“So you’re saying someone else is out there? Someone who could still want me dead?”
“Oliver…”
He took a deep breath. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” He spoke more to himself than to me. “What did Anya find out?” he asked me, still a little pale in the face but not shaking.
“Let’s see.” I unlocked the phone, unsure of what the hell we were about to read.
31Oliver Brightly
“Nothing,” I said. “She found nothing.”
I read the text message. Anya said that Greg’s digital tracks were spotty but still pointing toward innocent. I could feel my blood pressure rising like a freaking geyser. Beckham tried to talk me down, but this was intense. Not only did I have my parents a few rooms away from us, but I now had to deal with the idea that this six-year saga wasn’t actually over.
I had been feeling so lifted, sofree. Maybe it was dumb to let myself feel that way, knowing that Mario was still fighting any charges and not admitting to anything. But still, I let myself float along on the lazy river of blissfulness and naïvety.
And you know what?
It was really damn nice. Like really nice.
Now, the lazy river I’d been floating on turned into a white-water rapid infested with hungry piranha.
“Jesus,” I said, running a hand through my hair. “It’s going to be okay. Right?”
Beckham grabbed my elbows. “It’s going to be fine.” He kissed me. “Now let’s get back to your parents before they start thinking things.”
“Gooood point.” I stole one more kiss from Beckham before we turned and went back down the hall, passing by photos of my family on the way. There was a sequence of school photos of both my brother and me. I smiled the same in all the photos, even though I looked different in almost every one. From braces one year to a wispy mustache another to a terrible bowl cut that wasn’t doing anyone any favors.
“I’ve clearly had some awkward phases,” I noted. Beckham looked at all the photos as we passed. I loved that about him, how interested he was in knowing every single facet of my life. Like he needed all the details to paint the full picture.
“You should see my awkward phases,” he said.
“Oh? Were they as bad as this?” I stopped in front of a particularly bad school photo. I was a sophomore in high school and had gotten a terrible sunburn from PE class the day before. So not only was I beet red for the photo, but I also had gone slightly cross-eyed because a sneeze was imminent.
“Okay, that is kind of bad,” Beckham said with a laugh.
“And you want to know the biggest tragedy of them all?”
“What?”
“No one asked me to retake it! They all let me walk off that stage with a pre-sneeze school photo.” I shook my head and covered my face with a hand. “Monsters. All of them.”
We laughed our way back to the dining room, where my parents had already started to clean up the table. Beckham and I offered our help, but they told us to go grab seats outside and that they’d bring the dessert right out. I could sense Beckham about to put up a fight, but I grabbed his hand and gave him a look; it was pointless. We left them to clean up and walked out into the warm night.
A cricket jumped across our path as we walked to the seats surrounding the stone firepit. Thankfully, it wasn’t on tonight, because I could feel myself already getting a little sweaty.
“So, are you having a good night?” I asked as we took our seats. I’d been so nervous about this night for what felt like months now. It relieved me to see how well he and my mom got along, but I never doubted that would happen for a second. It was my dad who worried me. He had two sides to his Gemini self: the warm, goofy dad side I saw on the regular, and the hard-faced and all-business heart surgeon most everyone else saw.
Tonight, I could feel my dad had his guard up. I sensed he wasn’t as open as my mom, and that made me nervous.
“It’s been going great.” Beckham gave a genuine smile. “Nervous at first, I won’t lie. But all of that’s gone. Your mom and dad have been nothing but welcoming. I feel like I’m at home.”
That really warmed my heart. I reached across and grabbed his hand. “Good, because you should. This is as much your home now as it is mine.”
“He’s right, you know.”
The voice surprised both of us. My mom walked up holding two cups of cookie dough ice cream with hearty dollops of whipped cream on top, sprinkled with fresh chocolate chips.
“Oh, you are too good to me, Emma.” Beckham grabbed his bowl, and I was almost sure I spotted some drool.