The Anatomical Shape of a Heart(34)

Scandinavian black metal.

Jack arched away from my hip as my phone buzzed inside my pocket.

Ugh. It was Heath. He’d changed my ringtone to play something that sounded like a screaming subway accident whenever his number came up. “Sorry,” I mumbled, sitting up and frantically fishing out my blaring cell, which everyone and their brother could probably hear through the trees. So much for our private hideaway. I finally managed to mute the phone, but not before my pulse cranked up to a zillion beats per minute.

“Wow. I’d never pictured you as an angry-shrieking-vocals kind of music fan,” Jack said with a bemused look on his face.

“It’s my jackass brother.”

A text popped up from Heath: Where the hell R U?

“Something wrong?” Jack asked.

“It’s already five? How did that happen?”

“I thought you didn’t have to work.”

“I don’t. It’s worse than that. It’s”—I lowered my eyebrows—“family dinner night.”

“Oh,” he said, pulling his hand away from mine. Was he disappointed our near-kiss moment was kaput? I certainly was. “Do I need to drop you off?” he asked.

I didn’t want to leave, not when I’d already spent more than a week away from him, and not when I’d just learned all this stuff about his mom. I remembered how cold his father had seemed outside the hospital, and wondered if Jack would go home to an empty house that night.

I leaned back on my hands. “What are your feelings about lasagna?”

15

Jack pulled Ghost next to the curb in a prime spot almost directly in front of my house.

“You can change your mind,” I said.

He stowed his sunglasses on the visor and stared at our front steps like a monster might come storming down them at any second. “And turn down a free meal? Never.”

“You say that now, but you haven’t met my family yet.”

As traffic sped behind us, we headed up to the front door. On the other side of it, a trio of laughs floated from the kitchen on a fragrant cloud of tomato and melted cheese. It smelled freaking delightful. And Mom was in a superior mood, laughing it up and practically singing her curiosity when I called from the park to find out if I could bring Jack along. Now, if she just wouldn’t put two and two together about the graffiti in the museum, and if Heath would keep his mouth shut about everything I’d told him about Jack, this might not turn disastrous.

I signaled Jack to follow me through the living room toward the chatter. Our kitchen wasn’t fancy, having last been updated in an ugly 1990s shade of pale mauve, complete with fake butcher-block countertops. But it was pretty big for a city kitchen, with a long peninsula counter that separated a round four-chair breakfast table from the rest of the room. Mom was standing on the other side of that peninsula, and Heath was lounging at the table. And right as I walked under the archway from the living room, an African-American man as big as a professional wrestler stepped in front of me.

And when I say wrestler, I mean bulging muscle—beefy and corn-fed, with a few extra pounds of cushion, and tattoos snaking up both arms. He was dressed in a T-shirt with a fiery metal logo, and he had one of those wallet chains looping from the back pocket of his black jeans. To go along with all that, he had a full-on badass beard, like one of the big S&M dudes who walk around with nothing but a bullwhip and leather chaps at the Folsom Street Fair.

The whole package announced You do not want to screw with me, but the beautiful smile curving his lips was all sunshine.

“Beatrix?” he guessed.

“Noah?” I guessed back.

His rumbly laugh echoed around the kitchen as he scooped me up into a hug. “Damn, you’re a little thing like your mama, aren’t you?”

“And you’re apparently made of mountain. Are you sure you’re an engineer and not a lumberjack?”

“Last I checked.”

When he pulled out a chair, I widened my eyes at Heath, who was beaming so much he nearly blinded me.

“Well, I’m glad to finally meet you,” I said, moving into the kitchen to make room. “And while we’re on introductions…” Jack stepped under the arch. “Jack, this is my family. This is Saint Noah, my brother’s boyfriend. And that’s my brother, Heath, and over there is my mom, Nurse Katherine the Great. Everyone, this is Jack.” I refrained from adding the Vandal.

Jack extended his hand to Noah, and then to my brother, who looked Jack over like he was a piece of cake as he purred “Hello, Jack” in a voice an evil cartoon cat would use on a doomed mouse. “I’ve heard all about you.”

Ugh. Kill me now.

“But I haven’t,” Mom said, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. “Come closer and let me get a better look at the person my daughter’s been hiding under a bushel.”

Uh-oh. She was strangely cheerful and teasing, but it didn’t stop my neck muscles from clenching. And poor Jack had no idea what he was walking into, but he strolled around the counter and shook my mom’s hand, too.

“Thank you for having me. Hope it’s not an inconvenience.”

She made a sweeping gesture toward two pans of lasagna cooling on trivets. “If we can eat all this, we should get some kind of prize. It’s no inconvenience whatsoever. Do you go to school with Beatrix?”