Layers of Us (Second Generation Book 2)

Chapter 14

EMBER

When the doorbell rang I assumed that it was the pizza delivery guy with our Sunday night ritual: Pizza, wings, and Stef was at the store to buy the wine, but when I opened the door I was surprised to see Harlow, Lyle, Jace, and Deacon.

“Um, hello?”

“Hey! You’re here.” Harlow steps right in and pulls me into a hug. The three guys follow in shortly after her, closing the door behind them.

“I am here because this is where I live.”

“I’ve been trying to call you, but you weren’t answering. We were going to see if you and Stef wanted to go out to dinner with us.”

I walked into the kitchen to grab my phone and saw that I still had it on silent from earlier today. “Oh, that explains it.” I show Harlow the phone. “Stef and I actually have this thing Sunday nights where we order dinner and drink a shit ton of wine and celebrate another wedding weekend completed.”

“Oh yeah, where is Stef?” Deacon sits up onto the barstool and then Jace sits next to him.

“We were out of wine, so she went to the store to get some.”

“Oh? I saw your car out front.”

“I know, she walked since the weather is starting to get nice again.”

“She freaking walked?” Deacon raised his voice and I was a tad bit startled. Jace put his hand on his brother’s shoulder and Deacon sat back a bit. “Sorry, I just, it’s it might be dark soon and it isn’t that safe to be out walking around, right?”

“Jesus, Deacon, where the fuck do you think we live? She’ll be fine.” Jace ribbed him a bit.

“Whatever, fuck off.”

“I guess since we’re here we should order some more pizza, yeah? Babe, call, and get more delivered.” Harlow looks up at her husband who is still looking at her like he did on their wedding day. God, they are so fucking cute.

“So as much as I love the visitors and you’re more than welcome to stay, what is going on?”

“We just needed to get off the ranch tonight, it’s….um….tense,” Jace replied.

“Oh? Things still weird at Bev and Walker’s?”

A little over a week ago, Bev and Walker’s oldest ended up coming back home. From my understanding of the situation, he left with his girlfriend after high school and they’ve been traveling around the country, just kind of bumming it. Over the last few years, his relationship with everybody has been strained. His showing up out of nowhere, with a baby no less, was shocking for everybody. Bev’s been really weird all week, even let Brielle handle a meeting with a client because she was just dealing with some things. I haven’t had a chance to meet this Miles guy yet, but I’ve certainly heard a lot of no so pleasant things about him.

“Weird isn’t even the word that I’d use to describe it.”

‘There is a lot of yelling,” Jace mentioned and Deacon nodded his head.

The front door opens and Stef comes in holding the pizza that was out for delivery. She tilts her head to the side when she sees everybody. “Well hello there guests that I didn’t expect.”

“Surprise!” I said as I motioned around the kitchen to everybody.

Deacon jumped up and took the pizza from Stef and I pulled down some wine glasses and started pouring. “You boys are just going to have to live with wine.”