Dad stiffened.
“I think it’s a great idea,” Cannel finally chimed in. “I can’t say that I’ve been the best sister-in-law through the years…” She trailed off. “But I want to fix that. And if I have to come to Florida to do it, then I will.”
I smiled at my sister.
God, I loved her.
I was so glad that she was better, too.
Her being sex-trafficked right out of the supermarket parking lot near the Air Force base in Florida had changed a lot of lives that day, the most of all hers. She’d had a lot of hurdles to get over lately, but she was scaling each better and better as the days passed.
“So when are you leaving?” Shine asked, looking the most sullen of the bunch. “What about that party for her welcoming home you were talking about?”
“We’ll have to postpone it a few months.” I shrugged. “We leave tomorrow.”
CHAPTER 16
Motherfuckers think they can have their cake and eat it, too. Well, wrong bakery, bitch.
-Dory to Bram
BRAM
We were in Florida exactly twenty-three hours later.
“What do you think?” I asked as I pulled into the driveway of the house that we would be making our home for the next few months.
I looked over to find Dory’s mouth all but falling open.
“It’s… gorgeous!” she exclaimed. “Holy cow! You weren’t kidding about being on the water! Look at this!”
I looked at where she was directing and grinned. “Yeah, the water literally comes up to the back porch. It’s going to be extremely nice not to have to mow weekly.”
There was no grass at all anywhere around the house. It was all landscaped rock, which I assumed was because of the water.
Not that I really knew shit about tides.
I was born in East Texas. There wasn’t a fuckin’ tide to be seen anywhere near us.
“We need a boat,” she murmured. “Then again, I don’t know if I can handle a boat. I can barely handle the rocking of the car.”
Truer shit had never been said.
Her hyperemesis diagnosis from Dr. Proctor had all but taken care of with her excess intake of only sweets and the occasional healthy meal with the ingestion of nausea meds. We were handling it much better than we were last week at this time.
“I think I might like to have a boat,” I agreed with her assessment. “Though, just sayin’, but I’m not sure how well I would know how to navigate a whole ocean.”
She started to giggle, and I felt my heart pound.
God, her laugh.
Her smile.
Her everything.
I got out of the car to keep from snatching her to me and burying my face in her throat.
I tried to move very slow when it came to her. Tried to allow her to make all the moves.
But dammit, it was getting harder and harder as the days went on.
Hence getting out of the confines of the car while she was looking so damn cute.
When I rounded the front, it was to find her already standing on the ground, raising her arms up high over her head, causing her shirt to lift.
The tiniest of baby bumps swelled softly from her belly, and I couldn’t stop myself from reaching forward and skimming my finger from the top of her belly to the waistband of her pants. “It’s growing.”
She smiled softly at me, then distractedly looked toward the bay.
“A dolphin!” she cried, pointing.
I looked toward the bay to where she was indicating and saw a whole bunch of nothing.
That was, until a spray of water, followed by the rounded back of a marine mammal, crested the water.
Then another. And another. And another.
“Cool.” I smiled. “That’s gonna be fun to drink coffee and watch.”
“I wish I could have coffee,” she grumbled. “I didn’t realize how much I would miss it until I couldn’t have it anymore.”
“Decaf,” I suggested. “We can start doing that.”
That sounded like hell… but if it worked for her, well, then I would drink it. I would do just about anything.
“Come on, let’s check out the inside,” I suggested.
Turns out the inside was just as good as the outside.
The inside was an open concept, the living room, dining room, kitchen, and entryway all rolled into one.
The showstopper was the wall of windows at the back of the house that looked out over the bay.
“Wow,” we both breathed at the same time. “This is… holy shit.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” I murmured.
“Why would anyone ever want to sell this?” she asked. “If this were mine, I’d keep it, and live in it during the good season.”
“What constitutes a ‘good season,’ babe?” I teased.
She looked at me with shining eyes, her mouth kicked up in a small grin, and said, “When the sun shines all day long, you go outside and risk getting burned, and the two minutes of rain that happens every day that makes it feel like a swamp.”
I agreed with her.
“Let me start getting our stuff inside,” I said as I placed my phone and keys down on the counter.
She made an ‘okay’ sound and I took that as my sign that I was dismissed.
Just before I got out the door, I heard my phone ring.
“Hey, will you answer that?” I called out.
“Sure,” she said quietly.
I left to the sound of her voice saying, “Hello?”
When I got back, loaded down with all of our bags, it was to see her holding the phone out to me at the front door.
“Who is it?” I asked, walking the bags inside as well as trying not to hit her.
I didn’t altogether succeed, but she didn’t get mad.
“Mimi,” she said softly.
“Tell her to call my brothers or something if she needs anything. I don’t live there anymore,” I murmured.
Jesus Christ.
I’d known she was in town for months now, and she’d known I was there, too.
And it was as if she thought we would get started where we left off.
But the thing was, I didn’t want to get started with Mimi ever again.
Sure, seeing her had been a shock.
But not even the good kind of shock. The bad kind. The kind that reminded me how fuckin’ needy she’d been.
“Umm.” She hesitated, unsure if that was what I wanted to say.
I dropped the bags in the entranceway, scooped the phone up, and pressed it to my ear.
When Dory went to leave, I caught her wrist, pulled the phone away from my ear, and put it on speaker.
“Yeah?” I answered, looking into Dory’s eyes.
“Bird?” Mimi said, sounding annoyed.
“Yes, it’s Bram,” I said. “What do you need?”
Dory sucked in a breath at the use of ‘Bird.’
But that annoyance was definitely more for my benefit than hers.
She knew that I hated to be called Bird. By anyone.
That was what Amon had called me while he’d held me hostage in his storm shelter for days.
When Dory had found me, she’d heard Amon call me that, and my reaction.
And now, she didn’t let anyone call me that. Not anyone from high school. Not my brothers. And definitely not Mimi.