“He’s a big boy,” Kyle grumbled. “He can take care of himself.”
Baxter nudged Kyle. “Come on, that was her choice.”
“Exactly!” she agreed.
“But look what’s happening because of it!” Kyle said.
Callie straightened the bedding. “Denny’s upset and he’s blaming me. That doesn’t make it my fault.”
Kyle shoved his hands in his pockets. “Maybe Baxter, Noah, Ted and I should go over and have a talk with Denny.”
“Don’t! I’d rather not have all my friends become their enemies, too,” she said, but Kyle wasn’t willing to back off quite that easily.
“They’d better not be responsible.”
She held up a hand in the classic stop position. “Let’s wait and see what caused the fire before we go off accusing people.”
“When’s the arson investigator coming?” Baxter asked. “Or has he already been here?”
“He hasn’t shown up to my knowledge. Stacy didn’t mention a time.”
Baxter took Kyle’s seat on the bed. “How are you feeling?”
There was an earnest quality to his voice that indicated he wasn’t only concerned about how she’d been affected by the fire. As the one person who knew about her liver disease, he was asking after her health. “I’m fine. Just...tired. I was up all night.”
Kyle stooped to recover the bustier and threw it in her closet, out of sight. “Have you eaten?”
She twisted around to see the clock. It was nearly eight. She’d slept all day. “Not yet.”
“You should have some dinner. I’ll go make something.” With that, he went to the kitchen, but Baxter stayed behind.
“What happened?” he asked, his voice low.
“I told you,” she said.
“I’m not talking about the fire.”
She wasn’t sure she wanted to talk about anything else. “What, then?”
He arched his eyebrows. “Are you going to pretend you didn’t have sex with your guest?”
“I didn’t.”
“Come on.” A skeptical grin tugged at his lips. “A girl doesn’t break out a bustier unless she’s got plans.”
She smiled that he could name that particular type of lingerie when Levi couldn’t seem to remember it no matter how many times she told him. “I had plans. It was Levi who called it quits.”
“What?”
“It’s true.” And now he was gone....
Baxter made a sympathetic sound. “You have the worst luck when it comes to men, don’t you?”
She couldn’t help chuckling. “That’s no joke,” she said, then sobered. “But I haven’t lost anything, right, Bax? I knew he was going to move on. And now he has. So...”
“So?” he prompted.
“Why am I sad?”
He shrugged. “There’s just something about this guy.”
That was true. She’d felt it almost from the start. “I wish we could choose who we want to love.”
“So do I!”
His expression suggested this was the understatement of the year and she knew that for him it was. She reached out to squeeze his arm, and he responded by lying down with her. “We’re pathetic, the two of us,” he said as they settled close.
“How long have you been in love with Noah?” she whispered. They could hear Kyle banging around in the kitchen as he cooked. It wasn’t as though he was listening in, but the seriousness of the subject seemed to warrant extra care.
Baxter hesitated so long she thought he wasn’t going to answer. But then he took a deep breath and murmured, “Since forever.”
“What do you think he’d do if you told him?”
“I don’t want to find out.”
“He can’t get too mad. It’s a compliment.”
“You’re kidding, right? He’d probably start throwing punches.”
She rose up on her elbows. “Really?”
“You don’t agree?”
“I know he cares about you.”
This didn’t seem to please him. “Caring sounds so weak compared to my side of things.” He ran a hand over his face. “He’d feel betrayed,” he mused. “As if I was only pretending to be his friend all these years. As if I’ve been living a lie. And I have been. I make it worse every time he talks to me about a woman and I pretend to understand and agree and support him.”
What other options did he have? “I can see why you’re tempted to move away. Why not live in S.F. and find someone else, someone who can fulfill you?”
“Because I’d have to leave you and the rest of our friends. I could never replace what we have.”
She snuggled closer. “I feel the same.”
“And I’m afraid of what’ll happen to me there, how I’ll change.”
“You’d come out of the closet, wouldn’t you?”
“I wouldn’t be able to stay in it, not in an environment where it feels safe to be who and what I really am. Maybe I could pull off a double life for a while, but...” His words faded before he regrouped and finished. “Noah would find out eventually. So would my parents.”
“Would that be so bad?” she asked. “Surely, they’d have to accept it.”
“Would they?” he challenged.
She couldn’t say for sure. She hated to encourage him to do something that wouldn’t turn out well, and yet she understood how difficult it must be to pretend.
“Noah would hate me,” he said. “So would my dad.”
She wished it didn’t have to be that way. “I’m sorry.”
He kissed her temple. “I know.”
* * *
As soon as Callie heard the sound of a motorcycle, she dropped her fork. The clang of it hitting her plate made Kyle and Baxter pause in the middle of their dinners.
“What is it?” Kyle asked.
She picked up her fork. “Nothing,” she said, but she felt giddy with relief. Levi wasn’t gone. She had no idea where he’d been all day, but he was back, and that made her far happier than it should have.
The motor she heard outside died. Then there was a quick knock and Levi poked his head into the living room. “Callie?”
“In here!” Instinctively, she shoved her chair back. She wanted to go to him, but he was already on his way, and she preferred not to reveal her own eagerness.