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“Nah,” I told her, gesturing toward the row of stools. “Take a seat. We’ll take care of it.”
“Sit right here, Miss Charleigh.” Nolan smacked at the countertop in front of the stool to his left. “We don’t hardly never have any special guests unless my uncles come over, but they don’t count as a guest because they are my family.”
A soft laugh rippled from Charleigh as she slipped onto the stool next to him. “Thank you,” she murmured.
“Did you know I got four uncles and one auntie?” Nolan told her, offering up his life story the way he always did.
“It sounds like you’re a lucky boy to have so much family.”
“I’m the luckiest! How many you got in your family?”
I didn’t think I was the only one who felt Charleigh flinch when he asked it because Raven also slowed as she’d begun to set plates at each spot.
Sorrow swelled, flooding from the woman who tried to keep a smile on her face, though she failed, and the words were barely audible when she muttered, “I don’t really have a family.”
“What do you mean, you don’t got a family?” A compassionate sort of horror rippled out with his question. “How come?”
Charleigh hesitated then whispered, “Because I lost them.”
“Well, I guess you’ll just have to be our family since you don’t have any,” he said, spilling his innocence.
Charleigh fought to plaster a smile to her face, though it was brittle, and that glowing, pretty skin had turned a pale, sallow white.
Didn’t like much the way it slayed me seeing her that way. Way it made me feel like I was getting flayed alive, taken down to bare bones where the rot and decay was exposed.
The way it took everything I had to remain standing where I was and not go running to her and taking her in my arms.
Giving her false promises that it would be okay.
So fuckin’ reckless.
But the urge was there.
Charleigh fully shifted on the stool, turning to face him as she touched his cheek. “That is the sweetest, kindest thing anyone has ever offered me, Nolan, and I think you might be the sweetest, kindest boy that I’ve ever met. But I don’t want you to be sad when it’s time for me to leave here. You have your family, and I may not be a part of it, but I promise, I’ll always be your friend, even when I’m not here any longer.”
“Family’s just the people you love the most.” Nolan shrugged. “And I love you, so that’s gotta mean you’re my family, too.”
He said it nonchalant, like it was the simplest thing in the world, when it was nothing but profound.
Emotion crested the room. The overpowering kind. The kind that made it feel like you couldn’t move.
Raven was the one who broke it by grabbing the bottle of wine and refilling Charleigh’s glass before she lifted her own and said, “Now, I will drink to that.”
THIRTY-ONE
CHARLEIGH
I wasn’tsure how I was supposed to sit there and share a meal with them after what Nolan had said. How I was supposed to sit on that stool wedged between the little boy who’d wrecked my heart in the biggest way and the man who vibrated like a beast on the other side of me.
How I was just supposed to sit there and eat Chinese food as if this were just another day.
Not to mention Raven who was on the other side of Nolan, perched on her stool, though she had it angled so she could see both River and me as she chatted on like I hadn’t just gotten the rug ripped out from under me.
Tossed from my feet.
Though rather than crashing to the unforgiving ground, I felt as if I was floating. Floating on clouds and rays of sunshine and an aurora of hope.
But I should know that I couldn’t stay there.
