Wasted Time (The Steel City #1)

29. Declan

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

declan

I shift awkwardly on my feet, pulling my hat down lower on my head.

Normally, I’d wait in the car. Normally, you could not pay me to step foot inside of this building. Standing around an airport in Pittsburgh while being a player on their professional hockey team is my modern-day nightmare. But there is another, bigger nightmare that I have to tend to.

I have angered The Oracle.

I am way too anxious to wait in the car. I think I'm already trying to grovel.

Seth hasn’t spoken a word to me since our call. I texted him, but he chose not to respond. I really wish people would stop doing that to me. I can’t even be sure that he actually boarded his plane, but he had insisted he’d see me at ten in the morning on Monday, so here I am.

I even debated buying a bouquet of flowers to greet them, like we are some long-distance couple on the fritz. I realized that idea was stupid almost the second after the thought entered my head, but I’m still standing here like an idiot—with a box of cookies, instead.

Seth doesn’t even like cookies, but Avery does.

I have no idea what I’m trying to do here.

I check my phone for the hundredth time. No texts. No updates.

I regret not being the type of friends that share their location with each other. I would bet my last dollar that Avery and Penny are the ‘share their location’ kinds of friends.We should all start doing that to spare each other this kind of raging anxiety. I’d like to know if he even made it to the airport or if I’m wasting my time.

Maybe they aren’t coming.

I sigh, scratching my jaw as I check the ‘Big Dogs’ chat. Silence, apart from a video Wyatt sent at one in the morning of a little kid with some deadly hands doing stick drills on a homemade rink.

I glance upward at the perfect time.

Seth and Avery stick out from the crowd thanks to Avery’s neon pink suitcase. They’re both staring directly at me. A few others glance my way amid the hoard of people exiting their flight, but I avoid their eyes. The longer I maintain eye contact, the quicker recognition happens. I would prefer nobody recognize me today.

Avery smiles warmly, right in my direction. She lifts her free hand and waves.

A bit of fear dwindles away. She doesn’t look like she wants to rip my dick off. That’s a good sign.

My eyes flicker to Seth and the fear springs right back to life.

His stare has weight—expressionless, a little muscle in his square jaw ticking. His grip tightens on his bag, like the mere sight of my face makes him viscerally angry. Seth isn’t a violent person. He’s the least confrontational of the lot of us. If he punches me, he’s furious. If that’s how he needs to settle this, I’ll just stand here and take it.

Avery picks up her pace on those tiny little legs, leaving Seth in the dust behind her. She reaches me long before he does, abandoning her suitcase and throwing her arms around me.

She’s so little that I have to bend down to hug her properly.

All of my instincts are screaming at me that this is wrong. This, right here. This hug, that smile on her face. It feels like a trap. She’s weaving a web that she plans to catch me in, so that she can eat me alive.

My gaze shifts upward. Seth comes to a slow stop behind his fiancé with his bag hiked onto his shoulder. He takes Avery’s abandoned suitcase with one hand and pulls it to his side. He makes no move toward me, not even an inch.

We’re huggers and he isn’t hugging me.

He offers one, brisk shake of the head and I understand what it means at once.

Damn.

As Avery pulls away, brown eyes bright and excited, all the guilt that I’ve carried since that phone call comes back with a vengeance.

Seth didn’t tell her.

“Hey,” I say quietly, smiling down at her.

Avery’s smile falters for a moment, her head angling slightly at the tone of my voice.

“Are you alright?”

I nod, managing a shrug. “I just don’t like airports.”

I pass her the box cookies and her face lights up like I just gave her a million dollars and a vanilla latte on a platter made of gold. It makes me think of cinnamon buns. It makes me remember the girl with stormy blue eyes who would sell her whole family for a good batch with extra icing.

Please, stop thinking, Declan.

“Too famous?” Seth grumbles. It’s the first thing he says, and it hits me like a smack to the neck.

Our eyes meet, and I open my mouth to apologize because it’s the only thing I can think of to make this better.

He steps forward before I can say a word, holding out his hand.

My gaze flickers down to it. I can’t gauge if this means that I have been forgiven or if this is just part of the act to keep Avery unphased. I have a feeling it’s the latter.

I smack my hand in his and pull him forward.

Okay, we’re hugging. This feels kind of normal.

“We can talk about it later,” he mumbles, so only I can hear. Avery is too enamored with her cookies to catch it and honestly, she’s a little too low to the ground.

I dip my chin in a nod.

Avery gaze glides to her fiancé, brows tugging together in the middle. She smells that something is off. We’re not exactly being ourselves, and to protect my own life, I have to distract her from that.

I force a wide smile and reach forward to pinch one of her cheeks.

She warms, swatting at my hand. Her grip tightens on the cookies, like I’ll pinch one of those next.

I take her suitcase from Seth’s hand and try to keep my expression neutral. There’s a storm cloud hanging above our heads. I can feel it. I think we’re both just hoping that Avery steers clear of noticing its presence until we can deal with it ourselves. She'll turn the cloud into a full-on hurricane if she realizes who is sitting in the eye of the storm.

The car ride back to my condo is uneventful. Avery willingly jumps into the back seat, leaving Seth and I to co-exist in the front.

Normally, I’d appreciate it, but I wish Avery was my co-pilot today. Avery doesn’t look like she wants to murder me.

I try not to steal glances at him, but it’s hard. I can’t gauge how he’s feeling, and I have no idea what he wants to say to me. There will come a time during these few days where he will have to say it and I’ll have to take it. Until then, it’s awkward tension and unbearable discomfort.

I really hate arguing with my best friend. It’s easy with Forker. He’s new. We get over things fast and easily. Seth and I have history. Our fights hurt.

Thankfully, Avery is full of energy this morning. She makes us stop for coffee, which I don’t mind, and then talks about all the stuff she wants to do on this trip. Shopping, dinners, Target—the whole works. She mentions how excited she is to watch the game this week more than once, which heals my wounds a bit. I love when my friends are in the stands.

The conversation is either her and I talking, or her and Seth. Miraculously, she doesn’t seem to notice the disconnect.

“Penny was going to come with us. Did Seth tell you?” Avery says suddenly, out of literally nowhere.

My foot slips on the break and we jerk forward in the line of traffic.

Seth’s eyes are burning a hole into the side of my face. He grips the handle of the door to steady himself. I can’t look at him, so I just stare straight ahead, my knuckles going white on the steering wheel.

“Oh, yeah?” I mutter.

“Yeah,” Avery continues, not noticing the impact of that name in this car. “She hasn’t been feeling very well for the last couple of days. She thought it was best if she just stayed home. It’s a shame, though. I thought you two could finally get over whatever is going on and talk.”

I swallow, propping my elbow against the window and leaning my chin on the heel of my hand. I risk a look beside me. Seth’s dark eyes are locked on my face.

Shit.

“Is she okay?” I ask, clearing my throat.

“Came down with something Friday night,” Seth answers, his tone emotionless. “Out of nowhere. It was just her and I at home. She got a bit nauseous, and it got worse from there. She figured steering clear of people and staying home was the best move.”

I clench my teeth together, forcing a long breath out of my nose. Thankfully, the traffic begins to move again, and I have an excuse to focus on driving instead of on anyone in this car.

I got the message. Loud and clear.

Seth told Penny everything . He and Penny decided, for Avery’s sake, not to tell her and ruin her trip. They probably did that for my sake, too—because there was no way this visit would have been enjoyable if Avery had known any part of what I said.

No, I would be getting a verbal beat-down right now.

“It’s unfortunate,” Avery sighs from the back seat. My eyes flicker to her in the rearview mirror. She’s staring out of the window, her latte at her lips. “I think she really needed it.”

Guilt tugs at my heart, but I quickly smother it away.

No.

I am not responsible for that. Penny could easily reach out and put this to bed. She isn’t stupid. She knows that I have no real restraint when it comes to my friends—when it comes to her.

Why can’t anyone fucking see that the things she does hurts me, too? They don’t have to know that we slept together, or that I can’t stop thinking about it. Her cutting me out should be enough. I screwed up. Fine. I tried to patch it up before I left. I tried everything.

I can be damaged by her actions just as badly as she can by my words.

I wanted to wake up with her that morning. I wanted to kiss her skin and whisper things she hadn’t heard in years into her ear, and—no . That isn’t even the worst part. I texted, I called, and I answered . Without fail. Every time.

She left, she ignored me, and she let me worry. Without fail. Every time.

It is not my fault that Penny needed this trip. It’s not my fault she’s not here, either. It’s Penny’s fault. Even after my call with Seth, she could have picked up the phone and tried to have a conversation.

Lord knows I have no self-control. It would take one, whispered apology through the phone and she’d be in my back seat right now, sipping a hazelnut latte while I tried my hardest to stop staring at her through the rearview mirror.

A part of me wants to remind Avery that I am still blocked from Penny’s socials. I want to tell her that Penny was moaning my name just weeks ago, and that she forgot about me just as quickly. I want to make it very, very clear that I picked up that phone when she had called me crying and that she left me sick to my stomach. Not the other way around.

But there is no point. I could say she stabbed me in the eye with a steak knife, and Avery would remind me that I should have been nicer. I could tell her that Penny punched me in the mouth, and she’d ask what I did to deserve it.

Where Avery is concerned, she would die defending Penny—even if it killed her. Penny would do the same for her. It’s a loyalty that goes both ways.

Still, it sours my mood.

“Do you want to go out for dinner tonight or stay in?” Seth asks.

I let out a breath, relief pouring through me. I glance at him, my gratitude clear on my face. He only dips his chin, forcing his eyes back to the road.

“In, please ,” Avery pipes up from the back seat. “I’m exhausted.”

I resist the urge to remind her it’s only ten in the morning. That girl loves her sleep.

“There’s this new Thai place that opened down the road from my building that does takeout. Ave, you’ll die for it.”

Her eyes brighten. She sits up straighter in her seat. “Douse me in peanut sauce. I’m in.”

“Sound good?” I ask, glancing beside me.

Seth nods, refusing to look at me. “Yup.”