Page 27 of Finding Home
“I just had plans with my parents,” she says, and I stare at her.
“Chloe, you don’t have to explain yourself to me. I’m not yourkeeper. I appreciate the heads up. You have a key to get in when you come home.”
She nods, holding my gaze for a few seconds. “I’ve got to get these kids ready for class, I’ll see you when you pick up Lila.”
I nod and turn to leave the classroom. I head straight to Grandma’s place. I need to let her know I have a solution for when she has her surgery and starts treatment. I also have the instinct that I need to spend as much time with her as I can.
I pull up in front of her place and let myself in, finding her sitting in her chair with her most recent knitting project as one of her soap operas plays on the TV.
She smiles up at me, and I place a kiss on her cheek as she asks, “What are you doing here?”
I sit on the couch and say, “I wanted to let you know I found someone to watch Lila starting when you go for surgery.”
She raises her brow and opens her mouth to argue with me, likely going to say that she’ll be perfectly capable of watching Lila, but I shake my head.
“No, don’t even try it,” I say. “You’re going to need help, and I’m here to do as much as I can for you, and I appreciate that you’ve been helping with Lila. She’s grown attached to you, and I’m glad you two are getting that relationship, because God knows Mom won’t even try. Chloe Maxwell is going to start watching Lila when I’m on shift. She’s agreed to bring Lila over here to spend time with you and help out where needed, but she’s going to be making sure she gets to and from school.”
Grandma raises a brow in intrigue. “Chloe Maxwell?”
I nod. Grandma knows me and knows that asking questions won’t get anything out of me, but if she stares me down the right way, I’ll crack. She’s the only person who can, or she was, until Chloe.
I grip the back of my neck. “She’s moved into the spare room in my place. She needed a place to stay now that the son of the owner of her place has moved back to town.”
“Beau Thomas,” she says. “That boy’s been gone for a long time, it’s about time he got his ass back. That poor girl and his mom.”
The idea that “that poor girl” could be Chloe is like stab to the gut. “Girl?” I ask, needing to know.
Grandma just waves me off. “I know he felt like he needed to enlist, but he left people who care about him behind.”
I immediately think about the way Chloe hugged him outside Incahoots that day.
“Chloe Maxwell’s a good girl,” Grandma says before my thoughts can wander down that path any more. “Don’t go being an asshole to her.”
I stare at her slack-jawed.
“Don’t try and fool your grandmother. I know you, I know how you can be. You probably grunt at her more than you use words. That girl is pure sunshine, don’t you go dampening that.”
“I know,” I practically growl. I don’t need to be fucking told that Chloe is everything good in this world. I know I should probably not be grunting at her as much as I do, but I’m not sure I can let her in. If I let my walls down and let her in, I think she could actually destroy me from the inside out.
Grandma points at me. “You may be a grown man, Everett Lawson, but watch yourself.”
“Sorry,” I mumble, and she smiles.
“Why don’t you stay and watch some TV with me,” she says, and I settle deeper into the couch. I have no idea what’s happening in her show, but I stay and watch even as a new one comes on afterwards. I make us lunch and spend the day with her until it’s time to pick up Lila.
FIFTEEN
CHLOE
I’m a dirty, filthy liar, and I feel horrible.
When I left Everett’s place this morning, I didn’t have dinner plans with my parents. I showed up at school and called my mom to ask if I could come over, because I didn’t want to be at his place. Mom, of course, said I could come over, so the minute I saw Everett, I told him, that way I couldn’t back out and change my mind.
I leave school and head directly to my parents’, bypassing the house and heading to the barn in the back to visit my favourite horse, Miley. I need to thank Grayson again for making sure people are over every day to take care of them now that I’m working full time and Mom and Dad don’t have the time or energy to do so. I know that when my mind is a mess I can always come here.
I brush Miley, and she nudges me with her snout, making me smile. Miley was the first horse I got to watch being born. I helped take care of her and watched her grow up. She’s so good at reading me in a way that I don’t think most humans can. When everything was going on with Grayson and Rebecca in high school and there was all this talk about them being teen parents, and then Rebecca’s miscarriage, I didn’t know how to process my feelings about any of it. I was excited to be an aunt, to watch Grayson be a father, and for our family grow.
It was so much for me to process at fourteen. If it wasn’t for Miley and Brin, I’m not sure I’d have made it through that time. Thewhole family was grieving and all in our own way. That one situation showed me how delicate life can be.
