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Because whether she was cranky today or not, this was the man who’d saved her, just as she’d hoped he would.
The other things he’d done didn’t—couldn’t—matter.
She had to find a way to forget that anything had changed between them.
Because, dummy, nothing has,she snapped at herself.
She assumed that a man who looked like Blue had sex all the time. It likely meant as much to him as getting her latte every day meant to her. Delicious and perfect while it lasted, but no need to elevate one latte over another when there was always, always another on the way.
Everly was frowning as they walked into the kitchen— definitely not at the idea of Blue with his next interchangeablelatte, because that would be crazy—but she had to sort out her expression almost instantly, because Blue’s mother was there.
Everly only vaguely remembered seeing her earlier. Here in the bright glare of a summer afternoon, she much more closely resembled the woman that Everly had always known growing up. Regina Margate was trim and athletic, her dark hair glossy and straight and cut into a tidy bob. She was sitting at the table with the newspaper spread before her, but her smile looked strained when she aimed it their way.
“Hello, Mrs. Margate,” Everly said, because she might be grown up now, but she was incapable of addressing adults she’d known as a child by their first names.
“I see you’re both up,” Blue’s mother said brightly. “You must be starving.”
“I can’t imagine what a shock this is,” Everly began, apologetically.
“She’s fine,” Blue said, as if that was the end of it.
He went over to the kitchen counter with the ease of long practice, which told Everly that the coffee machine was in the same place it had been years ago. She didn’tknow why it pierced her heart to think of teenage Blue getting himself coffee in this same kitchen, but it did. He poured two mugs and brought them both over. He plunked one down on the table beside her, but then looked surprised when Everly took a seat.
“I’ve been collecting your parents’ newspapers,” Mrs. Margate said to Everly, with a smile that seemed more natural when she looked away from her son. “Their trip sounds like so much fun. I told your mother she’s going to have to show me all her pictures when she gets back.”
Everly felt her shoulders go down a few inches, telling her how tense she’d been that she hadn’t even noticed they were hunched up around her ears. “She loves nothing more. My father had to force a cell phone into her hand, because she vowed she’d never use one. Now she never puts it down, because she’s taking a million pictures with it all the time.”
“I don’t think there’s a thing your mother can’t do,” his mother said, and laughed.
“Okay.” Blue’s voice was flat. “Enough. We’re not here for pointless small talk.”
Everly set the mug she was in the process of lifting back down on the table, afraid her hands would start shaking. Because Blue’s voice felt like one of the blows he’d taught her, sharp and lethal and designed to maim.
For a moment that felt like it lasted forever, she found herself staring wide-eyed at Blue’s mother.
Who did not curl up into a ball the way Everly would have. She straightened her shoulders. For a split second, she looked hurt, but then a resigned sort of expression took over her face. She laid her hands on the table before her, very neatly, one on either side of her newspaper.
“Benjamin Lewis Hendricks,” she said, a kind of deep fury—or hurt, maybe, Everly couldn’t tell—making her voice shake, though she didn’t look away from Blue. “I haven’t laid eyes on you in twenty years. You show up here before dawn, and do I ask where you’ve been? Do I question you on why you’re back, and with the neighbor’s daughter, no less? No, I do not. Because I love you, no matter how you break my heart. And I’ll remind you that this is not the first time I’ve seen this kind of cloak-and-dagger nonsense.”
“Don’t.”
But Regina Margate ignored her son’s terse, angry monosyllable. She stood up, pushing back her chair as she rose but managing to make the scratch of it against the kitchen floor seem almost regal.
And this time, Everly was aware that she was holding her breath.
“I don’t think it’s asking too much for you to keep a civil tongue in your head while you’re in this house,” Mrs. Margate said. “However long you plan to remain in this house. That’s my only requirement.”
“It’s not your requirements that were the problem,” Blue bit out.
“You stop right there.” His mother sounded more furious than hurt. “This ishishouse. You’re not a child any longer. You’re a guest, not a dependent. If you don’t want to stay under his roof, Blue, no one is forcing you to stay here another minute.”
But Blue didn’t say another word. He simply turned and walked out of the kitchen, and Everly had to sit there in silence, staring awkwardly at his mother as they both listened to him take the stairs two at a time.
Everly knew her face was red. She was surprised to see that his mother’s was colorful, too. Flushed, anyway, and her eyes got glassy the more the silence dragged on.
“In my head he was still seventeen,” Mrs. Margate said when Everly had begun to think she wouldn’t speak at all. That she might stand there, frozen in place, forever. “Isn’t that funny? I know how old he is, of course. I knew he wasn’t still a teenager. It’s almost funny, the tricks time plays on a person.”
She focused on Everly then, which made Everly wonder if she’d forgotten she wasn’t alone.