Page 40 of Best Laid Plans (Rock Harbor #1)

But… no. This could be good. A little bit of time with Mr. Pierce to catch up with him.

Maybe Cam would finally get that breading recipe.

A night without Elle or Wyatt could be just the thing he needed to get his mind back on track.

They could shoot the shit about the restaurant for a few hours and Cam could pass out exhausted before midnight, sleeping blissfully before he woke up tomorrow to do it all again.

If he hustled with closing, he could make it over there at a reasonable dinner hour. But the great thing about the Pierce family is that given they’d had this restaurant for thirty years, dinner was always a relatively late affair.

Cam

8:30 ?

The response came back quickly.

Mr. Pierce

See you then.

And even as his traitorous heart rebelled at the idea of not seeing Elle tonight, he knew that it was for the best.

The fates were conspiring against him. That’s the only thing he could think as he pulled into the Pierces’ driveway to see Wyatt’s truck already parked. And Cam knew that if Wyatt was at his parents’ house, Elle was sure to be there, too.

It had been years since he’d been at their home when Elle was there. Usually, he stayed in Boston for holidays, popping into town on random days of the week when his schedule allowed it.

He and Elle had gone years of their adult lives without ever crossing paths. A few days together and he’d set his life on a collision course of monumental proportions. But even so… had this always been simmering below the surface, ready to explode between them?

Cam shook his head. Another intrusive thought that he refused to follow, especially given that he was walking into her family’s home.

Wyatt had bought this house for his parents about a decade ago, when his future had been bright. Cam had seen, firsthand, how quickly the tides could turn.

Two years of professional football salary for a kid whose family pulled in less than a-hundred-grand a year in one of the most expensive parts of the country had meant that Wyatt, young and filled with confidence, wanted to do right by his parents.

His home would come down the line, when he’d settled with a team.

When he and Hannah had gotten married. Only, none of that had happened.

Wyatt didn’t talk about his old life. Definitely not his former pro career. And especially not Hannah.

Cam was finally beginning to understand the idea of a loss that was too painful to talk about. And he hadn’t even lost her… yet.

He walked into the Cape Cod without knocking, already hearing voices talking over one another, mostly Elle and Wyatt. Unsurprisingly.

“You’re here,” Mrs. Pierce said when he stepped into the kitchen, her face lighting up like Cam coming by truly completed the night. He appreciated it, how she doted on him, even if it still made him uncomfortable after all these years.

Wyatt sat at the kitchen island with Mrs. Pierce and Elle, turning in his direction and making a dramatic sniffing noise. “I can smell the fried food on you from here.”

“One of us had to put in a real day’s work.

” Cam ignored the buzzing in his limbs, but he pulled out a chair and sat down at the table, just to be safe.

Mr. Pierce sat across from him, working on a crossword puzzle.

“And I cannot believe that I smell worse than the kids you spend all day with. Not even close.”

“He’s got you there,” Mr. Pierce said without looking up, though his face split into a smile.

“They really do smell terrible.” Wyatt grew somber. “Almost as bad as Elle’s feet when she was a teenager.”

“Wyatt,” Elle hissed surreptitiously, and Cam’s gaze flicked to the person he’d been avoiding since he’d walked in the door.

Her face was splotched with color, even though Elle and Wyatt teasing one another was par for the course in the Pierce household.

She carded her hand through her incredibly soft hair–Cam knew this from experience–and tried to push Wyatt off his stool to no avail.

“They did not. I think you’re misremembering. ”

“No I’m not,” Wyatt said, doubling down. “It was awful. Mom had to buy you socks in bulk because you’d go through like three pairs a day. We couldn’t keep up with the laundry.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Elle batted back, indignantly. Except the splotches had now come together to turn her face a solid crimson, and Cam wondered if she was possibly going to tackle her brother.

Wyatt laughed gleefully and slapped his knee. “I knew you remembered it.”

Cam knew that he was treading into dangerous territory, but all he could think about was making Elle feel better. He never got in between Elle and Wyatt’s sparring. It was one of his cardinal rules, no matter who was giving it better or getting it worse.

But he couldn’t go over to her, which is what he really wanted to do. Still, though… he had to do something . And he’d already broken so many rules this summer–what was one more? “Dude, didn’t you wear the same jersey for like an entire season without washing it? Because you thought it was lucky?”

“It was lucky,” Wyatt defended, not a hint of embarrassment as he stood up to his full height and grinned proudly. “We went undefeated that season.”

“We had to have the car professionally cleaned after that,” Mr. Pierce cut in, finally looking up from his puzzle.

He chanced a quick glance at Elle. Her face was returning to a normal shade, though she hadn’t looked directly at him, either, since he’d walked in. Her cheeks were still stained with a soft pink that was so… endearing. Fuck, Cam really needed to get it together.

Thankfully, Mrs. Pierce stood up from her barstool and walked over to the stove, stirring a shallow pan. “I made chicken fajitas. We’re doing it assembly line-style, just like when you all were kids.” She looked pointedly across the room at her husband. “Jim, I’ll make you a bowl.”

Mr. Pierce gave Cam a devastated look. “I’m sure it’ll be mostly lettuce, too.”

“I heard that,” Mrs. Pierce said as she turned back toward the stove.

After everyone grabbed their meals, Cam got his own plate.

In restaurants, it was customary to have a staff meal before or after a shift–which some places insisted on calling ‘family meals,’ which he’d always hated.

People trauma bonded by a militant head chef did not a family make, as far as he was concerned.

But this? Seated around a table with the Pierce family, their voices booming over one another–loving and teasing and warm–well, it would always be the closest thing to feeling like he was a part of something real that Cam would ever have.

Which meant that when he looked up and caught Elle staring at him with the softest, warmest eyes that had ever been leveled in his direction, he felt all kinds of confusing emotions radiating outward from his chest at the same time it felt like his stomach was going to implode.

He wasn’t built for the way that Elle was looking at him.

Tender and sweet and like they were sharing a private moment.

Because they were sharing a private moment, her lips tipping into a gentle smile as she shrugged her shoulders at him.

Like she wasn’t embarrassed that he’d caught her.

Like it was inevitable that she’d just want to look at him, for no other reason than she liked to see his face.

Elle Pierce was not the person that he should trial run having actual fucking feelings with. That was so abundantly clear it was like a flashing neon sign was going off in his brain.

He was going to fuck this up, and then what? Elle was going to hate him. Wyatt was going to hate him. The Pierces were going to hate him.

And the little sliver of familial understanding that he had was going to be wiped away.

He couldn’t–

Mr. Pierce pushed his bowl a few inches toward the center of the table and cleared his throat. “Since no amount of preamble is going to change what any of you say next, I’m just going to get to the point. We’re thinking about selling the restaurant.”

The din of cutlery and chatter stilled, a single, pronounced second of silence before it sounded like a bomb exploded at the table.

“What?” Elle and Wyatt both said in unison, their heads whipping in the direction of their dad.

If the Pierce parents were calm and temperate, the Pierce children were chaos-personified, especially in this moment.

“Is there something wrong with your recovery?” Elle asked, her voice choppy, like she couldn’t catch her breath. She slapped her hand to her forehead and used her thumb and middle finger to rub at both temples.

Wyatt, unsurprisingly, had similar questions. “Why is this happening now? And why wouldn’t you talk to me about it?”

“Us. But Wyatt’s point still stands,” Elle cut in, her voice having risen an octave in the last ten seconds.

Cam shut his mouth and expected the next indeterminate number of minutes to be absolutely cataclysmic, especially when Wyatt stood up and began pacing back and forth between the island and the table.

Mr. Pierce ran his hand along the newspaper still set atop the table. “Heads & Tails made an offer. And it’s a good one. It would allow us some breathing room to figure out what comes next.”

Wyatt threw his hands up. “What do you mean ‘what comes next?’ You’re both in your sixties. You just had open heart surgery, Dad. If next doesn’t include the ability to retire, then I don’t see how this can actually be a good deal.”

Elle blanched. “Are they going to take over the space? Or do they just want to push out the competition?”

Wyatt nodded at Elle. “What she said. Are they just trying to strip Pierce’s for parts?” If Wyatt and Elle as adversaries was overwhelming, the two of them on the same team was terrifying. “I thought you said yesterday went well,” Wyatt said to Cam, pulling him unwillingly into the fray.

He’d never regretted sending a text more.

“It did go well,” Cam admitted, hating the look of betrayal on Elle’s face when he added, “but I’m sure this is bigger than just a single sales day.

Restaurants are a tough business.” Foot, meet mouth.

But he knew that Jim Pierce loved Pierce’s Lobster Co.

like it was another child. The Pierces wouldn’t be considering this unless they’d fully thought about it.

“We haven’t made a final decision yet,” Mrs. Pierce said diplomatically, the faces of both her children whipping over to her like they were greyhounds chasing a lure on the racetrack.

Sadly, it did very little to control the damage. Wyatt’s face was scrunched up tightly, his hands balled into fists that dangled at his sides. Elle had also stood up, and now they were pacing in opposite directions, crossing paths before going their separate ways again.

“Kids, it’s not the end of the world,” Mr. Pierce maintained. “We weren’t going to be able to run the business forever.”

Elle scoffed, stopping and putting her hands on her hips. “But this isn’t your choice. It’s Heads & Tails bullying you out of the restaurant you’ve spent your entire lives building!”

Mr. Pierce shook his head, still managing to maintain his calm in the face of his children’s frenetic energy. “No, honey. What we’ve spent our entire lives building is our family. Everyone here now. The rest can come and go. ”

Cam’s throat tightened, struck at the intimacy of the moment he’d found himself part of–at being included in it.

Mrs. Pierce pulled their attention again, her voice soft but measured. “I know this is a lot to take in, but we didn’t want to keep secrets from you.”

That took the slightest amount of wind out of Elle and Wyatt’s sails, though Cam couldn’t even imagine what it was going to be like back at the apartment later.

“I have an early practice tomorrow, so I need to head home. We’ll be talking about this again,” Wyatt said matter-of-factly.

Elle picked up her bag off the kitchen island. “Same.”

The Pierce parents nodded, but Cam had seen that look from both of them before, many times over the years.

It said ‘we’ll hear you out and make you feel a part of the process, but this is our decision to make.

’ But with kids as stubborn as Elle and Wyatt, it was really the only possible way to handle them.

Cam stood up too, knowing that staying with Mr. and Mrs. Pierce would put him squarely in the doghouse with both of his current roommates. And that was, decidedly, a place he did not want to be. “Thanks for dinner. I guess I’ll head out, too.”

Both of the Pierces gave him genuinely apologetic smiles, but they all knew that Cam hearing it directly from them was better than whatever version Elle or Wyatt would have thrown his way. It definitely allowed him to get the story with fewer expletives.

On the drive home, he wondered what the end of Pierce’s Lobster Co.

would mean. It was inarguably the most important place in his adolescence, and even if he understood the decisions that Mr. and Mrs. Pierce were making better than Wyatt and Elle, it had still felt like a punch in the gut to him, too.