Page 61 of Take the Blame (Seaside Mergers #3)

Chapter Thirty-Two

AUGUSTUS

I should have never said yes.

It was a stupid, reckless, hare-brained idea to think this could ever work. That I could ever do this without my heart getting tangled up in the mix. And now, here I stood making one of the worst decisions I’d made since I got to this God forsaken city.

Doubts aside, it was too late to back down now. Whether I wanted to or not, I was going to the Fernandez Thanksgiving.

When Clay hit me up last minute wondering what I was doing for the holiday, I knew better than to lie. He’d become a good friend all over again in these weeks we were reconnecting, and he was one of the few people who knew the extent to which I had ostracized myself from my own family.

He didn’t know the newfound regret that was starting to surface every time I thought about that choice, though. Ever since seeing my mom, I couldn’t help the feeling that enough was enough. That I’d gone through enough pain in my life and that I’d shown enough of my solidarity with my sister.

Yet that thought made me feel guilty. It wasn’t like she was throwing in the towel.

She wasn’t tiring of being alone and running back to mommy.

She was still out there without a family.

What gave me the right to call it quits if she didn’t have that luxury?

And what kind of brother was I that I could only stand up for her as long as it was convenient for me?

And now, on top of mistakenly thinking I could play house with the Fergusons who were coincidentally sharing Thanksgiving dinner this year with the Fernandez’s and come out unscathed, I made another egregious error.

I didn’t tell her I was coming.

The floppy haired one answered the door, his grinning smirk seeming to be there before I even came into view. Did they have cameras or something? Or was that just his face?

“Why, hello,” he said in an overly welcoming voice, not bothering to hide his delight at my arrival.

I really didn’t know how to feel about this kid.

He seemed nice, but every word he said made me feel like he had one up on me somehow.

Like he was deviously planning something underneath those smirks of his.

“Welcome to Thanksgiving, come in and I’ll get Al. ”

Taking a cautious step toward the humungous door he was holding open, I said, “No actually I was invited by?—”

“Al!” he yelled unceremoniously, causing my eyes to go wide.

I didn’t even know what that would do in a house this big.

Would she be able to hear? She must’ve been in a room close to the door because I could hear her call back in the distance.

I tried to catch his eye as I shook my head, not wanting any assumptions thrown around that she wouldn’t be comfortable with, but before I could he was already singing out, “Visitor for you!”

I glowered as he returned his grinning smile back to me, and still holding the door open he gestured with his free hand to the space around him. “Well come in, we don’t bite.”

I merely grunted as I stepped around him into this mausoleum of a home racking my brain on what I would tell her about why I was crashing her holiday like this.

There was no time to think when my angel girl came bustling through the foyer though, her hair in big waves around her body that was dressed in a rich wine colored sweater and tight jeans.

She looked flushed, like she had been working and I could imagine she was helping whoever was in the kitchen.

And her eyes were alert, darting around the room in confusion as she rushed to meet her brother at the door.

“A visitor for me?” she asked, confused. That was until I stepped around her brother and she stopped cold. “Oh! Harp?”

“Hey, Boss,” I said slowly. Embarrassed to be showing up here like a lost animal.

She had none of it, because of course she didn’t. Her confused expression smoothed into happy surprise as she took me in, a smile slipping across her face as it so easily had since we’d gotten to know each other so intimately. She looked happy to see me, even though I was crashing.

Stepping forward, she slipped an arm around my not occupied hand and kissed my cheek swiftly. Was that just friendly… or?

“Hi!” she said happily. “Happy Thanksgiving, what a surprise! Did you come for me?”

“I—” I didn’t want to lie but even if I didn’t come for her, I would stay for her. I technically already had.

Unfortunately, the universe decided to answer for me as another familiar face illuminated the front door, all wide grins and booming voices .

“Montez!” Clay appeared from behind Alta and her brother, his smiling face the opposite of the now confused eyes I was getting from the only one who mattered. “Took you long enough! Come in!”

I didn’t move, my eyes zeroing in on the girl in front of me. She was staring, a pert little frown forming on her face as her eyes went between me and my friend. The nod she tucked into her chest stirred up anxiety in my stomach.

“So, not for me then,” she said, stepping away. “Got it.”

I directed my next words to her. “Should I go?”

Truth be told, I had no idea who I was supposed to be at this gathering. Was I a friend? Was I more? Or was I only just someone her so-called brother-in-law knew?

Her eyes traveled from my face to the dish I was holding in my hand. Pasta salad. It had been hard to make my mom’s recipe for several reasons. One being, I was shit at it, but the other being the visceral urge I had to call her and ask for her help.

These thoughts were running me ragged. And I just wanted to curl my head against the chest of the girl who was looking at me like I hurt her somehow.

“You gonna answer that Fernandez?” Clay asked, and I realized he was still there.

Finally, she cleared her throat and stepped aside. The loss of her eyes was like a loss of a limb. I just wanted to get them back, make this better. “No. We’re joint hosting with the Fergusons. Any guest of theirs is a guest of ours.”

Got it . I wasn’t a guest of hers then. Wasn’t hers at all.

I didn’t even know if I wanted to step in any further at that point. Not after that warm welcome. I could hear soft music floating around and the hum of laughter coming from other rooms. It was all so nice, so congenial, it made my stomach hurt.

So did the sight of her shoulders as she went to turn away from me without another word. I jogged to catch up to her, catching her hand in mine before she could get too far and pulling her closer so I could speak to her in a low voice.

“Boss? What’s up?” I asked, needing to know. “I can leave if it’s too much.”

The guarded look that passed through her eyes as she pulled her hand away from mine stung.

Her voice was a distant flutter as she tucked her chin away from me and said.

“Nothing’s up, Harp. I’m glad you have somewhere to spend the holiday— someone.

” Her eyes drifted to Clay before she cast them down.

“—Anyway, we’re all just hanging out for now.

You’re welcome anywhere you like. Dinner is at four. ”

With that, and plucking my pasta salad dish from my hands, she turned and rushed away.

A long whistle sounded from behind me before a hand clapped over my shoulder. I couldn’t help but feel sucker punched as Clay and I started into the main house. “I was going to show you around the place, but the doghouse is that way, man.”

Past the foyer and into the house, we passed an opening of a living room where a handful of men sat around a television screen watching the motion of some sport on the screen.

I recognized Alta’s brother as one of them, and when he felt me watching them he looked up and quickly rolled his eyes away from me as if I was as annoying as a fly that kept bugging him.

Another familiar face being Clay’s younger brother, who noticed me and abruptly looked the other way.

Weird.

In the end, he hadn’t been able to find anything substantial about that number he looked into for me. I’d have to tell him it was okay. Instead of finding the truth, the truth found me.

Surprisingly, the most welcoming presence at the gathering was the little fire-head who I realized had one hundred percent set me and Alta up on Halloween when she ducked out of the shop suspiciously .

“Tattoo guy!” she greeted as she barreled into the kitchen Clay was just showing me, a pie-wielding girl in tow.

“I have a name and if I remember correctly, you know it, tiny girl,” I said.

“I don’t know it,” a sweet voice said. The tall girl I’d only seen glimpses of peering up at me from around Ceci’s shoulder. She moved her hazel eyes to Clay, and I realized that their irises matched. “Clay, is this your only friend?”

“Tiny, you little shit,” Clay said, pouncing on her and pinching her cheek.

She giggled like crazy before batting her brother off.

I felt something pull at the easy way they interacted.

Family being family—being happy. Something like envy pushed through me and formed a lump in the bottom of my throat as I watched Clay give his sister a little nudge.

“Introduce yourself, you know how to act.”

“Hi,” the girl said, she moved her pie to one hand and held out her other to shake. “I’m Clementine. I make the pies.”

“Gus,” I shook her hand briefly. “I made the pasta salad, though if it finds its way to the trash before dinner, you might save a few lives.”

She smiled politely, her laughs apparently saved for her brother and her grins for her fiery companion beside her. What she did give me was a skeptical eye. “I thought Alta called you Harper?”

“That she does,” I said, my mind catching on to the fact that her family knew what she called me. Did that mean they knew about us? “It’s actually Augustus Harper, but that’s a mouthful, so I let people call me what they want.”

“Ah.” She nodded, her quiet eyes spanning over me before momentarily catching her sister-in-law’s. “And the two of you are…”