Page 115 of Take My Heart
Lyndsay hands Callie the baby. ‘She’s beautiful.’
Callie smiles, but looks exhausted. She’s probably had visitors all morning.
We all head out and go to Uncle Mitch’s house. I smell mom’s ham cooking in the oven the moment I walk in the door. My cousins—Jake, Bryce, and Austin—are all in the living room watching a basketball game on the giant TV.
Jake gets up when he sees us. ‘I’m on drink duty. You guys want anything?’
‘We can get it,’ Nick says, heading to the kitchen. Jason and I follow him there while Sawyer stays behind to watch the game.
Ivy, Jen, and Kira, my cousins’ girlfriends, are in the kitchen helping my mom.
‘Can we do anything?’ Lyndsay asks, going past me with Gina right behind her.
Mom asks them to set the table and they get to work gathering the plates and silverware.
I can’t believe how much my family has grown. Nash is married and has a new baby. His brothers all have serious girlfriends. Nick is getting married soon and I’m sure Sawyer will be next. I never saw myself being like them. I had no desire to get married, or even be in a serious relationship. Until I met Kate. I can imagine her here, hanging out with my family, talking to the other girls. She got along great with Gina and Lyndsay, and my mom loved her.
I’m doing it again, imagining a future with Kate that will never happen. Why do I keep doing this? Kate and I aren’t a couple. We never were. She’s going to go on with her life, find some guy who’s smart with a college degree who will give her the kind of life she wants. I should be happy about that, and the old Brody would be, but the person I am now doesn’t want to give up that easily. Being with Kate made me want more for myself, not just for my business, but for my personal life. If there’s even a small chance Kate would be with me, then what the hell am I doing standing in my uncle’s kitchen when I could be trying to get her back?
I walk up to my mom as she peels potatoes. ‘Any chance I could miss dinner? I need to go do something.’
‘And what could possibly be more important than having dinner with your family?’ she says, sounding annoyed with me.
‘Mom.’ Nick gives her a look to go along with it.
How does he know what I’m thinking? Can he read my damn mind?
Mom looks back at Nick, seeming confused, then notices everyone else giving her that same look. Seriously, how do they all know what I’m going to do?
‘Fine, dear,’ Mom says to me. ‘Go ahead.’ She goes back to peeling potatoes. ‘Oh, and there’s room at the table for one more if you decide to come back with a guest.’
I get out of there before they all start teasing me about Kate. I wish they didn’t know what I’m about to do. I’m going to feel like an idiot if she turns me down, and there’s a good chance she will. We already talked about this and decided it wouldn’t work, so why am I even doing this?
Her parents’ condo is downtown and finding a parking spot is nearly impossible. I finally find one, but it’s four blocks away. As I’m walking to the building, I almost turn back, deciding this is a bad idea, but I’m already here, so what the hell? If she tells me to leave, at least I’ll know that I tried. I won’t have regrets.
A security guard stops me at the entrance of the building. I tell him I’m there to see Kate and he makes me sign in and show him ID. It’s a fancy building and I’m sure the condos are nice, but I wouldn’t want to grow up here. I can’t imagine being a kid growing up in a high-rise building like this in the middle of a big city. It’d be too dangerous to go outside to play. Even if you could, there’s no open space, no fields of grass to kick a ball around. Now I get why Kate never did stuff like play in the snow.
I take the elevator up to her floor and walk down the long hallway until I reach her parents’ condo. I ring the bell and Kate’s dad answers. Shit. This isn’t going to go well. The guy hates me.
‘I’m here to see Kate,’ I tell him.
He laughs, and not in a funny way, but in a way that says he thinks I’m stupid for coming here. ‘You can’t be serious. This infatuation you have with my daughter needs to end. If you don’t get out of here, I’m calling the police.’
‘Who is it, dear?’ Kate’s mom says, coming up beside her dad.
‘It seems the boy Kate was staying with has decided to stalk her.’
‘I’m not stalking her,’ I say, getting angry. ‘I just want to talk to her.’
‘Kate doesn’t want to see you,’ her mom says. ‘She’s trying to get her life back on track and doesn’t need you interfering.’
‘She told you that?’ I ask. ‘That she doesn’t want to see me?’
‘She told us both that,’ Kate’s dad says. ‘She said if you stopped by, to tell you to leave.’
I’m not sure I believe him. I can’t imagine Kate telling her parents she never wanted to see me again, but maybe she did.
‘I want to see her,’ I say. ‘I want her to tell me this herself.’
