Page 15 of Back to Me
They both said hello to Belle, Beau, Christina and sat down at the opposite end of the table to us. Austin moved his hand to rest on my thigh and gave it a squeeze. Threading my fingers through his, Austin cleared his throat.
“So, brother,” he began, his tone dripping in venom that wasn’t going to end well, “how’s your jaw?”
“Fine, no thanks to you.”
“I always knew your mouth was going to get you in trouble.” Before Cash could bite back, Christina jumped in.
“Boys, enough. Here I was hoping to at least get through dinner before the family meeting.”
“No longer that now is it, with Ally being here. She isn’t exactly family after all.” I felt Austin tense beside me. Before anyone else could speak, I sat up straighter.
“Bit rich coming from you, Cash, considering you are one comment from being disowned by your brother. Or getting another punch to the jaw.” His eyes narrowed at me.
“What would you know, Alyson?”
“Enough!” Thomas stood up and pushed his chair back a little. “This ends right now. I won’t have this family divided for any reason. Cash, you are the reason we brought you all here today so I would suggest you do the smart thing and shut your damn mouth. Never have I been so disappointed in our children as I am right now. I don’t care what your problem is, but you need to get over it. You are not Austin’s parent, we are. You do not get to tell him who he can and can’t date. You do not have the right to harass Ally and be a downright asshole to her. We did not raise you like that. What really makes me angry is you using your badge to threaten your own family. We were all there for Savannah when she needed us. We all rallied around Belle when things happened with her. We were there for your brother when his shop burnt down. We managed to keep Austin alive through the whole Holly saga. Now, your brother has a second chance with the love of his life, and you want to continually piss all over that? No. It ends today.”
“Oh, of course it is all my fault! Austin can do no wrong! He brought her here to bait me!”
“No! He brought Ally here because she was invited and should be around family again.”
“She isn’t family!”
“Cash James, you listen to me. People make mistakes. They aren’t perfect and given the chance, they would take things back if they could. You sure haven’t made the best choices over the years. Wasn’t it just a few months ago that you kept your promotion from your wife? It’s done now though. Drop it. If you can’t at least pretend to be happy for your brother, leave them alone. Don’t go near either shop. We are done with the drama. It ends now.” Thomas finished talking and sat back down. Picking up my glass, I took a drink of wine and cleared my throat.
“May I say something?” Thomas and Christina both said yes, while Cash said no at the same time. I chose to ignore him and looked to the others.
“I’m sorry, Austin told you I wasn’t coming tonight because this is what he wanted to avoid but I wanted to come and defend myself. I made mistakes, I know that, and I will spend the rest of my life making that up to Austin but as far as I am concerned, he is the only one I need to make things right with. He was the one I left behind. I know the past few years haven’t been easy for you, watching him fall off the rails and just start to turn things around when I walked back into town, but this isn’t a decision I made lightly. It took months of deciding if I could face everyone again after what I had done but, in the end, I couldn’t stay away from Austin any longer. He is my home. Well, him and Dallas. I was fully prepared to come back here and see that he had moved on. If he was happy, I would’ve understood and let things lie. He hadn’t though, and I am grateful for that and him giving me another chance. I’m sorry you aren’t happy with that, Cash. If you want me gone, well that is just too damn bad because I am not going anywhere.” I took another drink of wine. Austin moved his hand from mine and wrapped it around my shoulder, pulling me closer to him. I closed my eyes and rested my head against him. I heard a snort at the end of the table and knew Cash was rolling his eyes about now.
“You are only here until things get hard again then you will up and leave the first chance you get.”
“I haven’t yet, after a week of yours and your wife’s bullshit, have I? You started this by sending him into my shop. Savannah set this whole thing in motion. This all could have been handled a lot differently, remember that. This could have been a nice dinner but you two couldn’t leave it alone.” Austin moved his hand to squeeze my neck. None of us spoke again. They weren’t backing down from their high horse and we weren’t either. Until they were willing to apologize, then we had nothing more to say to them. When it was clear the discussion was done, we all got up and started to serve up dinner. Beau kept looking over at Austin like he wanted to say something, but didn’t.
Once dinner was done, Beau pushed his plate away and sat back. Wrapping his arm around Belle, he looked over at us again. We had finished eating; Austin had one arm around me and was holding my hand with his right.
“Austin, are you busy tomorrow night?”
“I am, going to see Tye and Dallas. Why do you ask?”
“I was going to see if you wanted to come and join me and the guys from the firehouse down at the bar for drinks.”
“Well, if you want to go to Hurricane’s, Tye and I will be hanging out playing pool while Ally and Dallas spend some time together.”
“Belle is more than welcome to hang out with me and Dallas.” I had only just gotten the words out when there was another snort at the end of the table. I didn’t have a chance to say anything before Austin jumped in.
“You pull your head out of your ass, Cash, you can join us.” Beau cut him off before he could reply with what was about to be some smart-ass retort.
“Sounds good! I will let the boys know. It’s not like we weren’t going to end up there anyway.” In an attempt to ignore the death stares I was getting from the end of the table, glad that looks couldn’t kill, I pushed my chair back and stood up. Going into the kitchen, I grabbed the box of cupcakes from where Christina had left them and took the box outside. Sitting them in the middle of the table, I took mine and Austin’s out.
“I brought dessert. Hopefully your favorites haven’t changed. Belle, I didn’t know what you liked so I went with one of my classic flavors. There are a few options in there though.” Beau looked at Austin as I passed him his and sat down again.
“Wait, does that mean the cupcake ban is over?” Austin rolled his eyes and put his arm back around me.
“Stop being dramatic. There was no cupcake ban.”
“Oh please, anytime we even mentioned the word around you, the looks we would get.”
“Still didn’t ban you from eating them though.” Beau just shook his head and pulled the box to him. He let Belle pick hers after pointing out which ones would be Cash’s and Savannah’s if they wanted them. If they didn’t, well it was no big deal to me. I took the paper off the bottom and sat it on my dinner plate. Taking the bottom half of the cupcake, I put it on the top to make a cupcake sandwich.
