I should’ve realized that meant I wanted the wrong thing out of our relationship, but it took a car accident and, honestly, this week for me to fully connect the dots.
There’s more to life than marking off checkboxes.
I’m smiling to myself over the Nuts—I named them Joe and Bob, because I’m creative like that—and their plan to put Dick in a trance so they can run the controls on the spaceship to blast the earth with a laser beam that’ll give everyone the giggles so they can rob all the chocolate shops they want without anyone raising an alarm, when Wyatt steps down the stairs.
He disappears into the basement, and when he returns with an armful of sheets and the comforter for Beck’s bed, I start to get up.
“Move one muscle, and I’m calling Beck and telling him we’re getting married.”
“That would show the Dixons,” I reply. “And you know that’s the fastest way to get Beck here. He loves weddings. And me. And sometimes you.”
Wyatt grins.
I grin back.
He’s not winning this round.
“I’ll swap out your bubble bath for itch powder,” he offers.
“You would not.”
“Wanna bet?”
“You don’t have itch powder.”
“Last time I stayed here, your brother salted my sheets and put a life-size taxidermied bear in my bedroom to scare the shit out of me. I owe him. So yeah, I brought itch powder.”
And I’m suddenly quite certain I don’t want the man making the bed I’m going to sleep in tonight.
I start to move again. “Sit,” he orders.
Damn, that military order voice is hot.
Hot hot.
And that’s why I sit.
Because if I follow Wyatt into the bedroom, the mattress won’t be the only thing undressed.
“Thank you,” I say, conceding with a regal nod. “Also, if you itch powder my sheets, I’ll itch powder your underwear.”
He just grins again.
Which is also freaking hot.
I go back to flipping through my doodles. After a few minutes, Wyatt appears again. He stops in the kitchen before joining me with a water bottle in one hand and the rest of the banana pudding in the other. He claims the recliner angled to give him a view of both me and the scenery of the town below—or it would, if dusk wasn’t falling—and props up the footrest. “Trade you,” he says, lifting the banana pudding and pointing to my doodle pad.
I hesitate only a moment before I lean over, ignoring the twinge in my hip and thigh, to snatch the pudding and toss him the notebook.
“I was kidding, Ellie.” He holds out my book for me to take it back, but I shrug.
“I was going to show you anyway.”
“Why?”
“To scare you into your senses so you’ll quit trying to kiss me.”
He smirks and settles deeper into the recliner as he flips the cover open. “Do I want to know where you got the inspiration for Dick?”
“You don’t recognize him?”
Dick’s a short, squat, not very pretty penis. He looks nothing like Wyatt’s package.
“Can’t say I do,” he replies easily, completely bypassing the opportunity to ask if I’ve gotten an eyeful of my brother without the sock the photographers make him put in his briefs.
It’s an old joke. Possibly we’ve worn it out.
Also, possibly I don’t want to think about my brother in his underwear. It’s been nice having the cardboard cutout of him in the corner turned around.
Wyatt’s perceptive gray eyes skim the page, and he snickers.
“Not a word on my talent,” I warn him around a mouthful of heaven. I mean, banana pudding. My mom makes awesome banana pudding, but there’s something about the meringue on Crusty Nut’s banana pudding that puts it head and shoulders above.
“I was laughing at the Nuts,” he tells me.
“Oh. Then maybe you do have good taste after all.”
Sparring with him is so easy. We’ve done it a million times. It’s habit. But it’s also comfortable, which isn’t something I ever noticed before.
Maybe it’s never been comfortable before.
Or maybe we’ve both grown up.
Considering how long we’ve each been legal adults, it’s probably past time.
“Why’d you date the Blond Caveman so long?” he asks as he flips another page.
“Ambition made me blind. Why didn’t you quit the military?”
His smile fades into a resigned scowl. “Paperwork and networking failure.”
“Networking?”
“Need a job to pay child support. Don’t have enough experience yet in flight test to be valuable to anyone who’d hire me in Copper Valley. And my request for a waiver to get out of my service commitment got lost on some colonel’s desk. Found it last week, got denied.”
“Beck always said you’d be career military. That it suits you.”
“Shit happens. Rather have Tucker than a long career though.” He skims the next page and cackles.
Wyatt Morgan.
Cackling.
Because he thinks my doodles are funny.
My nipples go tight and a familiar heat pools between my legs.
“Broccolisauruses? Eating underwear models?”
“Beck might’ve pissed me off that day.”
“What’d he do, tell you that you couldn’t do something?”
“He asked me to be his date to some gala in Paris.”
He glances at me in surprise. “That pissed you off?”
“You want to know the last time Beck asked me to be his date to anything?”
“Ah.”
I think he’s done, that he gets it, but instead, he shuts the book and looks at me. “Ever consider he finally realized what he almost lost?”
I open my mouth, but I suddenly don’t know if he’s talking about Beck, and the possibility of losing a sister, or himself, and the possibility that he might’ve lost an opportunity.
With me.
Which is crazy, because I have always irritated the shit out of him.
I used to run marathons. I knew I was pretty—I’m Beck Ryder’s sister, for god’s sake, last year’s People’s Sexiest Man Alive, and we’re clearly related—and athletic and smart. I didn’t have insecurity issues, and so when Wyatt was willing to do the naked tango with me, I assumed it was because he wanted the same thing I did.
A little human companionship and confirmation that I was still attractive to somebody.
And possibly he was a little tipsy.
And angry. And hurt. And lonely.
Just like I was, except I wasn’t tipsy.
And maybe, just maybe, seeing him lonely and hurt and angry, made me realize what I’d been missing all those years between hating him, then crushing on him, then hating him.
That I wouldn’t have given him a second thought if there wasn’t something there.
“I considered a lot of things after the accident,” I tell him. “But it’s complicated. I don’t want pity dates. But I don’t want to take anything for granted either, so I understand other people not wanting to take people for granted. But I also wanted everything to go back the way it was before. Except it can’t.”
“Embrace what’s better, Ellie. Change what you can change. Fix what you can fix. Accept the rest.”
“You mean like accepting that the house will burn down if we sleep together again?” I whisper.
He gives an exasperated laugh. “Sure.”
“Okay. Good. Glad we agree on that.”
“You gonna eat that?” he asks with a nod to my banana pudding.
Our banana pudding.
I lean over and hand it to him.
“Did you spit in it?” he asks suspiciously.
And I laugh.
Because we’re a little messed up, but for the first time in my life, I’m really glad to have Wyatt as a friend.
Twenty-One
Wyatt
After a long and restless night, Tucker and I agree he needs to learn to play air hockey more than he needs to go dig for more pirate treasure or hunt for the peg leg that apparently still hasn’t been found in town. Ellie was up early to take the box of parrots into town and get ready for the wedding, but she hung around long enough to have breakfast with us and draw Tucker a parrot for him to color later.
We’re scrambling away for the puck mid-morning when I hear the door open and someone hit the security keypad.
“Stay here, bud,” I tell Tucker.
I creep softly up the stairs, half expecting to see Beck, and instead, I get a glimpse of an older couple.
My eyes sting and my chest swells, because these two people are the closest thing I have to parents in the entire world.
“Morning,” I say.
Mrs. Ryder turns, her bright blue eyes land on me, and her face lights up in a familiar smile that her children share. “Wyatt! We thought you’d be down in Shipwreck with Ellie.”
She smothers me in a hug, which is impressive, considering I have over half a foot and at least thirty pounds on her. Mr. Ryder squeezes my shoulder. “Hanging in there?” he asks.
“Always. You, sir?”
“Can’t complain.”
“Where’s that little boy of yours?” Mrs. Ryder demands. “I have presents.”
“You didn’t have to—”
“Hush. This is what grandmas do.”
I know a thing or two about arguing with the Ryders—all of them—and I know it’s usually pointless.
Sometimes fun, but always pointless. “Yes, ma’am.”
I help Mr. Ryder with the luggage while Mrs. Ryder heads downstairs to hug Tucker. After they’re settled, Tucker talks them into heading to town with us for pizza.
Doesn’t take much. Just him looking at Mrs. Ryder and asking if she’s hungry for pizza too.
Tucker chews her ear off about the pirate festival on the drive down the mountain. I smile as I listen to them chattering back and forth, but worry’s creeping in.