Now
You’ve got this, Cat told herself. But note to self: she so did not in fact have this. Her nerves had taken over—her own fault, of course. She’d done a thing. A big thing. And though her heart had been in the right place when she’d done that thing, butterflies were revolting in her gut, telling her she’d be the only one who’d see it that way. It was times like this that she missed Michael the most, because he would’ve been her ally in this, she was sure. Back then, even at half her height and weight, he’d been her shadow. The cutest shadow on the planet. Over time, she’d gotten used to being without him, but it’d never gotten easier.
Twin piglet-like snorts distracted her, and she looked down at her fiancé’s “babies.” The pug brothers had huge buggy black eyes and little round bodies and vibrated like they needed their batteries changed. Roly was black and Poly tan, both with black faces, black curly tails, and little black feet.
They snorted at her until she gave in and scooped them up, one in each arm, having to smile at their smushed-in faces. “Okay, guys, listen up. We’ve got a lot to do today.” She took a good, hard look around the old cabin that had been in her family’s possession since the early 1900s. It sat right on Rainbow Lake, about twenty minutes outside of Wildstone, a small ranching community on California’s central coast. She had a lot of good memories here: visiting her grandparents, learning to swim . . . she’d even run away here a few times in her dramatic teens.
Her grandparents were gone, and her parents now lived in South Carolina, where both of them were college professors. They were thinking of selling this place, but had agreed to let her live here until her wedding. At least that was the official reason. The unofficial one was that she was losing her collective shit and had needed the safety net.
The problem was that there were still a few vital pieces missing from the puzzle of Caitlin’s life: the most important pieces, the corner pieces, the ones you couldn’t do without. And since Michael was an angel now—and damn, her heart still squeezed painfully every time she thought about him, which was a lot—she was really counting on the wedding to bring the other vital pieces back to her. Those pieces named Heather, Walker, and Maze.
The estrangement between them all felt like a huge, gaping hole. It’d started at Michael’s grave three years ago and had only gotten worse. Hence the thing she’d done.
No one was going to thank her. And it was entirely possible it would all blow up in her face. But she’d had to try. Just thinking about it had the butterflies in her belly escaping and taking flight in her nervous system, giving her the shakes.
But that might have been the five cups of coffee she’d consumed.
She set down the pugs, much to their snorting, squealing displeasure, and got to it. Running around like a madwoman for the next few hours, she changed the sheets on the beds in the spare bedrooms, swept the wood floors, washed the towels so they’d smell fresh . . . all while fielding call after call from her boss, Sara. Cat managed the Wildstone deli that Sara owned. Cat also made all the hot food, which was actually the only part of her job she enjoyed, because the deli itself was a nightmare. She’d taken three weeks off for the wedding, but Sara, who’d missed her calling as the passive-aggressive queen of the universe, had been in contact almost every day in the guise of needing something, while really just wanting Caitlin to know of her every little mistake or misstep.
So when her phone buzzed in her pocket yet again while Cat was folding clothes in the laundry room, she ignored it.
“Caitlin?” came Dillon’s voice. “Can you bring me my laptop?”
She transferred another load into the dryer, turned it on, blew a stray hair off her sweaty face, and poked her head out of the laundry room to find Dillon sitting on the couch in the living room, feet up on the coffee table, Roly and Poly curled up on his lap. “Are you kidding me?”
He flashed her the charming smile that had caught both her attention and her heart a year ago. “Sorry,” he said. “But my ankle’s bothering me again. Do you mind?”
Hard to, when his twisted ankle was actually her fault. She’d seen a Cosmo post online titled “The Top Ten Ways to Spruce Up Your Sex Life.” Feeling ambitious, she’d gone with number one: “Seduce Your Man in the Shower.” What could she say? The illustrations had looked intriguing.
Turned out attempting intriguing things in the shower was dangerous.
Feeling guilty, she ran up the stairs and got his laptop, stopping to straighten out the mess he’d left on the desk. When she got back downstairs, he was standing at the front door with his golf bag slung over his shoulder.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Just got a call from Mom. Her golf date bailed and she needs me to do the back nine with her.”
“But your ankle.”
“We’ve got a cart.” He handed her the pugs.
Juggling the soft sausage loaves while trying to avoid the inevitable face kisses—a big no-thank-you, since they had a fondness for licking each other’s butts—she stared at Dillon. “You said that you’d be here to meet my family and have dinner with us.”
“Babe.” His face softened. “I’m your family. Me and my mom, and your parents.”
“You know that’s only technically true,” she protested. She and Heather and Walker and Maze might not be blood, but they were something even deeper. A self-made family, and yeah, okay, maybe it was a very dysfunctional one, but it felt more real than anything else in her life.
“Come on,” Dillon said, putting his hands on her hips and giving her a frustrated smile. “When’s the last time you heard from Maze or Heather”—he set a finger against her lips when she tried to speak—“where you didn’t contact them first. I mean, have they offered to help you with the wedding? They’re in it—you insisted on them over your local friends—so . . . where have they been?”
She could admit that he had a point. They hadn’t been together since their fight in front of Michael’s grave. Heather had vanished, just gone dark for a whole year before suddenly responding to Caitlin’s texts again as if nothing had happened. But she still hadn’t been back to Wildstone and wouldn’t give Caitlin much information other than that she was okay and “working on things.” Whatever that meant.
Caitlin hadn’t seen Maze either, and not for a lack of trying. But they’d texted and had a few strained calls. And to give Maze credit, she always responded when Caitlin reached out, even with her busy life that was now in Santa Barbara, two hours south of Wildstone.
But Caitlin had, however, seen Walker. Sparingly, but he’d been gone on the job nearly nonstop the past three years. She missed him.
She missed all of them and wanted them back together. And as the self-appointed bossy older sister of the fam, she was determined—and, okay, also slightly desperate—to make it happen. And yeah, maybe, maybe, she’d rushed her wedding along, knowing it was the one thing that could bring her siblings of the heart back together. She couldn’t help herself. For whatever reason, the four of them had synced and melded into a core family that long-ago year, but they were losing each other, and that scared her. She’d already lost Michael; hell if she’d lose the others too. She needed this so badly she couldn’t even explain it to Dillon. But the truth was the last time she’d felt vibrantly alive had been when they’d all been in her life, and she was just desperate enough to play with fate to make it happen. “Please stay, Dillon.”
He studied her face and sighed, his eyes lit with affection as he cupped her jaw. “I promised Mom, but I’ll get back asap. Take care of my babies?”
It was the best she was going to get, so she nodded. He brushed a nice, warm kiss across her lips, and then he was gone.
Caitlin blew out a breath and eyed his “babies.” They stared up at her with those googly eyes and she had to laugh. She’d grown up with big dogs, so she didn’t quite get the appeal of the little ones. They yipped. They had a Napoleon complex. Last week at the dog park, they’d terrorized a big dog into peeing on them.
But Dillon loved them. When the two of them had first started getting serious, they’d talked about their future. As an investment banker, he had a solid job and made a great living. He was fun and sexy. But she hadn’t fallen in love until she’d seen his “Life” list on his Notes app: wife, kids, big house, and a big pension.
And the past year had been . . . really good. They traveled, they laughed, and she’d felt so lucky. But lately there’d been missed dates. Fewer and fewer late-night talks beneath the stars. Less time spent together. She’d decided it was wedding stress, on both their parts.
Because if Dillon was pulling away, she could admit that she’d let him.
She’d kept all this bottled up because . . . well, that’s what she did, always. There were lots of corked bottles of emotion deep inside her. But this, with Dillon . . . for the first time in her life she didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t tell her parents, because they’d asked her—begged her—more than once to please think about dating Dillon longer before saying yes to a ring.
She hadn’t.
Her friends Charlene and Wendy were each very happily married and sickeningly in love, and Wendy was a coworker of Dillon’s. They loved him for her, said he was the best thing to ever happen to her. So maybe she just didn’t do sickeningly in love?
Maybe it would catch up with her.
When she’d finally finished her manic nesting, she critically eyed the cabin. She’d done everything she could to make it look homey and inviting. Exhausted, she jealously eyed Roly and Poly, now snoozing in their fancy beds, but before she could even think about taking a nap herself, she heard a car drive up.
Her stomach jangled uncomfortably as she hurried out front in time to see Heather getting out of an old, beat-up two-door Civic. She was twenty-two now and had made it clear she no longer needed a big sister, but Caitlin couldn’t help but still see the sweet, terrified, neglected nine-year-old Heather had been when she’d first come into Caitlin’s childhood home. Her hair had grown out a bit, straight and blunt to her collarbone, still black, but with pretty metallic blue streaks. At the sight of her cute, petite self, Caitlin felt her heart melt as she rushed over. “You made it!”
Heather laughed. “Did I have a choice?”
“Nope.” Caitlin pulled her in and hugged her tight.
“Wow.” Heather patted her on the back. “Okay. Hi to you too.”
Caitlin didn’t let go. She couldn’t. This was her baby sister, and Michael would’ve been Heather’s age now, still Caitlin’s shadow, she was sure of it, but also being her backup boss.
“Um . . .” Heather patted her some more. “Not sure we can do this all day, so . . .”
Nope. Caitlin still couldn’t let her go, not yet.
Heather laughingly caved, hugging Caitlin back. “Okay, okay, all day it is.”
Caitlin gave a little snort to beat back the threat of tears and reluctantly released her. “I missed you.” To hide just how much, she peered into the empty front seat of Heather’s car. “Your text said your plus-one was someone named Sam.”
“Oh. About that . . .” Heather’s smile went a bit forced, the way it always had when she’d stolen food from the pantry to secretly hoard, even though Caitlin’s parents had made it clear that everyone in their house could eat as often and as much as they needed.
Heather pressed a lever on the driver’s-side seat so that it slid forward, then reached in and pulled out a little girl from a toddler car seat. “So . . .” Heather said softly, nervously. “This is Sammie.”
Caitlin’s mouth fell open. “A baby? You had a baby?”
“I big girl!” the “baby” said proudly.
Heather cupped the back of Sammie’s head and kissed her chubby cheek. “Yes,” she said, smiling at the little girl’s face. “You’re a big girl.”
Caitlin was still gaping. “You . . . had a baby.”
“I did.”
Caitlin absorbed this blow, and yes, it was a blow, because once upon a time, she’d known everything—every single little thing—about her people. That was what she did: she was the center of their universe and kept them all connected. It gave her purpose and made her feel important in a world where she often felt invisible. The truth was she needed to be needed by them.
And yet she was now so unnecessary that Heather had gotten pregnant and had a baby without a word. Feeling like she’d just been hit by a freight train, she swallowed hard. “Is Sammie’s daddy coming too?”
“No.” Heather reached back into the car for a duffel bag, which she slung over her shoulder. Her jeans were torn in a few spots, and not by design. The rest of her clothing seemed ragged too, and now that the shock was wearing off, Caitlin noticed that Heather’s face was wan and tight, and it made her heart hurt. “You’re . . . on your own? No baby daddy?”
Something crossed Heather’s face. Pride. “We’re not together, but we’re friends and he helps. I’m good, Cat.”
“But—”
Heather’s smile fell. “Please, can we save the twenty questions thing for later? I’m working on zero sleep and enough stress to take down a buffalo. If I lose it now, I’ll never find it again.”
“Sure,” Caitlin managed, trying not to take offense, because she did always ask way too many questions, but how was she supposed to help herself? These were her people and she wanted them back. Shelving that for the moment, she smiled at Sammie.
Sammie stared at her with the biggest brown eyes she’d ever seen, but didn’t return the smile.
Caitlin tried another smile, because seriously, everyone liked her, even cats, which, along with roses, she was allergic to. Being liked was kind of her thing.
But Sammie’s deadpan expression never changed.
“Don’t take it personally,” Heather said. “She’s just super shy. Probably because it’s been just her and me.”
Caitlin had a million questions, starting with why, if the baby daddy was around, had it been just Heather and Sammie? And also, why hadn’t it been Cat and Heather and Sammie? But just then another car pulled up the driveway. She and Heather turned in unison, but Caitlin was pretty sure she was the only one whose heart was suddenly threatening to explode from her chest, because Maze was getting out of the passenger seat, followed by a guy from behind the wheel. He reached for Maze’s hand and smiled down at her. “Ready, sweetness?”
Maze’s gaze had locked on Caitlin, face grim. “As I’ll ever be.”
“Hey,” Caitlin called out. “Weddings are fun, dammit!”
Maze’s mouth twitched, but her eyes remained wary . . . and nervous, Caitlin realized, which softened her in a big way. Of all of them, Maze was the toughest nut to crack, even more so than Walker, and that was saying something because she was pretty sure Walker had been born and immediately dipped in Kevlar.
“Okay,” she said. “So weddings aren’t always fun, but mine will be.”
Next to her, Heather gave a low laugh. “She decrees it so.”
Maze smiled at that and walked up to them, stopping in front of Caitlin.
“Hi,” Caitlin said softly.
“Hi,” Maze said back, just as softly.
“Good to see you.”
“Same.”
“You brought a guy,” Caitlin said.
“If you’ll remember, you demanded I do so. You said, and I quote, ‘Don’t you dare show up without your boyfriend.’”
“Yeah, but that was a few months ago. You don’t have relationships that last weeks, let alone months.”
“Thanks for the reminder.” Maze turned and hugged Heather before coming back to Caitlin.
“Are we okay?” Caitlin asked quietly.
“As okay as we ever are.”
“That’s not saying much.”
Maze touched her finger to the tip of her nose and then sighed dramatically when Caitlin could no longer stop herself and pulled her in for a tight hug.
“Don’t waste your energy trying to escape,” Heather said. “Just give in. It’s easier, trust me.”
Maze gave a small laugh, relaxed against Caitlin, and finally hugged her back.
And since that was what Caitlin had been waiting on, she let go. “See, was that so bad?” She looked up at Maze’s boyfriend, whom she knew nothing about. Getting info out of Maze was harder than infiltrating the CIA.
“Hi,” he said with an affable smile as he held out a hand. “I’m Jace.”
He was tall, lanky, good-looking, and at ease, which gave him brownie points. Clearly, he didn’t yet realize he’d just joined the circus.
“I’m Caitlin,” she said, “and this is Heather and Sammie.”
Jace turned to little Sammie and gave her a big grin.
She gave him a big, sticky-looking grin back and held out her arms, the universal demand for up.
Caitlin blinked in surprise.
So did Heather.
Without missing a beat, Jace obliged Sammie and scooped her up, making her giggle and adding about a bazillion points to his pro column. He bounced Sammie a few times and poked her in the belly, making her giggle some more, and the sweet baby laughter made Caitlin’s ovaries turn over and weep.
So did the sight of Dillon’s BMW turning the corner. He’d hurried and returned, just like he’d told her he would, and gratitude and affection filled her. She smiled and waved, and he waved back . . . and then pulled into the garage, shutting the door behind him and going directly inside without coming out to be introduced.
And just like that, Caitlin’s anxiety was back. “So.” She gave her best pageant smile. “Who needs a drink?”