The Unexpected Everything (58 page)

“Well,” Clark said, after a pause. When he looked up at me, he was smiling, both dimples flashing. “I think that would certainly change things.”

I smiled and felt tears spring to my eyes. “Oh,” I said, my voice coming out wobbly, and I could feel that I was torn between laughing and crying and on the verge of both. “That's really good to hear.”

Clark smiled at me, and from his expression, I could see that he was feeling pretty much the same way.

And then Clark was stepping out from behind his podium and walking toward me, and I was running toward him and into his arms, and Clark was picking me up, and I wrapped my legs around his waist and we kissed, and it was like I was blocking out the commotion all around us, the people yelling and talking and laughing and trying to figure out what was happening, and
the bookstore lady clapping her hands and trying to get control of the situation.

“Hi,” I murmured when we stopped to breathe and Clark set me down to the ground on legs that felt wobbly.

“Hi,” he said, running his hand over my hair and cupping my face in his hands. “I missed you.”

“Me too,” I whispered. I knew that this couldn't last—that there were people waiting and he had things to do and this couldn't go on forever. But in that moment it was like everything else faded away and there was only me and Clark and the possibility of us—whatever we might become—stretching forward in a hundred different directions, all of them unexpected, each one better than the last, the ending not yet written. And with this thought in mind, and Clark's hands in my hair, I stretched up to kiss him once again.

J
ack looked around at them—the five who would be accompanying him on this journey. “Are we met?” he asked, dreading the answer.
These
were the comrades-in-arms who would help him avenge his sister's death and find the message he knew for certain Tamsin had left behind in the castle for him? This collection of rogues and misfits?

He looked at them one by one, realizing as he did that most of them weren't even paying attention, despite the fact that he was (technically) now the king. There was Lord Thomas, who was sulking on a nearby stump, still in the player's costume he'd been wearing when the king's guards had pulled him out of the performance. “I had a matinee today,” he said petulantly, shaking his head. “I've been rehearsing for
weeks
. My accent's finally perfect. But I suppose you don't care about that?”

Next to him were the ladies Sabrine and Hannah, who were, as usual, laughing together at something the rest of them weren't included in. He knew he needed them—Lady Sabrine was the best tracker he'd ever encountered, able to pick out the spot where a deer paused for a second and changed direction. And Lady Hannah had a way with horses that was unmatched. But that didn't mean he wanted to feel like they were giggling about him behind his back, like they'd been doing since he was a boy of fifteen.

Leaning up against a tree, not paying attention to any of this, and certainly not the looks Lady Hannah was sending him, was Sir Wylen, who was, as usual, strumming the lute he seemed to carry with him everywhere.

“
No
,” a voice at his side said, dripping with disgust. He turned and saw Lady Andrea, who had insisted for the past week she was coming along, until he'd finally stopped arguing. “I'm not coming unless you get him to stop playing that thing. I cannot abide it. I'll break it up myself and use it for kindling.”

Jack felt himself smile, and prayed he wasn't blushing, or he knew he'd never hear the end of it from Sabrine and Hannah. But he couldn't help it—he'd been in love with her from the moment he'd seen her,
when she'd stormed into his court and demanded to know what idiot claimed to be running the kingdom.

Rather than risk her seeing him blush, Jack knelt down to rub the ears of Bernie, the huge dog that seemed to follow her everywhere and which he had a suspicion was actually part wolf. “I'll leave that to you,” he said, backing away slightly when the dog bared inch-long fangs at him. “I think you can handle it.”

“We're going to have to be careful,” Lady Sabrine said, as she stood and pulled Lady Hannah up, ignoring Wylen, who'd reached out his hand to help her. “I've heard rumors that the assassin Margery is unaccounted for. And for a prize such as you, my lord, I doubt she'd have to settle for the lowest bidder.”

“Who?” Wylen asked, frowning.

“I have an idea!” Thomas said, standing up as well and clapping his hands together. “What if we leave
later
tonight? Then I can get the evening performance in, and—”

“No,” Hannah and Sabrine said in unison.

“It'll be dark soon,” Lady Andrea said, sheathing her dagger and taking a step toward the woods, dog at her heels. “We should get started.”

Jack took a breath, then let it out as he looked west, toward Haverhall, where they would journey. “Well, then,” he said, looking around at the assembled group. “Let's begin.”

—C. B. McCallister, “The Coin of the Realm.” Hightower & Jax, New York.

Advance reader's copy. Not for review or quotation.

I took a sip of my latte and looked across the table at Flask's. I'd switched to hot lattes at the end of September, when it officially got too cold for iced drinks, and now that we were getting close to Halloween, the leaves outside the coffee shop window had all turned color and started to cover the ground. “How are you not done yet?” I asked, shaking my head.

Toby glanced up from where she was currently doctoring her caramel pumpkin latte with sugar packets and cinnamon sprinkles, as she had been doing for, I was pretty sure, the last twenty minutes.

“You can't rush these things,” she said, dropping in a very precise amount of sugar, giving it a stir, tasting it, then nodding and looking back at me. “Perfect. What were we talking about?”

“I don't know. It was ten years ago, and I've forgotten.” I looked automatically to the chair next to Toby—the one that was sitting empty. This was when Bri would have chimed in, defending Toby or making a joke. But silence just fell between us, and we both took a sip of our drinks in unison.

“So,” she said, before the pause could grow uncomfortable. “How's it going with the DMV thing?”

“You mean DVM?”

“Sure,” Toby said with a wave of her hand. “If you say so.”

I smiled. I was pretty sure Toby actually knew what it was called and was just doing this to tease me. But there was a chance that she was actually still getting used to it—the change had taken me by surprise as well. In the last month I had switched my focus from premed to veterinary medicine. Now, whenever my dad and I went through my college options, narrowing down where to apply, we were focusing solely on schools that had good veterinary programs. I wasn't sure if the idea had taken root during the night of Bertie and the chocolate, but by the end of the summer, I'd come to my decision. Maya was thrilled.

Even though I was no longer working full-time, I was still doing weekend walks for Maya and Dave. Folding a dog into my regular routine seemed like good practice for the winter. Because now my dad and I were spending far too much time on pet rescue websites, either when he was here or video chatting when he was in D.C., arguing about what kind we wanted to adopt when he was out of Congress and home in January. One thing that seemed to be clear was that the dog was going to be named Duke. Every time we talked about our potential puppy, that's what my dad called it, and I was trying to accept that I was going to have a dog with John Wayne's nickname.

“It's good,” I said, before Toby could ask me if I would be the person who took people's license pictures—I'd heard all these jokes from her before. “How's the track team?”

Toby groaned, but good-naturedly. “It's killing me,” she said. “These people are maniacs. And did I tell you that we have practices on Saturdays? Like, in the mornings?”

I smiled as I took a sip of my drink. “You may have mentioned it.”

She shook her head and started going off about how weekends were for
rest
, not running, but I had a feeling it was mostly just Toby being Toby. She'd joined the track team right after school started and seemed to eat lunch most days at the track table, laughing with her new group of friends, wearing a ribbon in her hair on the meet days. Palmer and I had gone to one, holding up the signs she had made, but that was before we'd realized just how long they could take. “Anyway,” she said with an exaggerated sigh when she'd finished complaining. “We have a meet next Saturday. You know, if you're free.”

I pulled out my phone, scrolling through the social media apps that were now mine to do with as I pleased, until I got to my calendar. “I'm in D.C. next weekend,” I said, dropping my phone back in my bag. “My dad's giving a speech and he asked me to be there.”

I shrugged as I said it, and Toby made a face, but the truth was, I didn't mind at all. Seeing my dad return to work, safe in his lame-duck status, had been beyond fun to watch. He'd returned to the House, kicking butt and taking names, determined to use his last few months in office to the best of his ability, no longer pulling any punches or having to say things he didn't mean. As a result, he'd told me last weekend over pizza, he was getting more done than he ever had before. When his term ended in January, he was already set up with a job at the Stanwich Public Defender's Office. Until then, though, he tried to be home whenever he could, and was shooting down the rumors that he was going to run for governor.

It wasn't like it had come out of nowhere—my dad's speech at Erikson's event, coupled with the media narrative about being cleared of wrongdoing
and
leaving at a political high point to spend time with his family, had made him the star of a few news cycles. It was around then that the sitting governor of Connecticut had called him in for a meeting. He wasn't planning to run for another term, which—coupled with news of their meeting—had sent the rumor mill into overdrive. But my dad was denying them all for the moment. He'd promised me he wouldn't consider doing anything until I was at college, and I was very relieved he wouldn't be uprooting my life to Hartford anytime soon.

“So,” Toby said, when the conversation had started to wind down and we'd both finished our lattes. Toby had been folding and refolding her empty sugar packet for the last few minutes, and I knew she was getting up the nerve to ask the question. “How is she?”

Our coffees and lunches usually ended like this, with the reminder that things were not as they had been. When Toby and I met once a week, for the hours we were hanging out, I could almost let myself forget that things had changed, pretend that maybe Bri and Palmer were just running late or something. But we always came back to reality at the end.

“She's good,” I said carefully, searching Toby's expression, wondering if maybe this was the moment that she'd say she wanted things to go back to how they were, or ask me to reach out to Bri for her, anything.

But Toby just gave me a half smile and pushed the sugar packet away. “I'm glad.”

Toby and Bri didn't speak for several weeks after Toby walked off the bus in New Jersey. And even Bri and Wyatt breaking up when he went back to school didn't change this, even though Palmer and I had hoped it might. Bri, Palmer, and I had tried our best to adjust to our three-person group—four, if you included Tom, who always got offended when he was left out. Things between Bri and Toby had gotten better since school started—they'd chat in the hallways occasionally—but they weren't Bri-and-Toby any longer. “Do you think,” I started, then reconsidered my words. “I mean, maybe you two . . .”

Toby raised an eyebrow at me. “You were there on the bus, right? You saw the meltdown?” She shook her head. “I know I went a little crazy.”

“Well, I had kidnapped you and forced you onto a campaign bus.”

A smile flitted across her face and then disappeared. “I know I shouldn't have said the things I did. But . . .” She shrugged. “I think maybe this hasn't been the worst thing for me and Bri.”

I was about to try and argue with this, but Toby continued. “We needed some space,” she said, her voice quiet and sure. “I needed to figure out who I was without her.” She looked away from me and folded her sugar packet again. “Without all of you guys.”

“And?” I asked. Toby and I had talked around this over the last few months, but never this directly. And now that we were addressing it head-on, I couldn't help but notice that she seemed . . . calmer, somehow. More centered, like her energy wasn't flying off in a hundred directions any longer.

“And I'm good,” Toby said firmly, looking me right in the eye. “I promise.”

“So maybe someday,” I said, hearing the hope in my voice, “you guys might be friends again.” I knew we'd probably never go back to what we'd had before. But maybe that would be okay.

“Maybe,” Toby said, giving me a smile. “I hope so,” she added a second later, in a voice so quiet I almost didn't hear her.

We said our good-byes and headed out shortly after that. I got into the Mustang, running my hand over the steering wheel for just a moment before checking the time and realizing I had to get going. There was someone I needed to meet.

I always thought about my mother a little bit more when I was driving her car, and its presence in the senior parking lot had already attracted a lot of attention—mostly from the science teachers, for some reason. But between the car and the portrait of Stabby Bob hanging in the foyer, it was like my mom was around more now. Or maybe it was just that my dad and I were talking about her more. It still wasn't easy, but it no longer felt impossible. We were finding our way through it, together.