Page 119 of Go Find Less
“Good at what, son?” Luca asks, setting his own glass down and leaning forward to look at me. Before I can answer, Vic catches my eye.
“Feelings,” he says for me, and I nod, ever so slightly.
Nolan laughs. “Picked a hell of a woman, then.”
“She picked me.” It’s out of my mouth before I can stop myself, and I see Vic’s mouth turn up at the corners. But the rest of them are silent. “It’s true, as surprising as it is to you all, it’s possibly more surprising to me.”
“From what we’ve heard, you were kind of an ass.”
“Nol,” Brett says in a chastising tone, but Nolan just shrugs.
“Iwasan ass.” I nod, looking back down at my wayward string. “And I didn’t do anything to directly hurt people, but what I didn’t do was say something when I could have.” I pause. “Shouldhave.” I can’t meet Vic’s eyes, even though he deserves for me to, but I press on. “I don’t deserve her grace, or the grace of anyone my inaction hurt. But…” Finally, I look up, meeting Luca’s stare. “I’ll do whatever I have to in order to earn it.” He smiles, and seems to look at the man next to me as if to askThat good enough?
After a moment, there’s a deep sigh from Nolan, and I watch him sit back in his chair, scrubbing both hands down his face like he’s trying to reckon with something. When he looks up, his gaze has softened, and he meets Brett’s eyes, then Vic’s. Whatever he’d been planning to say seems to have been washed away by my admission, which I’m grateful for, but now he’s unprepared, and clearly uneasy.
“They fucked her up, man.” I’m surprised to hear Dylan speak, and when we all turn to him, his hand finds the back of his neck. He’s uncomfortable too, but he’s seen first hand, from what I’ve been told, the impact of the last several years on Piper. “Like, a lot.”
“They fucked all of us up,” Vic agrees, leaning onto the table with his forearms, his shoulders sagging in the crisp short sleeve button up he’s wearing. It’s effortlessly cool looking, which is something I’ve come to expect from him. “Mickey getting sick affected all of us in different ways, but the way the Davis’ acted, that’s…that’s the worst part of all of this.” His eyes cut to Nolan. “Aside from the fact that Mickey isn’t here.”
“How much has she told you?” Brett’s question is cautious, and I can tell he’s truly unsure, like there are parts of the story that aren’t his to tell. That’s fair. It’s Piper’s story, too, but they all have a piece in it. They all lived through it.
“Not a lot.” I flex my hand in my lap, fingernails digging into my palm. “I don’t want to press her for things she’s not ready to share. But, I’ve…seen a few things. Online.” I wince as Vic snorts, sipping at his water still on the table in front of him.
“I’m sure that went over well.”
“About as well as you can imagine,” I answer honestly. “She told me off for jumping to conclusions.” I meet his eye. “It was kind of awesome.”
“The whole situation is fucked,” Brett continues.
“Mickey was my best friend.” Nolan looks at me, appraising, his blonde brows creasing, and I try to meet his stare with as much courage as I can muster. I may be tall, but he’s built in a way I’m not sure I’d ever be, even under the training habits of a professional athlete. “But he treated Piper like shit, and she deserved - deserves - a lot better than that.”
“There were girls,” Luca says, and then swallows hard. I can tell this man is probably the most emotional of all of us. “Girls, plural. She found out the day he was diagnosed.”
“And she stayed.” Vic crosses his arms, leaning back in his chair, like the memory hurts him. “She chose to stay, knowing that he was facing what was likely a death sentence, and his family knew that she was choosing forgiveness. And they still treated her like crap.”
“Theyknew?” I ask.
“They knew everything.” Nolan’s tone is sharper. “Not that he cheated, not before she did. But they knew that she chose to stay, and when he wouldn’t move back to Paulsville, she became the bad guy. Undesirable Number One.”
I blow out a deep breath, running my hands down my thighs, suddenly heated. “I knew that he cheated, but I didn’t-"
“It didn’t stop after he was diagnosed,” Brett interrupted. “We sat through a ten hour surgery, waiting for him, and two weeks later he was back talking to other girls.”
“And she stayed,” Vic repeated.
“She stayed over and over, when she should have walked.” Nolan takes a deep breath before continuing. “And then Kelsie and Kayla showed back up.”
“Backup?” I sit forward. “Like, you all knew about her before?” I pause. “Sorry, that sounded really accusatory.”
“No,” Nolan corrects, “you have every right to be accusatory. I was the only one that knew here in Texas.” His shoulders sag, too, like he’s hit his limit, same as Vic. “I didn’t realize Mickey hadn’t told her a damn thing, that his family hadn’t said anything, until Alex was about two seconds from murdering him and…” He shudders. “It never came up, and I assumed if they were that serious, he would have told her from the beginning.”
“Clearly not,” Dylan adds, and Nolan pitches a balled up napkin at him.
“They got married, and she had no idea until Kelsie reached out about some paperwork.” Luca sighs. “She’d tried to claim that Mickey was the father a few months after the girl was born, but they got a DNA test that proved otherwise. I’m sure Piper has a copy, somewhere. We found out later, he’d been spending time with them secretly. For years.”
“Hewhat?” Horror lances through me. It’s one thing for someone to say you’ve got their child. It’s another to spend time with them, to build a life with them. Like Olivia had done to me, with Ryan. Nolan reaches behind us, to the cooler just at arm’s reach, pulling out two beers and handing me one. It feels like an offering before they drop a bomb.
“Mickey told us it was better for Kayla to grow up having a father figure, than believing that her dad hated her,” Nolan continues. “Since Kelsie refused to say who her real father was.”