Coming Home (22 page)

When the doors finally opened, she approached his apartment and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath before she opened them and knocked. There was a muffled rustling sound, followed by the muted thud of footsteps.

A few seconds later, the door swung open, and the fluttering moved up into her chest. His dark hair was tousled to perfection, and he had a hint of a five-o’clock shadow defining his jawline. He was wearing a pair of worn jeans with a gray zip-up hoodie over a white T-shirt.

And her favorite dimpled smile.

“Hey,” he said, leaning over to kiss her cheek before he stepped to the side to let her in, and she was immediately greeted with the smell of Chinese food.

Leah hummed as she walked past him into the apartment. “Good call. That smells amazing.”

“You got here before I could take it out of the containers and put it in pots and pans on the stove.”

Leah laughed as he took her coat and hung it by the door. “Right, because I totally would have believed that.”

“Hey, I can cook,” he said in feigned offense as he walked over to the table and pulled a chair out for her.

“I know,” she said as she sat. “I was there for the Hot Pocket.”

Danny laughed, shaking his head. “Why did I ask you to hang out again?”

“No clue. Maybe you’re a masochist.”

Danny pushed her chair in before he walked around to the other side of the table. “Sometimes I think so,” he said, but his voice was strangely devoid of humor.

Leah glanced up at him, but by the time he sat across from her, his dimples were back on display.

“So how was the wedding?” he asked as he started opening containers. He looked up at her, his smile still intact.

Maybe she’d imagined it.

“It was really fun,” Leah said, reaching for the bottle of water in front of her. “Robyn looked amazing. Everything went smoothly.”

“It went smoothly? What’s to mess up? Both people say ‘I do,’” Danny said, holding out a pack of chopsticks and a fork for Leah to choose from.

She grabbed the fork. “Girl stuff again. But there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that can get messy if it’s not well planned. Or if the bride is a bitch.” She smiled. “Thankfully, neither was the case this weekend.”

Danny placed two opened cartons of food in front of Leah before he started opening the others. “Do those bitch brides actually exist? I thought that shit was just for TV.”

“They exist,” Leah said, looking inside the containers. One was filled with sesame chicken, and the other contained pot stickers.

Leah’s mouth dropped. “How did you know to order this?”

“What?” he asked, his eyes trained on the chopsticks he was unwrapping.

“Sesame chicken and pot stickers? What made you order this?”

“Because it’s your favorite,” he said simply as he reached into his container with his chopsticks and pulled out a piece of broccoli.

“How did you know that?”

He popped the broccoli in his mouth. “You told me,” he said around his food.

“I did?”

He laughed softly. “Yeah. It was Tuesday night. Or maybe Wednesday. One of the nights I spoke to you this week.”

“Huh,” Leah said. “I don’t remember that.” She reached into the container and pulled out a pot sticker.

“I pay attention.”

Leah glanced up, and he winked at her before he grabbed his water bottle and twisted off the cap. She watched him take a long sip, suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to swat the bottle away from his lips and replace it with her mouth.

“What?” he asked as he put the bottle down and picked up his chopsticks.

“Nothing,” Leah said. “Just…watching you show off.”

“Show off?”

She nodded to his chopsticks, and he laughed.

“I’m not showing off. This is how you’re supposed to eat this stuff.”

She shrugged, spearing a piece of chicken with her fork and bringing it to her mouth, and he smiled, putting his container down and leaning across the table.

“Here,” he said, taking the fork from her hand and replacing it with the chopsticks. He manipulated her fingers around the sticks, his brow furrowed in concentration, and Leah kept her eyes trained on his face.

Maybe it was the fact that she had anticipated being with him all weekend, but right now, everything about him—his touch, his laugh, his voice—was driving her crazy.

“There,” he said, pulling his hand away. “Try it now.”

Leah strained to keep her fingers in the position he’d placed them in as she brought them down to her food, unsteadily gripping a piece of chicken between them. She raised it carefully from the container, grinning with pride as she glanced up at Danny, but the sticks shifted in her hand. She tried to pinch them together quickly, but they slipped and snapped together, sending the chicken flying across the table into Danny’s chest before it bounced into his lap.

She pressed her lips together, staring at him, and he looked down at his lap and then back up at her before they both started laughing. Danny grabbed the piece of chicken and popped it into his mouth before he reached across the table and took the chopsticks.

“Okay, you’re cut off,” he said, handing her back the fork.

Leah smirked as she took it from him, spearing a piece of chicken just as the double beep of her phone alerted her to an incoming text. She reached down with one hand and pulled the phone out of her purse, swiping her thumb over the screen to read the message.

She laughed softly before replying.

“What’s so funny?”

“My dad,” Leah said, finishing her reply before she pushed the phone away. “He just asked me how old my brother was when he stopped sleeping with his stuffed dinosaur, which could only mean my brother is at his house right now and they’re having a heated discussion over this very topic. I’m sure I’m being called in as a referee.”

Danny smiled. “How old was he?”

“Fourteen. My brother’s gonna say I’m full of shit, but that boy was fourteen.” She watched as Danny lifted his chopsticks and grabbed some lo mein; with a quick roll of his wrist and a twist of his fingers, he had the long noodles twirled into a neat roll on the end of the sticks. He glanced up at her and brushed his shoulder off haughtily before bringing it to his mouth, and Leah rolled her eyes, causing him to chuckle.

Her phone beeped twice and she leaned over. “My brother,” she said before tapping the screen. Leah smiled as she held the phone up, turning it around for Danny to see.

YOU ARE SO FULL OF SHIT
!

Danny laughed as she placed the phone back on the table. “Told you,” she said.

“Your family seems cool.”

“They’re the best,” she said, taking a bite of a pot sticker. “You gotta have a thick skin to roll with us.”

“I believe it,” he said with a laugh.

“What about you?” Leah asked, taking a sip of her water.

“What do you mean?”

“What’s your family like?”

He laughed humorlessly. “Not like yours.”

Leah twisted the cap back onto her water. “You don’t get along?”

“We get along, I guess.” He shrugged. “We’re just not that close.”

“Do you have a big family?”

“Just me, my mom, and my sister.”

“What about your dad?” she said.

“I don’t know my dad.”

Leah watched him for a second before she dropped her eyes. “Did he pass away?” she asked, sifting through the chicken with her fork.

“No, he left before I was born.”

“Oh.” After a few seconds of silence, she said, “I’m sorry.”

He shook his head. “It’s fine. I mean, I’m not fucked up from it or anything. I guess I could have been, but I had a family. It just wasn’t my real one.”

“Your mom wasn’t around either?”

Danny exhaled, running his hand through his hair. “No, not really.”

Leah bit her lip before she said, “We don’t have to talk about this.”

“I don’t mind,” he said. “I mean, if you don’t mind hearing this shit.”

She shook her head. “I want to know about you. Even the shitty stuff.”

He smiled sadly, his eyes dropping for a second before he said, “Here’s the thing about my mom. She did her best, but life dealt her one crappy hand after the other. She got pregnant with my sister when she was eighteen. Supposedly
that
guy had the decency to hang around for a year after she was born before he took off.”

Danny looked up as he said, “I’m sure it sucked. I mean, I can’t imagine being left with a baby that young. And I guess at that age, the only way she could think of to fix it was to find a replacement for him. She went looking for a guy who could take care of them. And she thought she found him.”

“Your father?”

Danny nodded. “I still don’t know if she got pregnant to try and keep him or if it was an accident, but either way, he obviously wasn’t into it.”

Leah frowned, and he said, “So she ended up a single mom to two kids from two different guys who wanted nothing to do with her.” Danny reached over and spun the bottle of water on the table. “She had to work two jobs just to pay the bills, and when she wasn’t working, she was out trying to find the next man who would take care of our family. So we never really saw her. I mean, the two jobs thing couldn’t be helped, but I just wish she had realized we didn’t need the man. We would have been fine without a father as long as we had a mother.”

Leah pressed her lips together as Danny shrugged. “Who knows. Maybe the man was more for her than it was for us anyway. God knows she must have needed the validation.”

“That’s really sad,” Leah said softly, and he nodded.

“I know. So I don’t resent her. But I was left by myself most of the time because of it.”

“What about your sister?”

“My sister was older than me. She stayed away from the house most of the time because she could. And as soon as she became a teenager, I was lucky if I saw her twice a week.” Danny’s hand moved from the bottle of water to the cardboard container in front of him, fiddling with the lid as he said, “I don’t blame her either. I mean, I got out of there as soon as I could too.”

Leah nodded, and he said, “Things got better when I was in second grade. That’s when I met Bryan, and after that I spent pretty much all my time with him. He lived with his grandmother a few blocks over.”

“Catherine,” Leah said, and Danny nodded.

“Yeah. His mom had him young too. Younger than my mother was. So Gram was the one who raised him so his mom could finish school.”

Leah dropped her eyes and swallowed. So, Catherine didn’t lose a grandson.

She lost a son.

“I’d come home from school and go to Bryan’s house instead of my own. And Gram would feed us, help us with our homework, tell us to wash our faces. You know, normal mom shit.”

“She calls you her boy,” Leah said, and Danny smiled.

“She called us both that.” He looked down, poking at his food with the end of his chopsticks. “That’s how I got into cars, you know. Bryan’s grandfather was amazing with them. He was always messing with something in his car, even when it wasn’t broken. It drove Gram crazy,” he said with a laugh.

Leah smiled, and he said, “When we were older, we used to wait for him to get home from work so we could watch him mess around with the car. Eventually, he started letting us work on it too.”

He picked up his drink, taking a quick sip before he said, “When he died, Gram put away his life insurance policy. She always said she was saving it for a rainy day. But when Bryan and I decided to open our shop, she ended up giving us that money and then some so we could make it happen. Pretty much cleaned out her bank account for us.”

“Wow,” Leah said softly, trying to fathom how much she loved these two boys. “So it was Bryan’s shop too?”

Danny nodded. “D&B Automotive.”

“Danny and Bryan,” Leah said.

“Danny and Bryan,” he repeated. “He always complained that he should get a higher cut of the profits since I got to have my initial first.” He smiled at her before he said, “I still cut the profits fifty-fifty. I give Bryan’s share to Gram. She wouldn’t take it at first, so I used to just hide bits and pieces of it around the house, thinking I was slick. She was on to me, though.”

Leah smiled sadly. “You take such good care of her.”

“She deserves it,” Danny said. “I would do more if I could.”

Leah nodded, and it was quiet for a minute as the two of them fiddled with the food in front of them. Suddenly Danny cleared his throat as he shifted in his seat, and she knew this conversation was over.

“So,” he said, taking another bite of food. “Is your brother older or younger?”

“Older,” she said. “He’s twenty-nine.”

Danny nodded. “Does he make your boyfriends run the gauntlet now?”

“What do you mean?” Leah asked, dipping a pot sticker in soy sauce.

“After what that piece of shit did to you. Has he been tough on all your boyfriends since then?”

“Oh,” Leah said, averting her eyes.

“You don’t have to tell me. I was just wondering. I’d grill the shit out of my sister’s boyfriends if it were me, and we’re not half as close as you guys seem to be.”

“No, it’s not that I don’t want to,” she said, twisting the fork between her fingers. “It’s just that...I don’t have an answer.”

Danny furrowed his brow, and Leah took a small breath before she said, “I haven’t had a boyfriend since Scott.”

“
None
?” he asked, unable to hide his surprise.

Leah felt warmth in her cheeks, and the knowledge that she was blushing only caused her to blush more deeply.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” he said gently. “I’m just surprised. No one’s approached you in two years?”

“No, I was approached. I just…” She trailed off with a shrug.

“Didn’t trust anyone?”

“I didn’t trust myself. I spent years thinking Scott was this amazing person. I would have sworn to it. I turned my back on people because of it. And it just messed with my head that I had been so wrong. After that I just didn’t trust my own judgment anymore.” She shrugged. “Besides, my dad needed to be taken care of for a while after that, and I just threw myself into that because…”

“Because it was like your penance.”

It wasn’t a question, and she didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.