“You’re running around like a chicken without a head trying to please everyone, and you’re day drinking. So try again.”
Even though she didn’t have anywhere near the same life experience he did, Caitlin had always treated him like she was the big sister. She was the warmest, sweetest person he’d ever met and had come into his life during a time when he hadn’t known much warmth or sweetness. He’d never felt anything but gratitude and a brotherly sense of protectiveness for her, and that shit went deep with him. Soul deep. She was his family for life, and he’d do anything for her.
Same for Heather.
He glanced at the third musketeer. Maze was a different story. Not that he wouldn’t throw himself in front of a train for her, because he would. But if she wanted his heart and soul . . . well, they weren’t available. She’d already had them.
And destroyed them.
“Done,” Caitlin said, gesturing to the spread. “Think it’s okay?”
She’d thought of everything, including Dillon’s favorite beer, Heather’s favorite cookies, and a container of dry cereal in which Sammie was already up to her elbows. Pieces of the cereal were stuck to her cheeks and chin.
“Delicious?” Walker asked the kid.
She beamed at him and drooled. Heather laughed and kissed her baby’s face all over, much to Sammie’s utter delight. Caitlin tried to join in the fun and Sammie’s smile faded.
“Honestly,” Caitlin said, and that made Sammie laugh.
Maze and Jace were sitting on an old log sharing a sandwich, looking annoyingly cozy. Walker tried to find something in their body language to prove his gut theory that they weren’t sleeping together, but he got nothing. For the first time ever, his famed instincts failed him.
“Sorry,” Caitlin said to Walker, breaking his attention. “The stuff I packed for you is far more boring. Turkey on wheat with sprouts. But don’t worry, it’ll keep your body pure.”
Maze choked on a bite. “Sorry,” she muttered, carefully not looking at him. Which was how he found his first genuine grin of the day. He sat with Sammie, and though she offered to share her cereal, he passed and ate his sandwich.
A bit later, he saw Maze by herself sitting on the tire swing, staring out at the water.
Because he couldn’t seem to help himself, he followed. When he was at her back, he took a hold of the swing and gave her a gentle nudge.
“That all you got?” she asked, and threw her weight into it so she went higher.
“You do know you don’t always have to go five hundred miles an hour, right?”
She flashed him a look as she swung by him. “And right back at you.”
Touché. “I saw that you won that bartending competition in San Francisco,” he said.
She leaned back, her feet up to the sky as she pumped for more speed. “And you saw that where?” she asked.
He shrugged. “After the five hundredth time that Facebook recommended we be friends, I decided to check it out and see what you were up to.”
“You keeping tabs on me, Walk?”
Actually, he’d kept track of all of them; it was a part of his obsessive need to keep safe the few people who had keys to his heart. Maze had been a challenge, since he’d had to do his protective thing from afar and quietly. Of all of them, not only wouldn’t she thank him for watching out for her, she’d be pissed off. And it bugged the hell out of him that she’d been content to have nothing to do with him at all, when he felt the opposite.
She’d been broken when Michael died. Broken when he’d stupidly married her far before she’d been ready for any such thing. And broken three years ago when she’d walked away from all of them rather than face down her pride and admit she needed anyone. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve kept tabs on you.”
She held his gaze for a long beat, shocking the hell out of him when she nodded and quietly said, “Thanks. And I’m not just a bartender.”
“I know,” he said. “You’re still in night school for your bachelor’s degree. But even if you weren’t, if there’s anyone who can make being a bartender a hotshot career, it’s you. Because, Maze?”
“Yeah?”
“You’ve never been ‘just’ anything in your life.”
She blinked, like she didn’t know what to do with the compliment. Which kind of broke his heart.
“What do you want to do after you graduate?” he asked.
“Run a bar and grill and keep bartending. I like it,” she said. “But I want to be the boss. I think I’ll like that even better.”
He laughed and nodded.
“I got that dream from you, you know,” she said softly. “You always wanted to run your own restaurant so you could feed all your people.”
Funny how their dreams had aligned but not their lives. Heather and Sammie were sitting in the grass. Caitlin was feeding Dillon a bite of her sandwich. Roly and Poly were collapsed in front of their portable water bowl. Roly was asleep. Too tired to stand up, Poly lay there, chin resting on the lip of the water dish, lapping up water. Jace was sitting with them. No one was paying them any attention. “You and Jules doing okay?” he asked.
Maze snorted, then jumped off the swing. “Yeah. We’re fine.” And with that, she headed off to the picnic table, perusing the assortment of desserts Caitlin had brought. Walker followed and grabbed an apple and a wedge of cheese. He began cutting them up.
Diverted from the cookies, Maze paired a piece of apple with a slice of cheese. “I see what you’re doing, you know.” She bit into the snack. Chewed. Swallowed. “Trying to change me. Many have tried. None have succeeded.”
“I wouldn’t change a thing about you.”
She choked on her apple and cheese, and he rubbed her back until she wheezed out an “I’m fine!”
“That too.”
She shook her head and took another bite. He waited her out, knowing that was the only way to get her to talk. Maze didn’t like silence and tended to fill it. And sure enough, she sighed and spoke. “You asked why I lost touch with Caitlin and Heather. I pulled back,” she admitted. “Caitlin thinks she did something wrong, but she didn’t. It was all me. I got locked into a cycle of guilt I couldn’t shake.”
“Maze,” he said, aching for her. The fire that had taken out the Walshes’ house and killed their son had begun in the basement, where the older kids had been working on their plans to sneak out.
Maze had been the ringleader on that particular adventure. Caitlin’s parents had never blamed her for the fire, or for Michael’s death, but she’d blamed herself. When the Walshes could no longer take on foster kids, Maze had felt abandoned. And honestly? Walker 100 percent got that, irrational as it was.
“A few months after Vegas,” Maze said softly, “Caitlin threw herself a birthday party. I didn’t go. I blew her off, no warning.”
“Because of me,” he said quietly, remembering. “Because you didn’t want to see me.”
She lifted a shoulder in a possible admission to that. “I didn’t think about how it would affect her. It was selfish. But then, because I’m me, I made it even worse.”