Page 60 of Wrapped Around My Heart
“Shopping days with you might be my new favorite kind of day.”
I laugh with him, shaking my head but not telling him he’s wrong. If all my shopping days were to end like this, I would be going multiple times a week.
Cora’s head snapping up, followed by her low rumble, pulls my attention from the picture I’ve been working on for the last two hours.
After our afternoon distraction, we cleaned up and put on one of Dean’s favorite anime shows. With that in the background, he played some dragon merge game on his phone while I pulled out my tablet.
“Ah, that’s probably…” Dean trails off, pushing off the couch to go let in whichever of his friends got suckered into helping him.
I laugh, petting Cora’s head when she stays stationed beside me. Ever since I got out of the first trimester, she’s been attached to my hip whenever I’m around, and I’m not upset by it. Especially when she keeps my toes so warm.
The storm door opens, and I focus back on finishing up a section of shading in the drawing.
“Did you already put in the order for pizza?” I call out after a minute. When I’m met with the sound of a car starting instead of an answer right away, my hand freezes. “Dean?”
He wouldn’t leave without saying anything and definitely not with the front door still open, which I can see from my spot on the couch.
“He’s going to pick it up.” The sound of my brother’s voice makes me jump, causing Cora to finally jolt from her spot and bark. Only when she realizes it’s someone that she knows does she calm down enough to greet him.
“Landon.” Even to my own ears I sound both confused and mystified. Shaking my head, I snap my fingers, grateful when Cora comes back to sit in front of me. My heart pounds heavily and having her in reach to distract my hands helps keep me from expecting the worst.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, already knowing that at the very least, he better be helping Dean carry all that furniture in.
Leaning against the archway to my living room, Landon slides his hands in his pockets and stares at the floor while answering.
“I was a dick,” he states and my hands pause on Cora. She immediately nuzzles her head against me, silently demanding I continue petting her. When I don’t say anything, my brother continues. “I don’t even think I was ever mad at you.”
“Coulda fooled me,” I deadpan, raising a pointed eyebrow at him. Pushing off the wall, Landon crosses to sit in the chair beside my couch.
“Ari, I wasn’t. I was jealous and honestly a little butthurt that youandDean both kept this from me.” He runs a hand through his unruly red curls, hair that is so similar to mine it’s almost uncanny. Before I can interrupt to explain or defend myself, he continues. “You didn’t owe me anything, and you still don’t. I was caught up in my own feelings of being left out. All I was focusing on was that neither of you felt you could trust me with what was going on. For the first time in my life, I was both jealous of you and disappointed in myself. I didn’t handle either of those things well.
“It sounds so childish when I say it out loud. As if I have any right to call dibs on another human just because he was my friend or because you were my sister. I’ve always loved that the two of you were friends. It never bothered me. Until I found out it was so much more than that. It was like someone had taken my toy at the playground and my only instinct was to throw a temper tantrum.”
“Which is something you’re very good at, by the way. Never knew that until now,” I add in unnecessarily. Growing up, we never fought about toys or trivial things. If it ever came up that one of us had something the other wanted, we would immediately find a way to share with the other.
“Yeah…” He finally looks at me, his seagrass green eyes shining with unshed tears. “By the time I realized just how much of an idiot I was being, it had been two weeks. At that point, I couldn’t figure out how to get over the hurdle I created between us. Until Dean told me to get my head out of my own ass and just do it.”
“Dean said what?”
He hadn’t said anything to me about talking to my brother. After the game last week when we both told everyone, I had asked if my brother said anything. All he said was thateverything was going to be fine. Which I had taken to mean my brother said nothing. But if they actually spoke…
Landon smirks. “I believe his exact words were ‘stop being a dick to the woman I love.’”
I blink slowly at my brother. Trying to juggle between the fact that he’s finally here, talking to me, and the fact that Dean is openly telling others that he loves me.
My brother’s temporary smile falls, and he leans forward, bracing his elbows on his knees.
“I’m sorry, Arianna. For walking away, for not speaking up sooner. For literally everything I’ve done wrong since finding out about…” He motions to my stomach. “But more importantly, I’m sorry for not being there to celebrate my niece or nephew with you all.”
“Niece,” I choke out around the emotions clogging my throat. “The baby is a girl.”
Landon’s eyes widen, a smile stretching across his face so wide, it almost looks painful. Only I know firsthand that it’s not. His smile, when truly and utterly happy, lights up and touches every inch of his face.
“Holy shit. I’m gonna have a niece,” he whispers before getting up from his seat and joining me on the couch. After a second of hesitation, he wraps his arm around my shoulders and pulls me into his side.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you for finally saying it,” I murmur, fighting back my tears. Something snaps inside me, making me relax, without restraint, for the first time in weeks. “You know it’s gonna take more than?—”
