It's Always Complicated (Her Billionaires Book 4) (18 page)

“I have been friends with Laura since college and never seen her naked before other than at Jillian’s birth. I’ve seen Dylan’s naked butt once before, and—”

Joe’s eyebrows shot up. “You have?”

“At Jillian’s birth,” Josie said with great exasperation. Alex finished his beer with one long, smooth swallow and stretched backward, popping open the cooler top and reaching for another.

“Everyone was naked at a birth?” Joe’s question was completely understandable, but it set Josie off.

“Yes! Well, Dylan and Laura were.”

“Is this a thing?” he asked Darla.

“How in the ever-loving fucking hell would
I
know about a birthing trend, Joe? Do I look like someone who follows the latest way to spit an eight-pound baby out of a one-inch-diameter hole?”

Alex calmly reached back into the cooler and handed Joe another beer.

“You’d better not!” Josie shot back hotly.

Joe finished the one in his left hand, popped open the new beer, and guzzled half of it, fielding sympathetic looks from Trevor and Alex, which only made Josie angrier.

“None of you is taking this seriously!”

“Taking
what
seriously?” Alex asked. “Naked birthing trends?”

Trevor snickered. Darla bit her lips. Joe looked like a scared sloth.

“Fuck all of you.” She stood and stormed off, aiming for the bathrooms, a tiny shred of light on the horizon making it possible to see the path. It was bad enough to now have an image of Laura and her guys in raw, animal flesh form, but worse: when she’d fled and found her way back to her cabin, there had been a note.

Aunt
Cathy,
Uncle
Calvin,
Uncle
Mike and her mother were out with Alex’s mom and stepdad, having a lobster dinner somewhere in town.

Josie was freaked. The grown-ups were together (yes, she was a thirty-something adult, but she wasn’t a grown-up when the older generation was present) and her mom and Alex’s mom were bonding, and she couldn’t handle the collision of her two worlds.

And the big day was less than twenty-four hours away.

Tomorrow she would become Alex’s wife.

Sandy had assured her that everything would go off without a hitch tomorrow, almost every detail secured and fine. Alex had fired up a grill and they’d feasted on hot dogs and burgers with Darla, Trevor and Joe, who had arrived minutes after Josie’s corneas burned with the sensation of seeing That Which She Could Not Unsee.

Shaking and pissed, she found her way to the main road and marched past the bathroom, on a mission to just walk. Think. Process.

Move.

The beach called to her, her eyes drawn to the moon on the horizon, the crackle of campfires along the way catching her eye. She saw Laura’s old boss from forever ago, and his family. Madge and Ed sat at a picnic table next to a campfire, chatting away with Mike’s operations manager at the ski resort and her boyfriend.

One of Alex’s aunts waved as Josie passed, and she waved back but didn’t slow down. She needed to be alone. Away. On the ocean’s edge and consumed by nothing more than the sound of the tides working their magic on water.

Clam shells crunched beneath her feet as she reached the shore, the sand more a mixture of shell shards than the finer-grained sand she was accustomed to, on Cape Cod. A midwesterner by birth, Josie had spent the first two decades of her life completely landlocked, and still considered the ocean with a kind of primal terror and healthy respect. Tides were a strange sort of magic to her, with the power to sweep you out into nothingness and the deep abyss of infinity.

She never waded in further than her hips, and tonight she didn’t even touch the water. Just stared. The mid-August weather in Mass
achusetts
was a soupy, muggy mess, but this far north the nighttime air carried a chill. She wore a sweatshirt and jeans, but it wasn’t quite enough. Wrapping her arms around her waist, she found a
flat boulder
on the outer edge of the shore and perched there, the soles of her feet on two other flat rocks, her bones settling in for the long haul of just watching the water move toward her, as if carrying a message she would never understand, but needed to hear anyhow.

The nude image of her three friends
in flagrante
delicto
would fade, eventually, though the teasing would never go away. In both directions—she would take every opportunity in conversations to bring it up, and they would lob it right back at her. Walking in on them having sex was not the source of her emotional state right now. It was a convenient excuse. Of course, she could have done without seeing everyone’s jiggly bits, but what was done was done.

No, this restlessness, this distress, came from some other place. Some other event. Some other time. Self-aware enough to know that, Josie took in the ocean’s salty air and made it part of herself, wistful and wanting, her body cool and timeless as the water greeted her like an old friend.

“Hey.” The voice startled her, though she knew from its tone that the owner of the voice was trying very hard not to scare her. “Hey, Josie.”

Darla.

“Hey.” Darla sat next to her and handed her a windbreaker, a balled-up piece of red nylon that Josie recognized. “Alex wanted you to have this. Said it was cold.”

Josie unfurled it and slipped the hoodie over her head. It smelled like Alex, the spicy-musk mix that was his scent.

“Thanks. Is he upset?”

“Naw. He knew you needed some space. So did I. But I’m a nosy bitch and had to follow you. Alex is smarter. He’s keeping his distance.”

“I’m feeling the love Darla. So much from you. So, so much.”

Darla gave her a side hug, then licked Josie’s face.

“EWWWWWWWWWW!”

“I haven’t done that to you since we were kids.”

“I don’t miss it!”

She collapsed into giggles in spite of herself, folding in half, the chill gone, her body warming.

“It’s gonna be okay, you know. You built one hell of a great life for yourself, Josephine Elizabeth Mendham.”

The bridge of her nose began to sting, making her wince, and then the inevitable tears filled her eyes.

“Yeah?” She wanted to agree, but that tiny part of her that couldn’t quite believe she’d done it—that she’d escaped the trappings of her old life—needed assurance.

“Yeah. And you helped me build mine, too.” Darla’s voice cut in half, turning into a sob. “Fuck you for doin’ that, Josie.”

“
Fuck me
?” Josie snapped, half-laughing, half-crying, half-angry.

“Right. Fuck you for challenging me and making me believe in myself and change everything and have a better life.”

“You have a funny way of expressing gratitude.”

“And there you go. You finally accept it.”

“Accept what?”

“That I should be grateful for your help. That you helped me. That you led the way. Josie, you are one of the strongest people I know. You took yourself on a path out of a fucked-up life. You left Fucked Up Kingdom and you found your way to the Unfuck Territories. You made yourself its queen.”

“Now you’re getting weird, Darla Jo.”

“Now?
Now
I’m getting weird? I been weird since I was a little kid.” Darla made a dismissive noise and put her arm around Josie, resting her head on Josie’s shoulder. “You’re just trying to weasel out of hearing good stuff said about you.”

She was. Darla was right. Josie felt a great disturbance deep inside when she was praised. It felt like the rest of the world had an internal receptor for praise, but Josie was born without one, so the praise just rumbled around inside her, ricocheting and lost, eventually piling up with the other debris inside her that didn’t have a home.

“Why are you being so nice?” Josie asked, letting Darla lean on her. When they were kids, that’s what Darla did. Lean. At ages eleven and four, it had been comforting, two fatherless children thrust into chaos and disorder with recovering mothers, both injured in the car crash that had taken their fathers from them.

As adolescents, it had been annoying. Now? Now it was comforting again, like the tides. Eventually, everything came back around. The world turned in a circle. Sometimes it felt like it spun so fast time was a blur.

“Because you’re getting married tomorrow and you should be happy.”

“Thanks. One more thing I should be.”

“It’s not an order, Josie.”

She laughed. “I know.”

“You love him?”

“What?”

“You love Alex?”

“Of course I do.”

“No cold feet?”

“None.”

“Then what? Most people would be at that campfire, kicking back some beers and laughing and chilling. Instead, you’re staring out at the ocean in the dark, getting pissy.”

Josie waited for three waves to crash before answering.

“I don’t know.”

In the distance, behind them, Josie heard the distinct sound of feet crunching on the broken shells. Flashlight beams dotted the area. It was a good-sized group, a mix of male and female voices getting louder as they came closer.

One of the voices was Laura’s.

“Josie?” Alex called out. Darla pulled away from Josie, the absence of her body heat making Josie realize how chilly it really was.

“Yes?”

“Is that you and Darla?”

“Yes.”

“Mike isn’t with you?”

“Mike? You mean Laura’s Mike?”

“Yeah.”

“No. He’s not. Why?”

Laura came close enough for Josie to see the panic and worry etched in her face. Whatever problems Josie had inside herself paled in comparison, washed away by Laura’s clear fear.

“He’s been missing for hours.”

“Because I walked in on you guys?” Josie gasped, guilt slamming into her. “I can find him and we can talk this out—”

“No,” Laura said with a sad laugh. “No. You had nothing to do with it.”

That chill from earlier grabbed Josie again, except this time it came with an intuitive sense that something was wrong. “What happened, Laura? Why is Mike missing?”

“His parents. His parents are here.”

“What?” She knew from Laura that Mike’s parents had shunned him years ago, a rejection that cut him deep. What the hell were they doing here, today of all days?

Dylan appeared next to Laura, the flashlight in his hand blinding Josie for a second before he pointed it down, his face grim.

“It’s a long story, Josie,” he said. She looked around at the group. Dylan, Laura, Alex, Trevor, and Joe. “We’re getting people together to look for him.”

“You think he’s...gone?”

“He ran away.”

“He goes on runs a lot when he’s stressed,” she said to Laura, who nodded.

“But it’s dark. It’s Maine. And he has no phone.”

“You think something bad happened to him? Are there bears here?” she blurted.

Alex reached for her hand, using his other with a flat motion meant to indicate everyone should remain calm. “We’re just covering the basics right now. Dylan and Laura found us at our campfire. Let’s take a look and see if we can find him.”

Suddenly, Josie’s worries didn’t seem so important. She pulled Laura aside, seeing how distraught her best friend was, and tried to be gentle with her. A sense of helplessness washed over her. She couldn’t help with Mike, but she knew she could at least ease some of whatever was making Laura shake.

“What happened, Laura?” she asked softly, her arm around her friend, her voice modulated. The guys and Darla all began walking up shore, Alex giving her a pointed look, thumbing in the direction of the group. She nodded. An unspoken understanding rippled between them. He’d go with the others.

She would stay and console Laura.

“I—this is all my fault,” Laura sobbed, curling in to Josie, who gave her friend the biggest hug she could muster. The two weren’t the most affectionate of friends, so this role didn’t come naturally. In the moment, though, it felt right.

“How is it your fault that Mike disappeared?”

“I invited his parents to the wedding.”

Josie was deeply grateful that it was nighttime and Laura couldn’t see her face, because she looked like Mr. Bill.

“I knowwwwwwww,” Laura groaned. Josie must have said or done something that tipped Laura off to her intense shock.

“I’m sure you had a good reason,” Josie said, her voice tight with confusion. Whatever that reason was, it would have to be damn good.

“Mike walks around with this big hole in his life. We fill most of it, but I can see it in him. The way his parents rejected him all those years ago was disgusting. And then I got all upset because I wish my mom were here to know our kids, and it’s great having Rose and Paul as grandparents for Jilly, Aaron and Adam, but it’s not the same. And knowing there are two grandparents out there who just, well, maybe....I don’t know.” Laura’s word salad made perfect sense to Josie.

“I understand.”

“You do? Because that was one fucked up explanation, Josie,” Laura said with a sniffle and a self-deprecating laugh.

“I am fluent in Fucked Up. I think my family invented the language, Laura. It is our mother tongue.”

The two shared a long sigh and a wistful laugh.

“I sent the letter to them months ago! I mentioned the kids.
I slipped in one picture of the kids. Their faces weren’t even showing.
And they never replied. I figured they considered Mike dead to them, and tucked it away in the back of my mind. I never, ever thought they’d just show up—surprise!—and trigger this kind of drama.”

“Drama?” Josie eased back from Laura, who seemed more centered now.

“Mike ran away. Just—ran. You could tell his dad is struggling with how unconventional we are. And his mom was gushing over Jillian, who looks just like Mike.”

“Right. So Mike took off?”

Laura’s shoulders dropped half a foot with another sigh. “Yeah. Like he does when he gets upset.” She looked at Josie, the moon peeking out at the same time, her eyes shining in the light. “But we’re not at home. He doesn’t know these roads or paths. And there are animals outside of the campground. What if something happened to him?”

“I’m sure a bear would consider someone Mike’s size to be a peer, not dinner.”