Page 62 of Best Laid Plans
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 softhair–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. Henevergot 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 dosomething. 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?”
“Itwaslucky,” 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 chickenfajitas. 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 theyweresharing 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 goingto 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.”
