A Little Beyond Hope Read online

  “I fell asleep.”

  “You fell asleep?” I asked, holding back the urge to call him a liar. “Real sleep? Or the flop-across-the-couch-and-try-to-fool-Julie kind?”

  He dropped his head into his hands and scratched his scalp. It was his way of avoiding the question, and that’d been normal for Charlie lately. He didn’t seem to want to talk about anything, look anyone in the eye, or even humor the idea of getting back to normal.

  “Charlie?”

  “I wasn’t feeling well.”

  I believed that much. I could see his distress as clearly as I could see Luke’s back at the station. Charlie’s eyes were sunken and red, as if he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in a week. Deep lines of fatigue were drawn across his face, casting a hollow and solemn expression that even I couldn’t believe he’d forced.

  “Charlie,” I said quietly, anxiety burning beneath my skin. I didn’t want to know what he meant by not feeling ‘well.’ Even the faintest hint of illness had me worried that he would spiral back into a dangerous place, and I couldn’t imagine the pain and hurt it would cause everyone involved—especially him.

  “I only left the station to come home and get a nap before the appointment,” he explained. “I was tired, and I was bored.”

  “But you have the computer at your office,” I said. “And we left you with books—”

  “I don’t want to be there if I’m not allowed to work,” he said, his voice growing thicker. “I don’t need a babysitter, Julie. I want to be able to come and go as I please. I wanted one hour of unsupervised time, just to be alone—to sleep, undisturbed.”

  I swallowed a sigh, my heart aching as I struggled with indecision. Could I believe him? With all the lies he’d fed us lately, wouldn’t I be smart to believe that this was just another one of his rehearsed lines?

  “It was an honest mistake, Julie. I didn’t mean to miss it.”

  “That’s been a popular excuse with you lately,” I said, still keeping my voice quiet. I eyed him a little closer, but I didn’t pause long enough to give him time to squeeze in another defense. “If you weren’t feeling well, Charlie, you should’ve told Bruno. He could’ve taken you to the hospital, or we could’ve gotten you into the doctor early. You should’ve said something.”

  “It wasn’t anything serious,” he said. “Like I said, I was tired. That’s all.”

  Again, I peered at him. The struggle was becoming more and more difficult the harder I tried to distinguish his lies from the truth. I only wished there was a surefire way to know if he was being honest with me.

  “Okay,” I said, knowing that I had no other choice but to abandon this discussion for now. He’d missed his appointment; I couldn’t change the outcome no matter how much I wanted to. “Luke called and rescheduled your appointment for next Monday, and you can’t miss it, understand?”

  “Yes,” he said, nodding. “I’ll do my best to make it.”

  “You’ll go,” I said. “You have to go, Charlie, okay?”

  Again, he nodded, and although he meant to convey that he’d understood, his gesture came across as noncommittal at best.

  “Now, lie down,” I said, standing up. I helped ease him back down on the cushions, and then I draped his favorite quilt over him. “Do you need me to get anything for you?”

  “No,” he said, nuzzling into his pillow and closing his eyes. “Stop worryin’ about me, Pumpkin. I’m fine. I only need some sleep.”

  “Okay,” I said, leaning down to press a kiss to his head. “I love you.”

  His lips thinned into a small smile, and then he pulled the blanket up under his chin and rolled over to face the back of the couch.

  I turned back and headed for the kitchen and left Charlie to rest. The man confused me to no end. He claimed he wanted unsupervised time alone, and yet he insisted on sleeping downstairs day in and day out so that he wouldn’t miss out on any of the action happening around him. But there wasn’t much to miss out on. Life in the Little household had remained mostly low-key as of late.

  I found my cousin seated at the kitchen island, leaning over a familiar red cookbook, one packed with dozens of handwritten recipes. It was the very same one my mother had used for years, the one she’d held so dear to her heart, and the very one that I’d passed on to my cousin during our first Christmas together in Oakland. At the time, it had only made sense that Matt kept it; I had no use for it, and Mom would’ve wanted it to end up in the right hands. But since Matt had returned home from school in October, I wasn’t sure he was really even the same person he used to be. The boy I’d given that book to had changed so quickly. He’d lost a part of himself, and while I’d hoped that time would mend what was broken, it really hadn’t.

  Lately, I’d only seen Matt in the kitchen long enough for him to make the meals that were required for Charlie’s recovery, and although I knew that he hadn’t liked doing it, he never once complained. As soon as he’d finished that cooking stint, he kept to staying busy elsewhere. No longer able to rely on the job he’d once held at the bistro before fleeing off to college, he ended up back at the flower shop. I’d given up my part-time job—since it had technically been his job in the first place—and he got back to work. The arrangement worked out quite nicely, really, because I’d already lined up an even better way to occupy what little bit of free time I had left. I offered to step in and help Lonnie and Grace babysit little Zoey while Derek took night classes.

  “Breaking out the old recipes, huh?” I asked, and Matt jumped at the sound of my voice.

  He turned and wrinkled his forehead, and then he looked back down to the book. “She was a genius, you know that?”

  “No more so than you.” I slid into the barstool next to him, nudging him with my shoulder. “I bet there’s nothing in that cookbook you couldn’t make five times better than she did.”

  Whatever it was that my cousin needed to hear, it wasn’t that. I hadn’t said the right the thing. My words had only darkened the deep sadness in his stare. I didn’t know the facts. I didn’t know much at all, but whatever it was that had pushed Matt away from school, whatever had happened out there at college, it had changed him. And although so much of him seemed different, there was at least one thing I’d come to know for sure: he needed to get back to doing what he loved. He needed a push.

  “You miss it, don’t you?” I asked.

  “Miss what?”

  “Cooking, baking, all of the stuff that you gave up when you came home,” I said, watching his eyes trail back down to the pages. Like his dad, he tried to fool me. He gave it his best shot, pretending to read the recipes on the counter, but I could see his eyes were moving far too fast. He was just avoiding my stare, trying to keep his emotions in check. “Mattie, when are you ever going to tell us what happened out there?”

  “Julie, I’ve told you a hundred times. It’s not—”

  “Don’t sit there and give me that load of crap about how it’s not important,” I said, turning to face him. “You gave up school, your future, everything you’ve ever wanted. What was it? Were you failing?”

  “No,” he scoffed. “Do you seriously think I could fail?”

  “No, I don’t,” I said. “But it’s the only thing I’ve been able to come up with.”

  “Well, you were wrong.”

  “Then what?” I pressed harder. “Did one of the other kids make fun of your crème brûlée? Hurt your feelings? Make you feel inadequate?”

  “Ha-ha,” he rolled his eyes. “No.”

  “A professor, another chef, one of your roommates?”

  “Will you drop it already?” he asked, finally shutting the cookbook. “It’s nothing like that.” He slid off the stool, sweeping the book off the counter and tucking it under his arm. He stomped toward the back staircase, ready to put the whole conversation to rest, and then I perked up one last time and asked, “Was it a girl?”

  He stopped just short of the first step, but he never turned back. He just dropped his head
, looked down at his feet, and paused.

  “It was a girl,” I said quietly. “Mattie, what happened?”

  “Drop it, Julie,” he said, finally turning around to look at me. “It wasn’t a girl.”

  He tried to play it off like it was nothing, but I could see it now. It was heartache that consumed him, left him bitter and tense. It was a matter of the heart, of love, and I should’ve known it from the start! In love, Matt was a fool. He’d go to any height, any length, or any means possible for the woman he cared about. Love was the only thing that ever threw him off track, made him act irrationally. When Matt fell for someone, he fell hard, and he didn’t take rejection well; I’d witnessed that firsthand with his last breakup.

  So if it wasn’t a girl …

  My eyes widened as an impossible thought occurred to me, and then I slid off the stool and stood staring at my cousin.

  “Oh,” I said, feeling my lips round. “Mattie, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. It was a … it was a boy?”

  “What? God no, Julie!”

  “I’m sorry, I just assumed—”

  “If knowing the truth will shut you up once and for all, then fine! It wasn’t a girl. It was the girl. End—of—conversation!”

  “The girl?” I asked, searching my brain, but nothing came immediately to mind.

  My cousin may’ve been the best looking guy in town—minus Luke, of course, so we’ll call Mattie number two—but he’d never been one for dating endless lines of girls. He’d had his chance, and he could’ve had anyone he’d wanted, but that wasn’t my cousin. He wasn’t that guy. I’d only ever known him to take interest in two particular girls, and one of them was locked up for a lifetime for shooting the best looking guy in town. By process of elimination, that only left one girl to be the girl.

  “Kara?” Better known as my cousin’s ex-girlfriend—the one who’d ripped his heart out of his chest, tossed it to the ground, and stomped all over it.

  “I said end of conversation.”

  “What happened?” I asked, ignoring him. I knew that if he’d really meant end of conversation, Matt would’ve already turned and walked away. But he hadn’t. He’d stayed, and that had to mean something, right? “I thought you guys hadn’t talked in like a year?”

  “Julie,” he said, finally dropping his shoulders. There was an element of defeat in his tone, one that made my heart ache to help him. His lips moved slowly, but nothing came out. I could sense that he wanted to talk; he was about to say something. But after a few long minutes of silence, he just shook his head and turned away. It wasn’t until he was halfway up the staircase that I heard him mumble, “Just leave me alone.”

  I stood and listened to Matt round the corner and enter his room, and just when I thought he’d slam his door, he proved me wrong yet again. He shut it quietly, and I knew that meant he was hurting. He’d gotten past the stage of anger and bitterness, and now he was just lost and confused.

  And it was my fault. I shouldn’t have brought it up. It was my own selfish need to know everything that changed the mood so dramatically, and now my cousin was left to suffer the pain that he’d spent months trying to recover from.

  It didn’t make any sense to me. Kara broke things off a year and a half ago. She adamantly refused to be in a relationship with someone who wanted a forever kind of ending, and she didn’t let him down softly. After the way things escalated with their breakup, I never suspected that she and Matt would stay in touch. There was a part of me that always believed that Matt held on to hope that Kara would someday come to her senses, and if she did, he would be right there waiting. But time had ticked on, and she hadn’t come around. And that little part of me that believed he was right there waiting, well … it slowly turned into this belief that he’d since given up hope. And with all of that time and distance between them, I didn’t understand what was happening now. How had she managed to break his heart all over again? What in the world could she have done?

  I pulled my phone from my back pocket and stared at the dark screen for a few long minutes. I knew what I needed to do, but I hated that it had to be done. I unlocked the screen, opened my messages, and sent a text to Luke.

  I can’t come home. I know I said I would, and I’m sorry. Charlie isn’t feeling well, and I’m finally making leeway with Mattie. I can’t leave.

  I waited a few minutes for some kind of response, but I found myself waiting for nothing. Luke never responded; he didn’t even answer his phone when I tried calling ten minutes later.

  It occurred to me that he might be upset; he’d never asked anything of me. He’d never asked me to come home, to put our relationship ahead of anything else. What happened back at the station was a rarity. Luke reached out, he extended an invitation for us to spend some quality time together. And for Luke to make that kind of request, I knew it must’ve been important to him.

  That’s where the struggle became too much for me. What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t leave Matt and Charlie to suffer alone. They were my family. They needed me. But Luke was my fiancé. I’d promised him my intent for forever, and he was just as much family to me now as the others.

  Tears streamed down my face, and with one soft swipe of my hand, I wiped them away. The stress was too much. I’d tried hard to deny the truth, especially in recent weeks, but fact was becoming more and more evident by the day. It would never matter how committed Luke and I were, or whether or not we had Charlie’s blessing to move forward in our relationship. As long as Charlie and Matt were part of my life, I would always get stuck in the middle, and I’d always have to choose.

  Chapter Three

  I threw myself back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. Hours had gone by. Matt was still holed up in his room, Charlie was snoring (for real, this time—none of that fake stuff), and I’d given up waiting to hear back from Luke … even after another failed attempt at reaching him.

  I’d come to terms with it, or at least I’d come to terms with as much of it as I could. Luke was upset; his silence spoke volumes. And yes, I understood that he had every right to be angry. I’d made him a promise. All he’d asked for was one evening together, some time away from everything else. He wanted dinner, festivities, and togetherness. It was incredibly important for us to spend time together, especially this close to Christmas. So I couldn’t blame him for ignoring my calls and texts. We’d intended for a future of growing together, and now more than ever it seemed as though we were growing slowly apart.

  Honestly, I felt awful for Luke. I hadn’t been fair to him. I couldn’t help but question why he hadn’t completely given up on me. Why exhaust so much of your time, energy, and love in someone who can’t do the same for you? It couldn’t have been my security in our relationship that kept him holding on. I’d never been anything but insecure. It couldn’t have been my ability to keep a promise; this evening alone was proof that I was lousy at keeping my word. So what was it? He’d said it was my courage and my strength, but lately I didn’t feel as if I possessed either of those qualities.

  I pulled the ring off of my left hand and stared at it, admiring everything about it—the curvature of the band, the sparkle of the diamond, the way it glistened even in the faintest light. As beautiful as it was, none of those things had ever made the ring special to me. Luke was what made it special. It was another gesture, another way for him to show me that I was the only one for him.

  And yet there I was, inadvertently ruining the one good thing I had going for myself. Why did it seem as though I always found a way to royally screw up everything in my path?

  “Hey there, grumpy.” My head snapped at the sound of Luke’s voice, and I sat up on the bed to find him leaning in the doorway. “Can you give me a hand downstairs?”

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, sitting straighter. I slid the ring back on my finger, pulled myself up off the bed, and smoothed the wrinkles on my shirt. And I never once took my eyes off of him.

  “Well, I figured if you weren’t coming h
ome for a little pre-Christmas fun, then I’d bring the fun to you,” he said, pushing himself off the doorframe. He stood straight and extended his hand. “Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’re going to help me bring the tree in.”

  “The tree?”

  “You mentioned last week that Charlie’s been too tired to go pick out a tree,” he said, taking my hand. We turned out of the room and headed for the stairs. “It’s two days until Christmas. You guys need a tree.”

  I kept staring at him, letting my gaze burn into the side of his smooth face. His eyes didn’t look as dark and tired as they had earlier, and his hair had been cut a little shorter since I’d seen him a few hours ago at the station. Dressed in a black button-up shirt and a pair of well-worn jeans, Luke looked better than I’d seen him in weeks. He seemed fresh off a haircut and a couple hours of sleep. And good for him if that was the case. He needed a break just as much as the rest of us.

  “Hey,” I said, stopping him before he could take the first step. “What’s going on? Why are you here?”

  “I already told you.”

  “I tried texting you,” I said. “And calling. I thought you were mad.”

  “What?” He granted me a sincere smile, and it was all I could do to keep from crying. How could he stand there smiling, remaining so kind and so sweet, when I couldn’t even keep a simple promise to spend the evening with him? “Why would I be mad?”

  “I’ve spent so much time here lately,” I said, my heart vibrating in my throat. “I haven’t been home.”

  “Jules,” he said, drawing back to get a better look at me. “I know you’re worried about them, and if you feel like this is where you need to be, then this is where you need to be.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. They’re your family.” He leaned in and framed my face with his hands, holding my gaze for ten solid seconds of silence. “I love you, and I know that you love me, too. We’re solid, kid. Believe me when I tell you that I am behind you with every decision you make, Julie. Every step you take, I’m right there with you.”