Page 230 of Across His Line

I didn’t tell Tessa that Kylie was coming.

Kennebeck’s phone buzzes in the back seat, somewhere around the bottom of the hill. He looks at the screen. I see it in the mirror. His jaw does something. He holds the phone in his lap and watches it buzz until it stops.

“You gonna answer that?” Barnes says.

“No.”

He declines it and shoves the phone down in his coat pocket and looks out the window at the trees. Kylie, next to him, puts her hand flat on his knee and leaves it there and doesn’t say anything. Barnes looks at the back of my seat for a second, then out his own window. Nobody says anything else about it.

I know who it was. I don’t ask.

I park out front.

Kylie’s out of the car before I’ve turned it off. She’s up the steps, through the front door I left unlocked into my parents’ house without saying hello to anybody.

Me and the guys walk up behind her.

“Tessa Canten!” Kylie shouts.

She sees Kylie in the front hall, and her whole face changes. She doesn’t say anything. She just runs. She comes down the front stairs two at a time in a pair of my socks, sliding on the last step, with her hair falling out of the rubber band. Kylie runs, and they hit each other at the bottom of the stairs hard enough that Tessa goes back a step and almost sits down on it, and they hang onto each other and go around in a circle in my front hall, both of them talking at the same time, neither of them listening. What are you—how did you—I can’t believe—your hair—I missed you—

My mom comes out of the kitchen with a dish towel and stands there watching them, smiling like it’s the best thing that’s happened to her all year.

I stand on the front step with Kylie’s bag in one hand and the foil tray in the other.

Kennebeck comes up beside me with his duffel and grabs it from my hands. Barnes comes up behind him, sliding on the ice, swearing.

I watch Tessa’s face over Kylie’s shoulder. Her eyes are shut. She’s holding on with both arms like Kylie might leave.

The drive was worth it. An hour each way. I’d do it again tomorrow.

“Close the door,” I say. “You’re letting the heat out.”

They’re staying through New Year’s. My mom made up both of the other guest rooms on the far side of the house, put fresh towels in them, and a little dish of chocolates on each nightstand, like it’s a hotel. She hugs Kennebeck. She hugs Barnes, who looks terrified by it. And I stand in the kitchen with my back against the counter and watch Tessa and Kylie talk.

They walk over to the stools at the island. Kylie’s holding both of Tessa’s hands across the corner of the counter and telling her about her Christmas, and Tessa’s laughing. She’s fixing her hair, wearing the cream sweater my mom gave her, the one she said she couldn’t take, and the scarf from Christmas, inside, for no reason. And the watch. It’s loose on her wrist, sliding down every time she moves her hand.

“—and I told him if he wanted to stay in the lineup, he needed to—Waleska. Are you listening?”

Kennebeck’s next to me. He’s been next to me for a while, talking about something.

“Yeah,” I say.

“What’d I say?”

I look at him. He looks back at me with absolutely no expression on his face.

“Something about a lineup,” I say.

“I said Berwyn’s doing a two-a-day on the third. Like a fucking psychopath.”

“Yeah.”

He keeps looking at me. Then at the island. Then back at me. Then he takes an apple out of the bowl on the counter and bites it.

At the island, Kylie’s stopped talking. She’s watching him eat the apple. He lifts it up to her. She shakes her head and grabs Tessa’s wrist.

“Oh,” she says. “The watch?”