Page 9 of Best Laid Plans (Rock Harbor #1)

CHAPTER FIVE

ELLE

Elle

I cannot believe you didn’t tell me about dad! You told me when he got a new pair of sneakers. But not this? What the hell!

Wyatt

Um… I figured they wanted to tell you themselves. And in my defense, he’s been wearing his old dad sneaker-style for decades. It was big news!

Elle

You sent me at least six photos of the new fucking shoes. THIS was big news. And you let me walk in there blind! Judas!

Wyatt

I’m sorry sis. I’ll make it up to you when I’m home.

But did you see his shoes in person? Pretty sharp.

Elle

Fuck off. And since when are you running an orphanage?

Wyatt

You mean Cam? He stops by sometimes. Let him cook for you. It’ll blow your mind.

Elle

We haven’t gotten to the ‘sharing meals’ together stage.

Wyatt

He’s a good dude. Don’t be mean to him.

Elle

I’m not being mean to him but I’m going to be mean to you. I hope you locked up your valuables.

E lle put down her phone and paced back and forth across the rug in Wyatt’s apartment. It was an amalgamation of blue hues, different colors in slightly wavy lines that she followed from one end to the other. She’d just completed her thirtieth line, turning quickly to start all over again.

If only those wavy lines meant to sooth could give her the kind of comfort that she needed right now.

She shook her head for about the hundredth time, trying to make sense of everything. Today had been such a mindfuck.

Even though she and Cam had stayed and helped out for the remainder of the day–her mom hadn’t been lying that it would pick up later–she’d been a tangle of nerves. She wondered if anyone had gotten a completely correct order if she’d been the one to pack it.

Now, without the distraction of customers, she was left with time to think. Cam, silent and stoic, sat on the sofa, his hands clasped together. He looked up intermittently to catch her eye, but hadn’t spoken since they’d walked back upstairs fifteen minutes ago.

To be fair, neither had Elle. She’d just been aggressively pacing the living room, trying to wear a path in the rug that, if she succeeded, she hoped annoyed Wyatt when he got home.

After the unceremonious admissions that a new restaurant had moved into town and that Pierce’s Lobster Co. wasn’t participating in the chowder fest, Elle thought that she had the bulk of the bad news that her family had been keeping from her.

She’d been wrong. So, so wrong.

“He’s having heart surgery.” Elle reached the end of the rug and turned at another quick clip. “Heart surgery,” she repeated, emphasizing the words separately like that would make them more real.

Cam’s deep voice, slow and even, came from the sofa.

“At least it’s minimally invasive, right?

And it was pre-scheduled which means that they don’t think he’s at serious risk for anything going wrong immediately.

Like your dad said, even though there is an issue, this is as much preventative as anything else. ”

“I know, Cam. I was listening, too,” she snapped, immediately regretting her words.

She’d been the one to ask him to stay downstairs, so it was doubly shitty to fault him for being an active listener.

“I’m just not handling this news very well, and I’m sorry that you’re forced to be present for it. ”

It’s not like she could send him to his room or something. And even if she went into hers, it wasn’t big enough to do the kind of pacing that news of this magnitude required.

For better or worse, they were stuck in this situation together. The least Elle could do was not take her fears out on the one other innocent bystander in the whole situation.

But she just… couldn’t believe it. And hearing Cam say those words out loud again brought all of her fears roaring back to the surface.

Her dad was her rock. He’d worked at the restaurant every day it was open for the last three decades. It was the same with her Mom.

Cam, to his credit, seemed just as shaken by the news. He scratched at his light scruff and opened his mouth but then shut it again.

“You really didn’t know?” Elle asked, suddenly unsure about everything. It seemed like her family was playing out a whole life that she had no part in. And even if she’d been busy with work and then her MBA program over the last few years, it still hurt. A lot.

She didn’t have the strength to pick apart why no one had bothered to tell her; She was too terrified.

There had been a lump in her throat since she’d found out that in just over two weeks, he was going to be put under anesthesia while a machine cut into his body to create a detour for blood flow around his heart.

Down in the restaurant, she hadn’t even pushed Cam away when he’d placed a steadying arm around her shoulder, just like he’d done when they were kids.

Sitting in front of her now, he put his elbows on his thighs and stretched out, keeping his hands clasped together.

When he looked at her, his green eyes were dark and stormy, and there was clear frustration in his voice when he said, “I promise you, Elle. I had no idea any of this was going on. Wyatt didn’t tell me. ”

At least they were aligned that her brother had been way out of bounds keeping this to himself.

“I’m going to murder him.” Elle half-believed her own words. This was beyond the pale, even for her ‘the world is on my shoulders’ big brother. He could be as self-sacrificing as he wanted, but not when it meant that Elle was in the dark about something this serious.

“I’ll bring the shovel.” A small smile played at Cam’s lips, and she appreciated that he was trying to bring a little levity to the situation.

They both knew that he considered Wyatt to be a brother as much as a best friend, and even if he was frustrated about being kept out of the loop too, his anger would probably wane a lot faster than Elle’s.

It all just felt like too much. She hadn’t even thought about her life outside of Rock Harbor today. Which was strange because two days ago, it had been the thing keeping her up at night. Plotting and planning to get back to Boston as quickly as possible.

If you’d have asked her yesterday about her weekend plans, she’d have told you that she expected to spend her days sending out resumes for jobs back in Boston and popping down to visit her parents to prove to them that she was alive and, in fact, still a functioning member of society.

In the span of less than twenty-four hours, she was now shacked up with Cam, her former childhood best friend had made an unexpected appearance–TBD on how that was going to go, and Wyatt had moved into the space as ‘arch nemesis’ on her list of enemies.

But all of that felt so insignificant compared to what was going on with her dad and to a smaller degree, her parents’ restaurant. And the worst part was, she had no idea how to help them.

“What are we going to do?” Elle asked, more to the universe than Cam .

Pierce’s Lobster Co. was her parents’ whole life. She hadn’t existed in this world without it–or her dad–and she didn’t want to find out what that would be like.

Just like that, the seriousness of her dad’s situation knocked the air out of her lungs.

It had taken a lot to keep it together downstairs, but she didn’t have any fight left in her.

Now, away from her parents’ mildly concerned stares–which was crazy, since she wasn’t the one with a serious health issue!

–it felt like the apartment walls were closing in on her.

She tried to take another breath, but air was nowhere to be found.

She managed a shallow inhale as tears began prickling behind her eyes, the edges of her vision going blurry.

They intensified so quickly that before she knew it, fat droplets were streaming down her cheeks, and she felt like she was sitting at the bottom of a hole, only a pinprick of light miles up at the top.

Elle had forgotten Cam was in the room with her–or that she was in a room at all–until she felt his large arms wrapping around her easily, enveloping her in a hug.

She buried her head against his chest, trying to finally take a full breath.

She could smell his body wash, something clean and woodsy that made her want to inhale more deeply.

She wrapped her arms around him, too, her hands coming to rest on his shoulders, her fingers finding purchase in the solid cords of muscle running across his upper back.

“I’ve got you,” he said with quiet confidence that was so reassuring there was nothing else to do but believe him. His hand rubbed at the base of her neck, soothing circles as she felt the tension that she thought would crack her body in two start to dull.

This was calming her. Cam, of all people, was calming her.

Which was insane, given that he’d been the person driving her crazy for the last twenty-four hours.

She’d hit him with a baseball bat for crying out loud, but that didn’t seem to matter right now.

Not when she felt his scruffy cheek press against the top of her head, providing even more solidness for her to cling to.

He held her gently, giving her all the time in the world to find her center, to feel like the light at the top of the hole was getting just a little bit brighter. And inside of that safe cocoon, finally, it felt like she could breathe again.

After relief came the embarrassment. Swiftly.

They must have been standing like this for minutes, but it wasn’t until Elle felt like she’d returned to her body that she realized how closely they were pressed together.

She could feel his heartbeat thrumming through his thin t-shirt, and he was so warm that he felt like a heated blanket wrapped around her smaller frame.

But there was also a teary trail across where her face was still nuzzled against his chest, and at some point, she’d fisted Cam’s shirt in one of her hands, holding onto it like a branch that was keeping her from falling off a cliff.