Teasing: Chapter 25

My father likes to give advice on his lucid days.

But those words are so much more than advice.

They’re echoes of battles he’s already fought,

guiding me down a path, in hopes I’ll walk without the scars that haunt his dreams.

—Emmie’s Secret Thoughts

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” I ask Maverick as he pulls into the parking lot in front of Sugar Hill Assisted Living. It’s the first time he’s meeting Dad. He asked if he could come last week. I think after everything with Rosie, he’s still feeling protective of all of us. More so than normal, and that’s already pretty protective.

“I should have met him already, Em.” He pulls a bag from the back seat. “And I got him something.”

“What did you do?” I laugh as we get out of the oversized SUV.

Maverick grins and takes my hand in his, then takes my mouth with his, and I sigh. “What can I say? I have an in with his favorite player. It’s not like I could come empty-handed. Now come on. Introduce me to your dad, baby.”

I called earlier to check on how he was doing today, and they told me it was a good day. My fingers are crossed that it stayed that way.

“Hey, Emmie. Your dad’s in his room,” the older woman behind the front desk tells me when I walk in. Then she looks at Maverick and lets her eyes trail over him. “And hello, Emmie’s friend. Aren’t you a tall drink of water?”

Maverick blushes, and I couldn’t stop my laugh if my life depended on it. “Come on, Cujo.”

I swallow my nerves as we come up to his door and turn to Mav. “Just go with whatever he says, okay?”

“I’ll follow your lead, Em. Whatever you need.”

“Thank you.” I take a deep breath and knock on the open door. “Daddy?”

“Is that my little rose?” Dad answers, and my heart sighs in relief.

Still a good day.

I tug Mav in behind me and move next to Dad’s bed as he coughs. He hasn’t felt great this week. “Hi, Daddy. I brought someone to meet you.”

“You brought a tank to meet me?” He smiles at Maverick, and I’m taken back to when I first met Mav and compared him to a tank myself. Like father, like daughter. “Do I know you?”

“No, sir.” Maverick offers him his hand to shake, and Dad’s wrinkled, weak hand lifts from the bed, and he forces it into Mav’s.

“Daddy, this is Maverick. My boyfriend.” I look at Maverick and laugh. He’s so much more than that, but how do you introduce the man you’re in love with to your father?

“Nice to meet you sir.”

Dad looks from Mav to me and smiles. “The tank’s got manners.”

“He does.” I smile and shake my head.

He has them when he needs them, but my face flushes, remembering the filthy words he was using this morning. I prefer them to his manners any day.

“Maverick plays for the Philadelphia Kings,” I tell him, hoping that might soften him a little, and my father’s entire face lights up.

“My boy plays for the Kings.”

I suck in a silent breath and slide my hand over his.

He remembered.

“So, tank. Any chance you know Sebastian Beneventi?”

“Cam,” I call out excitedly when we get home. “I know you’re here.”

I check the kitchen first, then the living room, where I find him half asleep on the couch and shake his big body. “What the fuck, Emmie?”

Maverick chuckles, and I throw an elbow into his stomach.

“Dad knew you were a King today,” I rush to tell him, trying to focus on the happy parts of our visit. “When I told him Mav was a King, he said his son was too. He was so proud, Cam.”

“Yeah, then he went on to make you sound like the second fucking coming, Monroe,” Maverick grumbles. Dad likes to brag. I don’t care. He was lucid, and he remembered.

“Don’t be salty that he was more interested in talking to you about your dad than about you.” I lift up on my toes and kiss his cheek.

“So it was a good day?” Camden asks and shuts off the TV.

He’s always needed background noise to sleep.

I don’t know how he does it.

“It really was. But his nurse manager stopped me on my way out and said they were changing computer systems and couldn’t find Dad’s living will. I need to find it and send it to them. You haven’t seen it, have you?”

Camden’s face falls, and he shrugs.

One day he’s going to have to see him.

One day soon, if I have anything to say about it.

Whatever. I’m choosing to focus on the good parts of today.

“We should probably check the office,” he finally says, and I know why he’s so hesitant.

The office became Vivi’s years ago.

And there goes the good day.

The anger courses through my veins, sneaking up on me like a snake lying in wait in the tall grass. “Why don’t you go home and check on Rosie? This could take a while. I’ll come over later.”

“Rosie and Sparkle have their first riding lesson today,” he bitches, and Camden laughs.

“Is that the pony she isn’t allowed to have?”

I shoot Camden a glare, hoping he shuts up, but he doesn’t because that would take common sense. Something my big brother seems to lack sometimes.

“How’s that working out for you?” Cam taunts, and I shove him in front of me toward the office. If I have to do this, so does he.

We stop outside the closed door, neither of us in a rush to open it.

“Is it locked?” Mav asks from behind me.

I shake my head and harden my heart.

Damn, I don’t want to do this.

I don’t want to talk about why either.

After staring at the knob for far too long, Camden opens the door when he realizes I can’t and walks ahead of us.

My good mood plummets as soon as I step in. How could it not?

Boxes line the top of the desk with a few scattered on the floor in front of it, and my heart sinks.

“This is going to take forever.” Cam pulls out the chair behind the desk and stares at the frame lying flat next to a box. He picks it up and turns it over, so he isn’t faced with the picture of the happy family staring back at him. “Shouldn’t we have an electronic copy somewhere?”

I shrug, unsure, and my brother groans and lifts the lid of the first box, disturbing the dust that’s settled on top, sending it into the air like Rosie’s glitter.

Maverick reaches for a scrapbook sitting on top of one of the boxes. A picture of Camden, Vivi, and me at one of Cam’s high school games is glued to the front with black photo corners holding it in place. “You were a baby,” he muses, looking at middle-school me.

“Yeah . . . I guess I was.” I lift the lid on another box full of papers and start flipping through. “Would it be in a folder?”

“You’re asking the wrong person, Em.” Camden pulls out an envelope and dumps out the pictures inside. “This is all scrapbook stuff.”

“I’ll take that one.” Mav takes the box from Camden and presses a kiss to my temple before moving to the chair in the corner of the room.

My God, what even is all this stuff?

Dad’s old newspaper articles from before he stopped working are all printed out.

Years of articles covering the Kings and the Revolution.

Philadelphia sports have always been his first love.

A love he gave to all of us.

Watching games together, dissecting them, celebrating them, it’s what we did as a family.

God, I miss that.

I close my eyes and try to hold my heart together.

Those days seem like ten lifetimes ago.

“Emmie,” Mav growls, and when I look up, my heart drops. “What the fuck?”

Maverick

My brain can’t process what my eyes are seeing.

Page after page of Kroydon Kronicles articles printed out and pinned into a scrapbook.

They date back years.

I keep flipping pages, and so many familiar names are getting trashed on these pages.

My family.

My friends.

The people I love most in the world have all been shredded in these articles.

Every dirty detail of their lives spread out for public consumption.

“Em.” My voice sounds far away in my own fucking ears. Like I’m in a tunnel underwater. Like this is an out-of-body experience. Because that’s what it is. It has to be. It can’t possibly be what it looks like. Can it? “What the hell is this?”

Her face falls and pales as I pull more scrapbooks out of the box, each holding Kroydon Kronicles articles. Beautiful pictures are glued on the pages, and splashes of glitter cover the corners.

Pictures and glitter . . .

But that can’t mean⁠—

Fuck.

Don’t let it be true.

I’ve never wanted to be more wrong in my life.

“Emmie, why do you have these?”

She looks quickly to Camden, and I slam the book down. “Tell me you’re not . . .” The words get caught in my throat. There’s no way it’s true. No way it can be her. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

Anger and hurt and so much disappointment threaten to choke me, but Em doesn’t say anything. She just stares at me. Through me. Like I’m a ghost. Like she’s heartbroken.

“Em . . .” I beg her, willing her to tell me I’m wrong, but she doesn’t say anything.

Silence fills the room, and the pounding of my blood coursing through my veins is deafening.

“Emmie,” Camden snaps in a voice I’ve never heard him use toward Em, and I want to slam him into a wall, but I’m stuck here, shock holding me in place. “Tell him.”

She levels him with a glare so lethal, I’m surprised he’s still breathing.

“Tell me what, Em?” I drop the scrapbooks, one by one, unable to fathom what she’s not denying. “I trusted you.” I watch her face. Watch how it doesn’t flinch. “How could you not tell me?”

“Mav . . . I—” She bites down on her lip and closes her eyes. “I didn’t know how.”

“You didn’t know how?” I’m trying not to yell, but I’m losing the fight. “I trusted you.” I look at her, so utterly fucked, I’m not sure I know what to do. “I trusted you with everything. With Rosie. With my family. With my life. And you . . . what? Were you writing the Kroydon Kronicles the whole damn time? Feeding them information? What the hell?”

“Mav,” her voice breaks, but she doesn’t say anything else, and Camden fucking groans and slams his palms against the desk.

“Jesus Christ, Emmie⁠—”

“Don’t,” she snaps at him, then turns back to me. “There’s more to it than that.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” My stomach turns, and I want so badly to understand what the hell is happening here, but I’m obviously missing something, and neither one of them is filling me the fuck in.

Her phone vibrates on the desk, but none of us move.

Locked in a stalemate.

“Em, it’s Dad,” Camden tells her, and she grabs for the phone.

“Daddy?”

What little fight she had drains from her face. “We’ll be right there.”

She ends the call, shoves the phone in her pocket, and looks right past me to her brother. “Come on. We’ve got to go. And don’t even try to not come with me.”

“Emmie.” I tug her arm as she brushes by.

“I can’t do this right now, Maverick.” She shakes me off, and I want to stop her but know I can’t.

“This isn’t over, Em.”

She looks up at me like she wants to say something but shakes her head instead. “The Kronicles hasn’t posted anything in months, Mav.” She presses her lips to my jaw. “I’ve got to go.”

Just like that, she walks out, and Camden stands there, staring at me like I’m shit on his shoes. “Fucking idiot.”

Tell me something I don’t know.

Jamie and Ryker let me tell them the whole fucking story before the two of them look as disgusted as I feel.

“She’s too young to be the author of the Kroydon Kronicles. She would have been like fourteen when they started. Can you imagine little fourteen-year-old Emmie sitting in a bar, dishing dirt on half the family?” Jamie argues.

“And what if she is? So what?” Ryker asks me.

I do a double take. Are they disgusted with me? “What the hell do you mean so what?”

“I mean so what?” Ryker gets right in my face so he can see my lips. “Are you mad that you think she’s writing the Kroydon Kronicles or are you pissed she didn’t tell you?”

“Both,” I admit. “I’m pissed she lied.”

“She didn’t lie,” Ryker pushes my chest, and the only thing keeping me from punching him is who he is. “She never said she was or wasn’t the Kronicles. You’ve never talked about it. That’s not a lie.”

She knew how I’d feel about this and still didn’t say anything.

That’s worse than a lie.

That’s intentionally hiding something from me, and I’m not sure how to get past that.