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He froze at the sound of the familiar voice. Damn, it brought him back. To barbeques and baseball games. To late night conversations over beers in the Cooper backyard.
How many nights had he stayed up until dawn, talking and laughing with Mandy, Mike, and Cindy? Those memories were as clear as if they’d happened yesterday. It was like nothing had changed.
Until he turned around and got his first look at his old buddy. The curly blond hair had darkened with age; the brown eyes he remembered always sparkling with laughter were now tired and dull. But those weren’t the biggest changes.
Mike had always been a big man with an easy smile. Now his broad shoulders hunched in his wheelchair. His skin sagged on his bones, and though he smiled, it seemed forced.
It hurt to look at him. He tried not to flinch.
And Mike had to know it because the smile on his face faded when their eyes met. “Yeah. I look like shit.” He sighed and backed his wheelchair into the foyer. “You just gonna stare at me with those puppy dog eyes, or you gonna come in?”
Kane followed him into a cozy living room, then sank into the big brown sofa Mike gestured to. It looked nothing like Charlie’s place, but he felt the echoes in all the important ways. Warm colors bathed the cozy space, all the textures, soft and inviting. A baby swing sat in the corner.
No one would doubt a family lived here.
A pang of jealousy zinged through him until his gaze returned to Mike’s haggard face. “You look like hell, brother,” he said somberly.
Mike barked out a laugh. It wasn’t like his old full-belly laugh; it had bite. “At least somebody’s willing to say it. The girls kind of pretend like everything is fine in front of me. Then they whisper about me in the other room, but I can hear everything.” He scowled. “We have baby monitors all over the house, dude.”
He smiled despite himself. “Got yourself another kid, huh?” He’d heard through the grapevine Mike and Cindy had a son not long after things ended with Mandy. He should have come to visit then, but he was still too raw. “Boy or a girl?”
This time when Mike smiled, it reached his eyes. “A girl.” He rubbed his hand in small circles over his chest. “She looks so much like Cindy, but every once in a while, she’ll get this expression on her face, and I’m looking in the mirror. It’s the damnedest thing. When I start to feel sorry for myself about the accident, I look at her, and I remember how lucky I am.”
“Is she here?”
“No.”
The swift disappointment at Mike’s words took him by surprise.
“But she’ll be back soon. Cindy took her to pick up some ice cream for dessert.” Mike stuck out his lower lip in a parody of a pout. “I’m feeling too bad for anything but Baskin Robbins.”
Something else that hadn’t changed. Mike had been a slave to his sweet-tooth forever. Kane had personally witnessed the man eat an entire gallon of butter pecan in one sitting. “Don’t tell me Cindy can’t see through your pitiful-me bullshit.”
Mike shrugged with a slight upturn at the corner of his mouth. “A few months ago, she would’ve. These days, she’s so determined to take care of me, I think she forgets who I am under all this plaster.” He knocked on one of the two impressive leg casts, the one ending below his right knee. The other extended all the way up his thigh beneath the leg of his cut-off sweatpants. Both were decorated with art of varying skill, from a fair approximation of a butterfly to a skull with crossbones, and some red scribbles, clearly made by a small child.
He also spotted a small heart, marked with the letter A.
Mandy.
He winced, but Mike didn’t seem to notice.
“As bad as it looks now, it was worse when all the metal was holding my pelvis in place. At least now, I’m out of the bed.” Mike’s eyes drifted to the front door as it opened to reveal his wife, a toddler on her hip, a diaper bag on her shoulder, and a Baskin Robbins bag clutched in her hand.
Jumping to his feet, Kane reached out to lighten her load.
Her delicate brows furrowed for a moment, and her grip on her child tightened. No doubt, she was wondering what a grizzly looking biker was doing hanging out in her living room, possibly reaching for her kid.
He raised his hands in surrender. “Sorry CeeCee, I tend to forget my manners when I see a beautiful woman carrying ice cream.”
Cindy’s tension faded into shock, her eyebrows now climbing her forehead. “K-Kane?”
He waved. “Long time, no see.”
She let the diaper bag slide down her arm as she put her squirming child on the floor.
On hands and knees, the kid made a beeline straight to her daddy’s chair.
Cindy gaped as her gaze swept over his long dark hair, worn jacket and jeans, all the way down to his Army Surplus black boots. Then she smirked. The expression took him back more than a decade. “I didn’t recognize you in your Hells Angels costume. Halloween was weeks ago.”
