Page 51 of Caught Up

Junior

Of all the Fridays formy father to call an impromptu family dinner, it had to bethis one. The night I was supposed to meet Lauren at Velvet.

My parents usually hosted these dinners once a month as a way to sit down with the whole family: Dad, Mom, me, my brothers, and more recently, my cousin Aly and her boyfriend Josh. It was Dad’s way of pretending we were like any other family, crowded around the dining table and catching up on one another’s lives. In some twisted, narcissistic way, I sometimes thought that was how he truly saw it. That he’d deluded himself into thinking we all gathered willingly, happily, and not because if we refused he’d make our lives a living hell.

Everyone else knew what these dinners really were—just another way for Dad to exert his control over us, remind us who we owed our loyalty to.

I was especially pissed about dinner tonight because he had a habit of dragging them out for as long as possible, and it was atwenty-minutedrive from my parents’ place in the suburbs to Velvet, without traffic. I’d have to keep my eye on the clock to make sure I got out of here in time to meet Lauren.

My parents’ house perched on top of a slight rise, just high enough to see the city spread out in the distance. It was aTuscan-stylevilla, clad in light stone, with green shutters and aterra-cottaroof. Towering arborvitae lined the driveway, clipped tight to mimic the Italian cypress trees that couldn’t survive our winters. With the sun setting behind it and the outside lights kicking on, the house looked ancient and proud, like it had stood here for hundreds of years instead of beingcustom-builta decade ago.

I’d never hated the sight of it more.

I parked in my usual spot and was just pulling off my helmet when lights flashed over me. A luxury car rounded the circular drive, and I let out a relieved breath. Aly and Josh had made it. They’d had to skip the last dinner, thanks to their vacation, and Dad had been unbearable because of it. With them here, he’d (hopefully) be in a slightly better mood, and there’d also be more people for him to focus on besides me.

The car pulled to a stop next to my bike, and out popped Josh, grinning ear to ear. He was a big sonofabitch, not just tall, but broad, with the kind of flashy gym muscles women loved. Add in his dark hair, nearly black eyes, deep olive skin, and blindingly white smile, and he looked a little like a superhero. Right until you noticed the hellscape of ink crawling up his arms, each full sleeve filled with demons and ghouls and other dark ephemera.

He held a finger up while racing around to the passenger side. “One sec,” he said. “I need to get the door for myfiancée.”

I rolled my eyes. Josh had always taken great pride in calling Aly hisgirlfriend, and I’d had a feeling it was going to become unbearable once he finally popped the question. Looked like I was right.

Aly, not to be upstaged by him, shot her hand into the air as soon as her door was open. At first, I assumed she was flipping me off—she and I had a somewhat antagonistic relationship—but then I realized she was just showing off the giant rock on her hand. Josh offered his arm, and the rest of her appeared, dark hair pulled back off her face, skin a healthy tan after finally spending some time outside instead of stuck beneath the fluorescent lights of the ER she worked at.

“Oh, hi,” she said, still holding her hand up for inspection.

“He sent me a picture of it last week,” I told her.

She turned to Josh. “Hey!”

He ducked, looking sheepish. “What?”

“We said we were going to wait until tonight to tell my family.”

Josh waved in my direction. “Junior doesn’t count.”

I arched a brow. “Rude.”

He sent me a sideways grin. “Because you’re my friend. Aly said I could tell my friends.”

I huffed out a breath, feeling awkward. Sometime over the past six months, this giant weirdo who never tookanythingseriously had wheedled his way into my life, and, yeah, fine, I guess we were friends. I was still coming to terms with it, would never admit that I’d missed his dumb ass while he and Aly were away getting engaged and doing whatever else it was in the woods that had left them covered inhead-to-toescratches.

My gaze traced over their exposed skin. It looked like they’d fallen down a mountain. Through pricker bushes. The fuck had they been doing out there? Actually, never mind. I didn’t want to know.

Aly swiveled back to me, frowning. “You didn’t tell everyone, did you?”

“Fuck, no. You think I want to be the one to tell my old man thatthis guyis about to become part of the family?” I asked, thumbing toward Josh.

“Aww,” he said. “I missed you, too, buddy.”

He tried to boop me on the nose.

I slapped his hand out of the air and moved out of his freakishly long reach.

“Why is it,” my mom called from the doorway, “that I always find you three loitering outside?” She stepped onto the front stoop and motioned us in. “The booze is in there, ya daft fecks. And it’s humid as a—”

“Mom, please,” I interrupted. “No more nun jokes.” She had a godawful habit of comparing the weather to nuns’ unmentionable places. Some of the worst I’d heard recently were, “Dry as a nun’s fanny,” “Cold as a nun’s teats,” and “Windy as a nun’s arsehole.” I didn’t know how many more I could take, especially if she made good on her threat to drag me back to church again soon.

Aly and Josh started toward her, both grinning. They might have hated my dad, but Mom had wormed her way into their hearts with her dark Irish humor, and they looked genuinely happy to see her.

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