The Summer Deal (Wildstone #5)(8)

Brynn wasn’t laughing or crying. Her eyes were closed and she was hugging her moms back tightly, but Eli couldn’t get a bead on her emotions. It was fascinating, actually. Her quietness. The people in his life—his brother, Max, friends, even Kinsey, all of them, himself included—were not quiet. Not even close. They had sarcasm and bickering down to a fine art, much like a real family. Or so he assumed.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out.

“What’s the update?” his brother asked in lieu of a greeting.

“Kidney arrived unviable.”

Max let out an audible breath. “Shit. Goddamn. Fuck.”

“Yeah.” In the background, Eli could hear excited barking. Max had probably just come in from surfing. He was probably standing in the kitchen dripping water all over the floor along with their rescue dog, Mini.

“She all right?” Max asked.

“What do you think?”

“That she’s devastated.”

“While pretending not to be,” Eli agreed.

“Need me?”

“I’m okay.” He and Max shared a dad, who’d dumped Eli’s mom to have a baby with the eighteen-year-old babysitter—Max’s mom.

Eli’s mom, a British college professor who’d never really enjoyed children, including her own, had taken the opportunity to leave her cheating husband and ten-year-old son to go back to England and teach there. And with his dad far more interested in his new trophy wife and baby, Eli had been out in left field.

But in spite of the ten-year age difference, he and Max had forged a relationship that remained strong to this day. “There’s something else,” he said, eyes on the three women hugging in front of him. “Brynn’s here. At the hospital.”

“Brynn,” Max repeated, sounding confused. “You don’t mean—”

“Yeah.”

“Holy shit. Did Kinsey see her? Did they talk? Maybe—”

“No, Kinsey didn’t see her.”

“Did you tell her how hard you crushed on her all those years ago?”

Eli scrubbed a hand down his face. “I should never have told you that story. And how do you even remember it anyway? That was forever ago.”

“You’d lost a dare and had to admit your most idiotic crush, which fascinated me because you don’t tend to do idiotic. Plus, I never forget anything. Did you talk to her?”

“Not really.”

“Why not?”

Hell. “She didn’t recognize me.”

There was a stunned silence from Max, then a very amused laugh. “Sorry, but shit, that’s funny.”

“Is it though?”

“Oh, yeah.” Max had just turned twenty-one. He was a beach bum and surfer at heart. He worked two part-time jobs: as an assistant to Eli at the marine life nonprofit, and also cooking at the local bar and grill. He cooked better than he surfed, which was saying something. And he very much enjoyed lording stuff over Eli whenever possible.

“Bring our girl home,” Max said. “I’ll have food waiting for you guys.” Then, still laughing, his brother hung up.

Shoving away his phone, Eli went back to watching Brynn. Wondering how to get this to play out the way it needed to. He had a couple of choices. One, keep his mouth shut, and in doing so, let go of a connection that Kinsey desperately needed.

Or two, bring them together.

Or back together . . .

None of them had known during all those years they’d spent together at summer camp that Kinsey and Brynn were related. That hadn’t come to light until Kinsey had taken one of those ancestry tests to try to find a blood relative other than her mother and good-for-very-little con artist of a father. She’d actually gotten lucky. At some point in the past, Brynn had apparently gone looking for relatives as well. She’d uploaded her DNA and a picture. So when Kinsey had come along several years later, she’d been able to follow the bread crumbs. Once she’d found the shocking connection, she’d given Eli a second surprise—she had no intention of telling Brynn they were half sisters.

Clearly Brynn had never gone back to her own relative hunt, or she’d have found Kinsey. And by then, Kinsey was too sick to go back to camp anyway, so they’d not seen Brynn again.

Until now, when Brynn was currently being smothered by her moms. She pushed her glasses up farther on her nose as she rolled her eyes, but she wasn’t trying to get away. She was comfortable with the easy affection and the way they were holding on to her like she was the very best part of their entire world. Eli tried to remember his parents holding him like that, but couldn’t. He had no idea what it must be like, but thought it was sweet.

Brynn had been a tiny thing, undersized like him. She hadn’t had asthma like he’d had, but she’d stuck to herself, especially whenever there’d been sports involved. She didn’t have a single athletic bone in her body. That, combined with her quirkiness, had made her different.

Eli liked different, always had, but the other kids hadn’t, and he knew camp had been a lonely place for her.

Raina was sniffing at Brynn. “Baby, why do you smell like chocolate and trans fats and sugar?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“I do.”

“I had a candy bar.”