Page 31 of Keeping Secrets

He walked into the room to see Nick looming over Scot’s hospital bed.

"I just wanted to see if you were all right."

"I’m fine," Scot said irritably. "And you have better places to be." He looked over at Travis. "You both do."

"Hey, man," Nick said when he saw Travis.

"Hey." Travis turned to Scot and set the bag down where he could reach it. "I packed some clothes, a toothbrush, your books."

"My books?" Scot brightened. He smiled when he unzipped the bag and saw his books inside, and Travis‘s heart lightened a bit. Scot was going to be okay. This was a minor injury, an incident that would soon be forgotten. And it had the added benefit of giving Scot the attention of a whole team of medical staff; maybe they could finally address the other symptoms that had been growing steadily worse for months.

"Is there anything I can do?" Nick asked.

"You can both get out of here." Scot shooed them toward the door with a flick of his wrists. It occurred to Travis that being seen in this state might be worse for Scot than simply being left in peace with his books.

"We’ll let you rest," Travis agreed. "I’ll be back in the morning."

"Thank God you found him," Nick said again as they walked down the hospital hallway together.

"Yeah." Travis’s mind was a mess of fear and fatigue. He needed to go home and sleep.

"Where are you going?" Nick asked. Travis looked over his shoulder. Nick had paused to press the elevator button.

"Stairs." He kept walking. Nick jogged to catch up.

"What’s going on with you, man? Are you coming to the fundraiser tonight?"

"No," he said, deeply tired. "I’m not going to the fundraiser tonight."

He walked out the hospital doors and climbed into his car without saying goodbye.

CHAPTER 10

Keely was a bundle of nerves leading up to the big fundraiser. She didn’t know how she would’ve gotten through the last of the prep without Chloe’s persistently cheerful energy.

It didn’t help that Nick had disappeared just as they were getting ready to drive across town with a car full of food, but he had promised to meet them there.

"At least now I can carry food from the car to the event space without him nagging at me," Chloe said with a laugh. She waved at Nat and Willa as they climbed out of the car.

"He really doesn’t let you carry anything?" Keely asked.

"The doctor told me that I shouldn’t lift anything heavy, and somehow in Nick's brain that translated to anything heavier than a loaf of bread."

"Have you seen the muscles on that guy?" Willa quipped as she helped them unload the hors d’oeuvres they had prepared. "He can’t help it if he doesn’t have a working understanding of what is or isn’t heavy for mere mortals."

"Very funny," Chloe said, then ruined the brush-off by laughing. "He does have big muscles, doesn’t he?"

"Yuck," Keely said. The other two laughed, and she lengthened her stride. The event space took her breath away when she first walked inside. It was a huge wooden building with high ceilings and massive windows overlooking the ocean.

She set down the container of deviled eggs that she had brought and peeked inside to see if they had survived the short drive across town. They were still perfect, each egg white ringed with bright pink from the brine that she had soaked the boiled eggs in overnight. The whipped yellow centers were extra bright, helped with a pinch of turmeric.

"All good?" Chloe asked.

"Perfect." She set the top back on to ward off flies and walked back out to the car. In the end, they had decided not to make any sort of entrée, just a selection of attractive and reasonably filling hors d’oeuvres followed by ice cream cake. Those were still in the freezer; they would run back down the hill to pick them up once the party got going.

Guests began to arrive just as they put the finishing touches on the food table. It was buffet style, with platters of hors d’oeuvres interspersed with piles of small plates for eating on the move. In addition to the deviled eggs, they had made crab cakes, miniature quiches, bite-sized Caprese skewers, and cucumber slices topped with decadent salmon cream cheese.

Willa scolded her brother for piling so many hors d’oeuvres on his plate that he had a veritable mountain of food perched on his hand. He just stuck his tongue out at her and disappeared into the crowd. Once a brother, always a brother, Keely supposed.