Brutal Game (Flynn and Laurel #2)(21)
“So this is going to be a complete surprise.”
“Pretty much.”
“Why now?”
He kept his eyes glued to the road through the watery flakes pelting the windshield. “It just hit me.” Like a fist to the face. And he’d recovered from the resulting daze without a doubt in his mind.
“You know how you’re going to propose?”
“Not really.” Again, not at all.
“When?”
“Not sure. When it feels right.” In the next week or two, he imagined, some time when it was just the two of them. Before she decided about the pregnancy, he hoped. He wanted her to know where he stood. Wanted her to know that if she kept it, he was in this. And that if she didn’t, it didn’t change how he felt for her, how serious he was… Though now he thought about it, maybe it would make her decision harder, if he proposed first. Maybe that was too much pressure, like a big fat sign she’d take to mean he wanted her to have the baby.
And is it? Fuck if he even knew—
“You nervous?”
He cracked a smile. “Terrified.”
“Ha! This from the guy who volunteers to get assaulted every weekend. For free.” Anne had come along to the fights with Laurel once and spent the entire night wincing and shielding her eyes with her purse. “For free,” she said again, throwing her pink wooly hands up in disbelief.
“For fun.”
“You know what’s super fun? Bar trivia. Badminton. Getting drunk and trying on all the clothes in your closet.”
“Your closet, maybe.” He exited the highway, taking them onto a neglected route trimmed with tired strip malls. When they reached the plaza, he was relieved to see the jewelry store was nicer-looking than most of its neighbors. He parked and shut off the engine, sat holding the wheel and staring blankly between his fists.
Anne patted his shoulder. “Nothing to fear, champ. Just a massively expensive purchase with no guarantee she’ll say yes.”
“When you put it that way.”
“C’mon. Let’s go look at sparkly shit.”
And since the car was getting cold, he flung his door open and took the next big, icy step into the unknown.
* * *
“How’s this?” Laurel asked, holding up a sugar cookie to show Flynn’s sister.
Heather eyed it in her beady way and nodded. “Perfect.”
Before them on the kitchen table were tubes of icing and sprinkles and those little silver balls that just had to be poisonous, Laurel imagined. The cookies were supposed to be snowflakes, frosted pale blue and white, but they’d spread a bit in the oven and given the color scheme, they could’ve passed for trussed-up Stars of David.
She set the test cookie aside and got to work on the rest while Heather layered a lasagna. For a family named Flynn they certainly did lean heavily on Italian bakes. Then again, she’d never before had a meal at Heather’s not bestowed by a surly delivery driver, so it felt very fancy indeed.
For Laurel, the afternoon was a welcome break from the lingering questions that nagged at her day and night. A week since she’d peed on that stick—and two days since she’d peed on a second one, also positive—and she felt no closer to confident about her decision. But for the next few hours, it wasn’t about her. It was about Kim, and about cookies, and fun and celebration. She just hoped no one noticed her toasting with seltzer water.
The young woman of the hour was out at the moment picking up her daughter from her ex’s mom’s house, leaving just Laurel and Heather to handle the party prep. Once upon a time this apartment had seemed so harsh and unwelcoming to Laurel, with its cigarette undertones and the incessant drone of the portable TV on the kitchen counter, always tuned to court TV or trashy talk shows.
Heather herself had initially intimidated the crap out of Laurel, as well. She was nearly fifteen years older than Flynn, an abrasive South Boston native with a lanky build and a hulking presence, a load of auburn hair and clashing roots and no deficit of eye shadow. Everything about Heather Flynn growled, Don’t f*ck with me, but Laurel had grown very fond of her. She’d stepped up to raise her brother in her twenties and was every inch the mama bulldog, but she hid a heart of gold behind the sandpaper veneer.
Her daughter Kim had just completed a certificate program in medical billing. The family, broken though it was, was fiery and proud, and you’d think Kim had just graduated from Harvard with honors.
Laurel, on the other hand, had had no one cheering when she’d crossed the stage to accept her Bachelor’s in Engineering at Wentworth aside from her classmates, to say nothing of a party to mark the occasion. The whole thing struck her as slightly outlandish but infinitely charming, and she envied Kim, she could admit. Or perhaps it merely humbled her to remember how she’d judged Flynn’s niece when they’d first met, thinking she was a sulky, overgrown teenager who’d had a kid way too young and f*cked up her life.
Joke’s on me, Laurel thought. In no time at all Kim might land a job that paid better than Laurel’s waitressing gig. The engineering market in Boston was tight and competitive, and it didn’t help that she’d let her education lapse. She wanted to kick herself, some days. Now more than ever.
“You’re quiet.” Heather’s accent was as heavy as her brother’s. Yaw quiet.