Page 11 of Love Me
We all sat down at the table and filled our plates with the delicious food Knox had made. Colt placed some French toast on one side of my plate a second before Creed dropped sausage on the other. My heart clenched a little as I stared down at my plate.
“Do you not like French toast?” Knox asked as he added food to his plate.
“I love it,” I said sullenly. “Shayla and I made French toast for my mother every year for Mother’s Day. It was her favorite.”
“We would make our dad chocolate-chip waffles for Father’s Day,” Creed said, and that seemed to surprise everyone.
“That’s right,” Keelan said with a sad smile. “Knox always lost his shit every time the two of you stole a handful of chocolate chips whenever his back was turned.”
“You stole the chocolate chips, too,” Creed grumbled. “You just never got caught and played the innocent bystander when we did.”
Keelan’s smile grew into a somewhat happy one. “I can’t help it, I'm older and wiser.”
As Creed and Keelan bickered, I took notice of how silent Colt and Knox were. Knox was quietly eating as he watched his brothers go back and forth. He appeared bored, but there was sadness in his eyes. Colt seemed to be frozen, lost in his thoughts as he stared down at his untouched plate. Hoping to comfort him, I placed my hand on his forearm.
“My dad always requested an omelet with whatever we wanted to put in it. He loved surprises and always looked forward to finding out what ingredients we’d choose each year,” I said, shifting from their dad to mine, hoping to ease their pain. “One year, when Shay and I were little, we wanted to make him a green eggs and ham omelet. We put ham and every green vegetable we could think of in it, which included broccoli and peas. It must have been so gross, but he ate every bite like it was the most delicious omelet Shay and I had ever made him.” My eyes welled up and I had to blink a couple of times to keep any tears from falling.
“Our mother loved banana pancakes,” Knox said, shocking all of us. Even Colt looked up from his plate.
“She loved banana everything. Banana cream pie and banana bread and muffins,” Keelan said, looking from Creed to Colt and back again. “When she was pregnant with you two, Dad said that all she wanted to eat was banana pudding.”
As Keelan talked about their mother, Colt and Creed hung on his every word. Their mother had passed away from lung cancer when the twins had been six, which would have made Keelan eleven and Knox thirteen. Knox and Keelan had more time with and memories of their mother, whereas Colt and Creed probably didn’t remember much about her. If they did, I had a feeling they weren’t memories of when she had been healthy.
Silence blanketed the table as we ate. Since I had been the one to drag us all down memory lane, I felt obligated to pull us out of it. “Anything eventful going on at work today?”
“I’ll be working from home,” Keelan said.
“You shouldn’t be working at all,” Knox grumbled.
Keelan shrugged. “You can’t finish the preparations for the mud run tomorrow and find coverage for all my classes.” With Keelan’s injuries, it’d be a while before he could teach again. Last night, I had offered to help in any way that I could, even if that meant teaching the class with someone else. Keelan had explained that with everything that was going on with the sheriff and Jacob, it might be best to take a break from teaching with him. I agreed. My life was full of…hurdles and that wasn’t fair to the women paying for the class.
“I need to find someone to help me with Shi’s training on the weekend, too,” Keelan added.
“I’d suggest Derek, but he’s covering the front desk,” Knox said.
“Derek?” I said.
“Derek’s our fill-in guy,” Creed said. “He’s worked in every department.”
“The guy has impressive MMA training,” Keelan added.
“He hates teaching classes, though,” Colt said. “He prefers one-on-one teaching, which is why he does personal training.”
“I thought personal training was to teach people how to get into shape?” I asked.
“It is. We don’t offer one-on-one self-defense training,” Knox said.
Keelan gave him a look that clearly screamedW.T.F.?
I wasn’t surprised. I had a feeling that was the case. It was one of the reasons I had been reluctant to let Keelan train me. By the look he was giving Knox, he was worried me knowing would cause issues with our arrangement. “So Derek is a no-go,” I said, moving the conversation on.
The four of them stared at me, then exchanged looks with each other with varying tells of surprise. Like always, Keelan was the quickest to recover. “Derek wants to continue working the front desk part-time so he can still do personal training. We just need to hire someone to cover what’s left of Stephanie’s shifts.”
“If you give me a week or two to find someone, you can ask Derek to help you with Shiloh’s training,” Knox said to Keelan.
Keelan looked at me. “Would you be comfortable with that?”
I shrugged. “Sure.”