Page 16 of Until the End

Levi comes over to where Teddy and I are taking a break. “How’s our girl?”

I give Teddy a look. He swipes a hand across his mouth to hide his smile.

“She’s all right. Hanging in there.” I don’t mind that everyone is asking me how she’s doing. I’d rather it be me than them hounding Ginny. The last thing she needs is to constantly reassure everyone she’s fine, even though she’s the furthest thing from it.

“I want to kill that little bastard,” Levi growls.

“We all do,” Teddy agrees.

“Max is beside himself. He can’t quit beating himself up over not being there for Ginny when she needed him.”

“I know that feeling,” I say. It took a lot of convincing to keep Ginny’s parents away while we stayed at the hotel. They wanted to comfort her like any parents would, but Ginny was hanging on by a thread. She needed to get her head wrapped around the new direction of her life before she could console her parents. Because that’s what she’d have done. Instead offocusing on working through her own emotions, she’d have shoved them aside to help her parents work through theirs.

The night we got back to Sonoma, they had dinner together, and I know Ginny told her parents and Gia what was truly going on behind closed doors. I can only imagine how hurt and distressed Max was to think about his daughter going through such an awful nightmare alone.

I wish Ginny had turned to any of us, but I have a feeling she didn’t fully realize what the Weasel was doing to her until the day of her wedding.

“You taking care of her?” Levi’s expression is one of consequence. I’m not sure when everyone realized Ginny was mine, but I’m not mad about it. There are no secrets in our family, so it’s not a surprise that they know I have feelings for her. Ginny might even know too, though I doubt it. I don’t believe she’d have cuddled with me the way she did in the hotel if she knew I was head over heels in love with her.

“As much as she’ll let me.”

“Let us know if you guys need anything?”

“Always.”

Levi pats me on the shoulder and heads across Teddy’s house to check on the rest of the crew.

I swallow down the last of my coffee before getting back to work. The rest of the day goes by in a blink—it usually does when we’ve got a big job to finish. It’s dinnertime when I’m pulling into my driveway. I’m hungry enough to eat a horse, but I need a shower more than food.

Michael is standing in the kitchen, eating a burrito over the sink. He’s only in running shorts, and a purple bruise is flaring on his ribs.

“That looks painful.”

He lifts his arm, looking at the discoloration as if he hadn’t remembered it was there. “Courtesy of Mr. Lambert’s rescue mare. Caught me when I wasn’t paying attention.”

“She escaped again?” As a deputy for Sonoma’s police department, Michael’s duties run the gamut. He’s had to help corral Mr. Lambert’s rescue animals many times, since his farm sits right off the highway.

“Yep. One of these days, she’s going to cause a crash.”

I grab the bag of frozen peas we keep on hand for such occasions and pass it to him. Michael and I both come home with random injuries from our jobs—it’s one of the hazards of doing blue-collar work.

The front door opens, and Ryan comes into the house, looking exhausted. He runs the local flower shop with his mom, and they’ve been working long nights to finish an order for a wedding.

The three of us have been roommates since we graduated from high school. When we decided to stay in our hometown, it made sense to move in together to save on rent. Uncle Levi, who is also Ryan’s dad, helped us buy the house. It was scary at first, living on our own and having adult responsibilities. Our families taught us how to care for the house, and in the eight years we’ve lived here, we’ve turned it into a comfortable home instead of a bachelor pad. Although our moms played a big part in that when we were starting out. None of us had even thought to buy toilet paper, let alone throw pillows.

The small split-level house is blocky in its design, but Levi and I opened the walls enough to make it feel a little larger. The kitchen and living room are open to each other, and around the corner is our dining room and the stairs to head up to our bedrooms.

Ryan lands face-first onto the couch. “I’m going to sleep for the next three days.” His words are muffled by the cushion, and no more than ten seconds later, he’s asleep. Michael and I grin at each other.

“I’m going to shower and then take dinner over toGinny’s. A couple of her assistants surprised her with a visit, and I doubt they’ve eaten anything but snacks.”

Michael grabs a beer from the fridge. “Probably a good guess since Ginny can’t cook anything to save her life.”

“It’s a wonder she’s survived as long as she has.”

“Tell her hi for us.” Michael moves into the living room and sits gingerly in a chair. The quiet noise of the television follows me upstairs. All three bedrooms up here are small, and Ryan and I share a Jack-and-Jill bathroom, but it works for us.

I shower quickly, throwing on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt before leaving the house again. On my way to La Mensa, I call in an order for pasta and breadsticks and hope none of the girls are on a super restrictive diet. I added a couple of salads, but that won’t be enough to feed all three of them if that’s all they’ll eat.

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