

“Okay, okay, so enough with the Garth-channeling jokes.” She fitted her hands on either side of mine, so they made one small circle around her stomach. “What’s this code you’re talking about though? Is it one you can share with, you know, a girl? One who was raised in the, gasp, city of all places?”

From the corner of my eye, I saw her smirking at me, but I couldn’t seem to tear my gaze away from her stomach and our hands circled around it. “It’s not a code, per se, but it’s something Colt would have a basic understanding of if he’d been born and raised the way I had.”

She nudged her pinkie into my thumb. “Am I to infer from that vague explanation that you’re saying Colt should have known better than to ask out a friend’s sister?”

“Exactly.”

She nodded slowly, swinging her legs over the arm of the chair; those glaring orange toes flashed at me. “But don’t you all kind of grow up knowing each other, being from a small dot on the map and putting so much importance on helping each other out? Wouldn’t you, if you wanted to date someone in the same zip code as you, kind of have to ask out some friend’s sister eventually?”

I wanted to answer with a quick and adamant no, but I couldn’t. Because she was right. Back where I came from, plenty of friends dated plenty of friends’ sisters, so I didn’t know why I was so worked up over Colt and Lily. The age difference had something to do with it, but it wasn’t as though he were fifty and asking her out. I don’t think it was his family’s money or where they had ties to. So what did I have so against Colt Mason dating my sister?

   
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