Almost Just Friends (Wildstone #4)(43)

“Piper?”

“Yeah?”

“What if what I really need is to be here with you and Win for a little bit?” He lifted his head and met her gaze.

She drew a deep breath as she realized her own hopes and dreams of going off to school were getting further and further away. “Then we’ll all live together again for a little bit.”

“And if we want to kill each other?”

“We already do,” she said. “Wanting to kill each other is sort of the definition of being siblings.”

He hugged her again. “Love you, Pea.”

His old nickname for her, from the early days when he hadn’t been able to say Piper. He hadn’t used it in so long that just the sound of it was like coming home. It’s enough, she told herself. This life’s enough.

“Love you more,” she whispered.





Chapter 14


“Sorry not sorry.”

Gavin waited until late that night when the house was dark and silent to sneak out. Back in the days of his wild and crazy and very confused teen years, he’d snuck out a lot. That had involved escaping through his second-story bedroom window, climbing along the ledge to the corner of the house, and shimmying down a tree.

On those nights, he’d rarely had an agenda. All he’d known was that he’d grown up in a world so far from this one, a wanderlustful, amazing, crazy world in which he’d seen every continent and more cultures than most people knew existed. He’d not known anything different until he’d been sent here after hell had broken loose.

A hell of his own making that had started and ended in the DRC. There’d been strict rules for him and his sisters there, and a “yard” they’d had to stay within. Going past that into the jungle had been forbidden. In fact, that had been Winnie’s first full sentence when she’d been three years old: “Don’t leave yard.”

So of course Gavin and his BFF, Arik, had gone into the jungle in the midst of a storm. And they’d walked right into a gang of local drug runners. In the ensuing fight to get away, they’d been separated. Gavin had heard the shots and run until his side hurt. He’d tumbled into the yard. Alone. It’d been hours later, when the storm had been gaining steam by the minute, that Arik’s body had been found.

The very next day, he and his sisters had been sent home by their parents, who promised to follow shortly.

They’d died in the flooding from the storm before they could get out.

To say after all that, that Gavin had been a hard-to-handle kid, one who was angry and grieving and generally pissed off at the entire world, was an understatement. Suddenly his skin had felt several sizes too small, and he’d been crawling up the walls, his brain filled with so much inner turmoil he didn’t see how he could possibly go on.

So he’d escaped every night, thriving on the illicit freedom. A freedom he’d known he didn’t deserve, not when Arik would never know the same, or Gavin’s parents either. Still, he’d done his best to make sure the world knew he was angry, hurting, and racked with guilt. God, the stupid things he’d done, but he’d been a walking, talking death wish. He’d gone swimming in the lake by moonlight, alone, even in a storm with a three-foot chop. He’d stolen his grandma’s car and hit up the bars around the Cal Poly campus looking for easy, fast hookups.

His grandma had never caught on to him, and then she’d passed away right in the middle of his assholery.

Now as a dubious grown-up, he wasn’t still mad at the world. Maybe at himself, but he was slowly getting over it. And he sure as hell wasn’t going out the second-story window. He intended to go out the back door, but he found Winnie in the kitchen. She had the toaster’s parts strewn across the kitchen table. Her phone was propped up against the napkin holder, playing a YouTube video on how to fix a toaster. Sweet Cheeks was asleep in her lap. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?” she asked.

“Okay, I’ll rephrase. Do you know what you’re doing?”

“If I did, would I have watched this YouTube video ten times?” She sighed. “Emmitt told me what to do, but I can’t remember all he said.” She met his gaze and frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” He headed to the door. “Don’t get electrocuted.”

“Don’t find trouble.”

He turned back. “What does that mean?”

“You’re heading out, right? I thought people in NA aren’t supposed to go out alone.”

Yeah, and he was also supposed to be working on his steps, making amends. “I’m not looking to get wasted.”

“Promise?”

“Yes.”

“Pinky promise?” she asked.

He realized she wasn’t kidding. She was utterly serious and also worried, which made his chest ache. “Hey,” he said. “I really am okay. You know that, right?”

“You keep saying it, but you lost your job, your place, and near as I can tell, all your friends.”

“That was last year,” he quipped. “This year I’m trying something new.”

She still didn’t smile, and he let out a long breath and came back to sit next to her, wrapping an arm around her.

“Is this about the fight tonight?”