Flirting with the Frenemy (Bro Code #1)(50)

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.

Tomorrow, we leave to drive home to Georgia. Monday, I go back to work. He starts at a summer camp that my boss swears his wife loves for their kids.

And we won’t have Ellie with us.

For the majority of my life, that was just fine with me. She was irritating, obnoxious, and a general pain in the ass.

Now?

Either I need to see my doctor for an issue with sudden flaming indigestion, or I’m going to fucking miss her.

Because maybe the problem was never that she was irritating, obnoxious, and a general pain in the ass.

Maybe the problem was that she was everything I wanted to be, and then everything I wanted, and nothing I thought I could have, or deserved to have.

Working hard to make something of myself in a career and being the best father I know how to be isn’t always enough to erase the seeds planted in my subconscious in my early childhood that I was nothing but a pest.

“Work going well?” Mr. Ryder asks.

I tell him about my current project, an upgrade to radar sensors on the newest fighter platform, and he tells me about a windmill farm project their company’s been doing for a cloud-based server complex south of the city, closer to where Davis lives.

“Still looking to get out in a year?” he asks me.

“I’m ready.” I’d stay in until retirement if I could—I like knowing my job supports my country and ultimately helps protect my friends and neighbors, and the work is challenging and rewarding—but the odds of being able to get stationed and stay stationed at the base just north of Copper Valley, and therefore close to Tucker, are slim. “Just waiting for the clock to tick down or a waiver to come through.”

“You want a job, you know where to find us.”

“Appreciate that, sir.”

Not that I plan on taking him up on any offer without knowing I’ve earned it. It was hard enough letting them pay for me to take my SATs so I could apply to college.

Which is exactly the sort of thing that family does, and one more reason I need to not fuck around with Ellie.

Her family means too much to me.

Hell, they’re why I applied for an ROTC scholarship the minute I hit campus.

So they wouldn’t feel like they needed to help me through.

That was before Beck and the guys hit it big with Bro Code, and before Ellie landed herself a full ride.

And if I fuck things up with her, I’ll never again hear the chatter in the back of the car with the way they’ve adopted Tucker as a surrogate grandkid. I won’t feel like I still deserve to be treated like one of their own.

If Ellie and I were both in this for the long haul, that would be one thing.

But she doesn’t even want to touch me for fear the world will crumple around her.

So I’ll keep my feelings to myself, and Tucker will keep his second set of grandparents, and life will go on, just as it always has.

Except different.

We park once again in the field at the far end of Shipwreck and head down Blackbeard Avenue into town. Mr. Ryder scans the street. “Where do you suppose Ellie is?”

Spotting the bridal party isn’t easy this morning—no bright parrot costumes for the wedding day, apparently—but then I notice the English colonists.

And the woman who looks like Kiera Knightly in that pirate movie.

“Ah, there, I’d guess,” I tell Mr. Ryder. I don’t see Ellie, but Monica, Jason, Sloane, and the parents are in full colonial regalia. It appears Pop Rock is spending the day playing the role of a governor with the powdered white wig.

This town.

I wave to Monica down the block when she glances our way, and her face lights up as she waves back.