No, but he deserved the best. He deserved a comfortable life.
You can give him a comfortable life.
I shook my head and tried shoving those stupid thoughts out of my mind. I needed to slow down and enjoy what I had for the moment. And I had a full weekend ahead of me with all of my absolute favorite people under the same roof.
When I pulled up to the curb in front of Teo’s apartment, he was waiting for me on the sidewalk with a duffle bag over his shoulder and some kind of wooden pallet box in his arms. I hopped out to help him load his stuff into the SUV.
“What’s this?” I asked, taking it from him. There were bags of soil and packets of seeds inside the wooden tray, along with an empty mason jar.
“I hope they like it. I found it at the farmer’s market. It’s a little salad garden kit, kind of like an EarthBox. I can fix it up for Millie and Kirk this weekend while we’re there, and then all they’ll need to do is water it. By the end of July, they should have the fixings for a good salad. I brought the recipe for my mom’s dressing too.”
After settling the items in the back and hopping back in the driver’s seat, I glanced over at him. “They’re going to love it. Thank you. You didn’t have to bring anything.” I leaned in and kissed him without thinking. I’d intended it to be a quick peck of hello, but then I stayed for more.
“Mm, should have brought you something too,” he murmured against my lips.
“You did. These sexy lips,” I said before pressing another kiss to his mouth and forcing myself off him so I could pull into afternoon traffic.
While we battled our way out of the city, Teo caught me up on Wilton gossip. He was happy and chatty which was nice to see, and it was clear he was back where he belonged.
“Oh! You’ll never guess who I met this morning at work,” he said with excitement.
I tried to think of famous Chicagoans old enough to be at Wilton. “Harrison Ford? Bob Newhart?”
“Pretty sure those guys would hire in-home care at their mansions. So, no. Also, don’t imply Harrison Ford needs senior care. He’s… shit.”
“Almost eighty?”
“Never mind. But you’re on the right track. It’s a celebrity. But you’re never going to guess.”
“I like guessing. Give me another chance. Was it…”
His laugh was light and sweet. “Hush. You don’t watch YouTube anyway. This guy is a YouTube star. His name is Ryan Fae and he has, like, twenty million subscribers. He’s kind of like a beauty blogger. He does tons of makeup tutorials and drag queen makeovers, stuff like that. But he also does the most amazing special-effects makeup. So like… sci-fi aliens and horror movie monsters. It’s so cool.”
“It’s true,” I admitted with a smirk. “I don’t watch makeup tutorials on YouTube.”
Teo smacked my shoulder. “Shut up. This guy is fucking gorgeous. If you met him, you’d drool like an idiot and want to get into his pants. Anyway, apparently his grandmother is one of my patients, and I had no idea. You remember me telling you about Coral, the lady who sings?”
I remembered the night in Goose Bay when I’d caught him singing a song in the shower from the 1950s. He’s said it was Ritchie Valens’s “We Belong Together” and he’d learned it from one of his patients who had the voice of an angel. He’d just told me about his crush on Chris, and I remembered thinking he should have been singing “The Great Pretender” instead.
“Yes, I remember. The wannabe crooner.”
He smiled and lay back in his seat, stretching his legs out in the late-afternoon sun coming through the window. “She always wanted to be a Chordette or Shirelle. She’s got the vocal chops for it. Too bad she was the daughter of a blue-blood politician. The woman was never getting out of the country club scene regardless of how well she sang.”
“So now she has a grandson who makes a living entertaining others. That’s something anyway. I take it she’s good to him? Accepting?”
“Oh yeah. That woman brags about Ryan to anyone who will listen. I’d always heard about her talented grandson Ryan, I just never made the connection it was Ryan Fae.”
I glanced over at him. His dark hair was stylishly messy as usual, and his skin had a healthy summer glow already. He looked stunning as usual. “So you got to meet a real-life celebrity crush. That’s exciting.” I teased him just to see him blush.
“He says he doesn’t leave the house much. That’s why I hadn’t met him before. But he’s trying to do better. It sounded like he has some fears. I talked to him about my fear of flying and how I’d only just begun to realize how much it was holding me back.”
I reached over and grasped his hand, threading our fingers together. “You know if you want to fly somewhere, I can probably find a way to take you, right? Or I still have connections at United and can get you some passes.”
He looked away from me out the window. I felt his hand twitch a little. “Thanks, but, um… I think money’s going to be tight for a little while until I get the full-time placement at Wilton. Right now I’m—”
“Yeah, of course,” I said quickly, cutting him off. “I forgot about that. Well, it’s there when you get more settled and want to make plans.”
He squeezed my hand. “Thanks. I kind of daydream about taking Fia and Bella to Disney someday.”
We talked the rest of the drive about dream trips we’d each wanted to take. When he mentioned a place I’d been, I told him what I knew about it. The drive went quickly, and before I knew it, we were pulling into Millie and Kirk’s driveway.
And there, on the front porch, stood Kirk’s brother, Ty.
My ex.
29
Teo
At first, I assumed the beautiful man on the front porch was Jack’s brother-in-law, Kirk.
“You didn’t tell me Millie was married to a hottie,” I teased as Jack parked the truck. When he didn’t answer, I looked over at him. Jack’s jaw was tight, and his entire body was tense right along with it.
Jack took a deep breath and turned to me. “Listen—”
Whatever he was going to say was interrupted by a happy screech and the slightly pregnant woman from the front porch came rushing out to greet us.
“She looks like you,” I said, noticing they shared the same shiny dirty-blond hair and angular chin. Millie’s nose was slightly more turned up at the end which made her look younger instead of the two years older I knew her to be. Jack and I had talked at length about our sisters when we’d spent too much time together in Goose Bay. In a way, I felt like I already knew Millie because Jack absolutely adored her and talked about her often.
She ripped open the door to the SUV and yanked me out, engulfing me in a hug I hadn’t been expecting.
“Oh my god, you’re fucking adorable,” she said. Then she lowered her voice so only I could hear her. “He thinks the world of you, just so you know.”
My face pretty much self-combusted right there on the spot. Part of me wanted to tell her that I thought the world of him as well, but then I remembered that she was a meddling sister who thought the two of us were dating. Of course she was going to push us together regardless of Jack’s true feelings.