Outsider (59 page)

Ethan
was laughing with a couple of fellow job candidates when someone knocked on the
glass of the waiting room’s interior windows. The smile dropped off his face
when he recognized his mother. He leaned forward so fast, his crossed ankles
slipped from the edge of the coffee table and his shoes landed on the floor
with a hard thud. What the hell was she doing in California? And at the police
station?

He
darted to his feet and hurried out into the corridor.

“Are
you done soon?” she asked, fanning her flushed cheeks. “I was waiting for you
by your car, but you never came out. I think this takes way too long. Maybe he
died or something.”

“What
are you doing here, Mamá?” he asked, his heart thudding with panic. “What
happened?”

“Nothing
bad. We’ll fix this for you. You’ll see.”

“Fix
what?” And who was
we
?

Her
little smile told him she had a secret she planned to keep. “So how did the test
go?”

“I
think it went okay.” Actually, he was pretty sure that even though he hadn’t
had time to study, he had aced it, and he knew he’d pass the physical portion
scheduled for the next morning. He was more worried about the interview, if he
even managed to get one. He was lucky they let him take the test with such
little notice. But he had an unexpected champion by the name of Butch Carter.
Until yesterday, Butch had failed to mention that his brother was chief of police
in Beverley Hills or that he was capable of pulling a few string to get Ethan a
chance to apply. No guarantees—and Ethan was fine with that—but an opportunity
to return to the career that he preferred.

Ethan’s
mother searched his eyes. “If you get the job, will you not go to Europe with
Reagan?”

“Mamá,
I don’t know where she is, if she’s even going to Europe.”

“You
must not have looked very hard for her.”

“You
know where she is?”

Mamá
nodded and started toward the door, gripping her purse tightly in both hands.

“Is
she outside?” Ethan tilted his body to look through the glass exterior door and
into the parking lot.

“No.
I will take you to her.”

His
mother wasn’t the only one who’d been waiting in the parking lot. His brothers
were out there as well. All of them. No, on second glance, the one he was
closest to in age and friendship—the one he
had
been closest to—was
missing.

“There
he is,” Juan called, waving. “My brother who is famous for kissing dudes.”

“Shut
up,” Ethan said, shoving Juan’s shoulder once he was within reach. Last night he’d
talked to all of his brothers on the phone—with the exception of Carlos, who
refused to speak to him—and none of them had been overly upset by the truth
he’d shared. Or surprised. Juan wasn’t one to keep a secret, so they’d had
plenty of warning before being confronted with scandalous pictures of their
oldest brother enjoying the company—and tasty lips—of a man. So while Ethan
wasn’t surprised they weren’t threatening to beat the gay out of him with ball
bats, he was astonished to see them. No one had mentioned coming out for a
visit. Had he forgotten his own birthday in the confusion?

“What
are you all doing here?” he asked.

Surely,
he didn’t need five assistants to talk to Reagan. He preferred their reunion to
be a bit more private.

“Eh,
Carlos didn’t come,” Mamá said, waving a dismissive hand. “Too busy playing his
music at some wedding.”

“You
should let him play at your grand opening, Mamá,” Juan said, hugging and
tickling her at the same time until she slapped at him with her purse to get
him to stop.

“What
grand opening?” Ethan asked. Jeez. No one ever kept him in the loop about
anything. He had talked to these closed-lipped idiots yesterday, for fuck’s
sake.

“Mamá
is starting her own restaurant. Without Pap
á
and his little chica.”

“Can
you afford to do that?” Ethan asked, his practical side winning over his pride
in her decision.

“I
must do this. My kitchen is much too small.”

“She’s
been selling boxed lunches out of her house for the past week,” Miguel said.
“Word is already out that she’s cooking again, and everyone wants her food.”

“Pap
á
tried opening a place with his waitress chica,” Juan said, “but no one goes
there. No one.” He laughed and drummed on Miguel with both palms.

“He
gets what he deserves,” Mamá said, her eyes narrowed.

Ethan
gave her a hearty squeeze and kissed the top of her head. “I’m proud of you.
You’ll do great.”

“You
should thank Butch. He says I must try working from home first and if I
succeed, then I should open my own restaurant. He says I can do it. And I know
I can.”

Ethan
cringed. Ugh, no, not Butch. He already owed Butch one for the job lead and another
for the good reference. And now he owed him for helping Mamá see her worth.
Owing that man was sure to bite him in the ass someday. But Ethan was glad
Butch had given his mamá the confidence to move forward. Ethan still hadn’t
told off his stepfather, but maybe her success was the best revenge.

“We’re
going to be late,” Pedro said. “Isn’t traffic in Los Angeles always really
bad?”

“Pedro!”
Ethan said, hugging brother number four. “I haven’t seen you in a year. How’s
school?”

And
by school, he meant graduate school. Pedro was working on a master’s degree in
chemical engineering.

“Busy,”
he said, “but I wanted to come and support you.”

“Support
me? In what? Aren’t we going to see Reagan?”

“Duh,”
Juan said, and rolled his eyes.

“Shush!”
Mamá said, waving six of her seven sons toward Ethan’s car.

“Shotgun,”
Arturo shouted.

“Mamá
gets shotgun,” Ra
ù
l said. “You get the trunk.”

“Someone
is going to have to ride in the trunk,” Ethan said, wondering how they thought
five grown men could fit into the back seat of his car.

Pedro
pointed at the black suitcase sitting behind Ethan’s sedan. The enormous piece
of luggage alone would take up the entire trunk. “You need a bigger vehicle,”
Pedro complained as Miguel and Juan climbed into the back seat.

“How
did you get here in the first place?” Ethan asked.

“Bus
,” Mamá said. “From airport.”

“And
how did you know where to find me?”

“Butch.”

Naturally.
Ethan was going to have to have a heart-to-heart with that man. His mother was
still a married woman, and Butch was embedding himself into her personal
affairs much too quickly.
Affairs?
Ugh. Why did he have to think
that
word?

“We
wanted to see you as much as possible,” she added.

Arturo
shook his head. “We told her we should just go to the—”

“Shush!”
Mamá said while Arturo opened her door for her.

“To
the
place
,” Arturo continued. “But she wanted to arrive with all of us
at your side.”

“To
show your support,” Ethan guessed.

“Exactly.”

“For
what
?” Ethan asked, still completely confused about why they were all there.

“Get
in the car, Ethan,” Mamá said from the passenger seat.

Pedro
shoved the single large suitcase into the trunk and then piled in on top of his
four brothers crammed into the back seat. It was a good thing they were on the
small side, but they definitely didn’t have enough seat belts.

“If
we get pulled over, I’m screwed,” Ethan said under his breath, smiling to see
almost all of his brothers squashed into his car. He was suddenly reminded of
trips they’d taken as a family in their beat-up minivan. They’d never made it
out of Texas, but there’d been plenty to keep them occupied in the Lone Star State.
The youngest, Juan, was eighteen now and had graduated high school, so Ethan
guessed they really were all grown men even if he’d always see them as his
obnoxious—and dear to him—little brothers.

“Keep
your head down, Arturo,” Juan said, shoving the back of Arturo’s head to force
his face into Raul’s thigh. “Or we’ll get pulled over.”

“Can’t.
Breathe.” Arturo slapped the window as he sought oxygen.

“Where
are we going?” Ethan asked as he started the car and shifted into reverse.

“Gwen’s
house.”

“Gwen?
Trey’s mom?” But his mother had spoken to Gwen for less than two minutes after
Reagan had fled the wedding in Vegas. And they were suddenly besties and
planning family get-togethers?

“Yes.
The address is—” Mamá pulled a piece of paper out of her purse. “Seven oh—”

“I
know the address. I thought we were going to find Reagan.”

Mamá
smiled and squeezed his knee. “We are.”

Ethan
shook his head and pulled into the flow of traffic. None of this made any
sense.

Reagan
pulled her gaze from the scenic palm trees outside her car window and glared at
her father. The man was driving her nuts. “No one is going to
destroy
grandma’s cello,” she insisted for the fifth time.

“You
left the man at the altar, tiger,” Dad said. “He’s bound to want to hurt you as
much as you hurt him. He knows how much that cello means to you.”

“Which
is why he would never, ever damage it.”

Her
life had become one disaster after another since she’d walked out of her own
wedding. And she knew she deserved the bad karma that had descended upon her.
When she’d arrived at the airport two days ago—her only thought to escape back
home to Little Rock—all the flights were full until the following day, so
they’d gotten temporary lodging near the airport to wait for their flight.
She’d left her purse, her phone, her identification, her money, her credit
cards—everything—at the chapel when she’d rushed off, so she had no way to call
and her fucking dad wouldn’t allow her to talk to anyone, somehow thinking
isolation was the best policy until she got her shit together. Which maybe it
was, but now she was regretting telling him anything—everything—because once
again he was determined to rule her life.

She
was pretty sure all those phone calls Dad had been getting and not answering were
actually Ethan and Trey trying to reach her. Reagan wasn’t sure if she was
ready to talk to either of them—she couldn’t think up a big enough apology for
what she’d done—but being in contact with them should be her decision, not her
father’s. The only call he’d actually answered had been from her mother. Reagan
didn’t have to hear his soft-spoken greeting of
Robin
to know it was
her. She simply had to witness the doe-eyed look on her father’s face to figure
out who he was talking to. Reagan had been so disgusted by his stupidity—how
could he even speak to that home-wrecking bitch?—that she’d gone for a walk to try
to sort through the disaster she’d made of her life. When she’d returned, he’d
been on the phone with the local police, certain she’d been kidnapped by
crackheads.

Yesterday,
happy to put the day from hell behind her at last, they’d headed to the airport
for their flight to Little Rock. Turns out, security wouldn’t let her on a
plane without identification—
duh
—and she wasn’t sure who had her purse,
so they’d searched Vegas for signs of familiar faces for an entire day. No
luck. Then Dad had the brilliant idea of renting a car and driving to Los
Angeles to track people down. Which Reagan needed to do. After sleeping on it,
there was no longer any doubt that she needed to apologize to Trey and she
needed to hear an explanation from Ethan and she needed to explain why she’d
run off. She felt horrendous for hurting Trey. For hurting them all. She’d seen
the news stories about what the press thought was going on between the three of
them. Saw images of Ethan kissing Trey at the front of the very chapel where
she was to have married Trey. She still didn’t know why Ethan had decided to
show his face
after
she’d fled. She was so confused about how to fix the
giant mess she’d made that she couldn’t think straight. She couldn’t eat. She
couldn’t sleep. She knew she had fucked things up in a big way, but she
couldn’t come up with any way to make them right. There was no way Trey would
ever forgive her for humiliating him in front of God and everyone. As the news stories
said, maybe the two gay lovers were better off without her in the picture.

And
now Dad was on this never-ending loop about getting her cello back. Not find
her purse, her phone, her life. Nope, he was worried about the damned cello.
Being trapped in a car with him for six hours as they drove from Las Vegas to
Los Angeles had been an exercise in pure torture. The man drove so slowly, she
was pretty sure a turtle could run laps around the rental car.

“Take
the next exit,” she said when they finally got to the familiar area near her
apartment.

“I
know where to go,” he said, zooming—or rather idling—past the exit.

“Dad,
you missed it.” She wanted to get home. She prayed that one of the guys was
there, because her house keys had also been in her purse. Running off with
nothing but the wedding gown on her back had gone much worse than she could
have ever anticipated. Hell, her dad had bought her an “I love Las Vegas”
T-shirt and a pair of pajama shorts in the airport gift shop so she’d have
something to wear other than the cumbersome white satin dress that had once
symbolized her commitment to Trey but now only reminded her that she was a
truly awful coward. If she’d been brave enough to reveal the truth from the
beginning, instead of trying to live a lie, she could be sorting things out
with the men she loved instead of floundering here alone. Well, as alone as she
could be with her father breathing down her neck.

“Where
are we going?” she asked when he took an exit a few miles down the road.

“To
get back what belongs to you,” he said.

Reagan
crossed her arms and shook her head. “And you know where to find it?”

“I
know exactly where it is.”

“How?”

“A
little bird told me.”

Reagan
looked out the window to take her mind off strangling her father and was
surprised to find they were in the hedge-and-wall-lined residential streets of
Beverly Hills. The man was hopelessly lost—obviously—but she knew he was too
damned stubborn to admit it. He was following directions on his cellphone, so
she suspected he had googled addresses of the stars like some ridiculous
tourist. Gah! He drove her crazy.

When
they turned onto a familiar street, her heart skipped a beat. Maybe her dad knew
more than she realized.

“Is
Trey at his parents’ house?” She sat up straighter in her seat as Dad pulled
into an overcrowded driveway. One of the cars belonged to Ethan. The others
belonged to . . . she didn’t care. She was unfastening her
seat belt before the car had come to a complete stop. Dad caught her arm before
she darted out of the car.

“Don’t
forget your wedding dress,” he said. “It’s in the trunk.”

“What?”

“Can
you just listen to your old man without arguing for once in your adult life?”

“I
need to talk to Ethan and Trey.”

“Get
the damned dress, Reagan.”

She’d
never heard her father swear. Not ever. And he only called her Reagan when she
was about to get scolded, so she had no choice but to grab the huge black trash
bag that her wadded-up dress had been shoved into.

Dad
linked his arm through hers and made her walk up the driveway when every
instinct told her to run. Not
away from
this time. But toward.

Dad
rang the doorbell.

“Dad,
tell me why we’re here. Why do I need my wedding gown?”

“You
can’t get married without a wedding gown, tiger.” He stroked her hair as he
used to do when she was a little girl, and planted a wet kiss on her forehead.

“I
told you I can’t marry Trey when I love Ethan as much.”

The
door opened, and Gwen’s face brightened with a wide smile. She was wearing a
free-flowing pink dress and had matching flowers woven into a braid that coiled
at the back of her head. “There you are. I was going to be upset if you broke
my son’s heart twice in one week.”

“Is
Trey here?” Reagan stood on tiptoe to peer into the house. The entire foyer was
filled with familiar faces.

“He
is.”

“And
Ethan?”

“Naturally.”

“Can
I see them?”

“Everyone
knows it’s bad luck for a bride to see her grooms before the ceremony.”

“Grooms?”
Was she hearing things?

“Reagan!”
Toni called as she separated herself from the crowd. “I have your purse. You
left it at the chapel Saturday.”

“Thank
you,” Reagan said, opening her purse and pulling out her phone. The battery was
dead. Damn, she couldn’t call Trey or Ethan and ask them what the fuck was
going on. She needed to see them immediately.

“Where’s
your dress?” Toni asked.

Reagan
shoved the trash bag into Toni’s arms and brushed past Gwen to enter the house.
“Trey?” she called over the din of multiple conversations. “Ethan?”

“You’ll
see them soon,” Gwen said, slipping an arm around her waist and corralling her
to a guest room off to one side of the foyer.

“Why
won’t anyone tell me what’s going on?” she shouted.

“Your
father didn’t tell you why you’re here?” Gwen asked, pulling Reagan’s crumpled
gown from the trash bag and laying it across the bed.

Reagan’s
eyes filled with tears. No, he hadn’t told her, but she’d figured it out. “I’m
sorry, Mrs. Mills, but I can’t marry your son. Not at the expense of Ethan’s
feelings.”

“But
you’d agree to marry them both, wouldn’t you?” Gwen asked. “And for them to
marry each other?”

Reagan
blinked at her. It was a lovely idea, but the government
still
had a say
in who could marry who, even if gay marriage was legal in many states. “I would
jump at the opportunity. But there’s a law—”

“Fuck
the law,” Dare said from the doorway. “Is she about ready? The grooms are
getting antsy.”

“Get
out!” Toni said, throwing a pillow at Dare’s face. “She could have been naked
in here.”

“But
isn’t,” he said, his gaze meeting Reagan’s. “Could you hurry things along, sis?
You know I can’t stand it when my brother is upset. If you don’t get moving,
I’m going to strip you naked and stuff you into that dress myself.”

“Darren
Edward Lunar Mills! You behave yourself,” Gwen said.

“I
must be in trouble,” Dare said, winking at Reagan. “She used
both
my
middle names.”

Reagan
was in a trance—thoughts racing, palms sweating, ears ringing—as Toni and Gwen
helped her put on her worse-for-wear wedding gown. “We can’t get married,” she
muttered. “It’s not legal.”

Gwen
forced Reagan to sit on the edge of the bed and squatted down so that they were
eye to eye. “Does it matter that it’s not legal? Really? Or is it more
important that the people close to you are allowed to acknowledge the love you
share with Trey and with Ethan and that they have for each other? Don’t you
want to openly celebrate all that love with us today?”

Reagan
took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

Gwen
squeezed her hand. “If you’d rather call it a commitment ceremony or a love
fest, that’s fine. But Rosa has her heart set on a wedding.”

“Rosa’s
here?”

“Everyone
is here. So do you want to make this thing with my son and Ethan legit? At
least in the eyes of everyone who matters?”

Reagan
stared fixedly at the closed door above Gwen’s head. “Why bother asking a
question you already know the answer to?”

Gwen
stroked a lock of hair behind Reagan’s ear. “Because I want you to admit that I’m
brilliant for throwing this thing together in two days.”

Reagan
laughed. “Are you the one who convinced my father it was a good idea?”

“Not
directly, no. But I did get that ball rolling.”

She
scooted off the bed and hugged Gwen, feeling blessed to have this woman in her
life. Between Rosa and Gwen, she was no longer without a mother. She had two of
them.

“Should
we do something with your hair?” Toni asked, examining Reagan’s bed-head as if
it was a puzzle worth solving.

“I
don’t want to keep my soon-to-be-husbands waiting another second,” Reagan said.
She rushed to the door, tossed it open, and stopped in her tracks in front of
the woman blocking her way. It was like looking in the mirror—if a mirror was
capable of aging her twenty-five years. “Mom?” she croaked.

“Someone
told me my very own daughter was marrying a rock star. I couldn’t miss that,
now could I?”

Reagan
was too happy to be angry at her mother for showing up whenever she felt like
it and too used to being deserted by the woman to have any hope that she’d
stick around for long. She gave her a quick hug and said, “We’ll catch up
later.” Much later.