Up by Five (28 page)

“And you’re pissed at me?” Conner asked Ryan.

“Not pissed, just…” Ryan blew out a breath. “Yeah, okay, a little. You think you’re the big hero, you think you keep everyone happy and fix everything, but you don’t always. The girls pull themselves and each other through a lot.”

Conner felt the sharp twist in his gut move up to his heart. He pushed himself to his feet. “Fuck you, Kaye.”

Ryan grabbed his arm. “You need to hear it so you don’t—”

Conner yanked his arm away. “So I don’t what? Think I’m a good brother? Think I’m actually making a fucking difference?”

“So you don’t fuck it up with Gabby.”

Conner grabbed his helmet and stomped toward the bench. “Yeah, well, Gabby doesn’t have any big issues.” Or so she kept saying. “She’s totally capable and independent. She doesn’t need a damned thing that I can’t deliver. I can just focus on keeping her happy.” If she ever came back to his apartment and let him.

“Don’t be a dumbass,” Shane said, following. “Everyone needs someone sometime.”

“You gonna start singing too?” Conner asked, swiping up a bottle of water.

“Don’t let her convince you she’s always fine,” Ryan said.

Conner took a huge drink then turned to face his friends. “What’s that mean?”

Ryan looked at Nate and Conner scowled. What the fuck?

“Just that I think Gabby…” Ryan sighed. “Gabby thinks she is fine. She tries really hard to be fine. Maybe because there aren’t a lot of people who will be there if she’s not fine. Or maybe she’s like your sisters. She doesn’t want the people she cares about to
fail
to help her because
they’ll
feel bad.”

The frustration and worry and anger—at himself and everyone else—welled up and he grabbed Ryan by the front of his jersey. “What the fuck are you talking about? You know something about Gabby that I need to know?”

Ryan scowled and shoved him. “Knock it off. You’re not pissed at me.”

Conner shoved Ryan back for good measure, but his friend was right. “What do I need to know about all of this?”

“With Gabby?” Ryan asked.

“And the girls.”

“You need to know that you don’t have to have all the answers. You don’t have to fix everything. Just be there. They will still love you and come to you, even if you can’t solve
every
problem. Being there and loving them when things are bad is more important than struggling to keep everything good all the time. Anyone can love them when things are good. It takes
real
love to love them when things aren’t good.”

Conner felt like Ryan had shoved him again and knocked him on his ass. Had he really been afraid that the girls wouldn’t
love
him if he couldn’t solve their problems? Or that if he said he didn’t have an answer or botched something they’d stop coming to him?

Yeah. He really had been afraid of that.

Conner blinked at Ryan stupidly as the realization sank in.

He hadn’t been able to fix Ashley’s problems and she hadn’t loved him.

Whether or not that made sense, or if the two things were even actually related, he’d never know. But in that moment he did know that he’d subconsciously believed they were connected for a long time.

And with Gabby? Yeah, he wanted to slay her dragons and defeat her enemies. Yeah, he wanted her gazing up at him adoringly.

But she wasn’t the gazing type. She’d said so herself. So if she wanted to slay her own dragons? He still wanted to be there. To watch, to cheer her on, to maybe nurse the burns and cuts she’d probably get in the process. Definitely to hold her afterward if the slaying didn’t go so well.

But she didn’t want him there. She wasn’t telling him about her dragon problem. Just like his sisters had been keeping their battles—the big ones anyway—away from him.

It had happened just as he’d subconsciously feared—he hadn’t been able to solve everything, so they’d stopped coming to him.

Gabby hadn’t even
started
coming to him.

Conner threw his water bottle down. “You know what? Screw it. I’ve been there for my sisters for fifteen years. Willing to do anything, anytime. I wasn’t perfect, but I tried. And they still kept stuff from me, they still figured it out for themselves and found other people to help them. So maybe Gabby does have problems, maybe she does need people. Maybe it’s just not me.” He jammed his helmet back on his head. “Let’s go play football. I think it’s time for someone else to spend some time on his ass.”

And if anyone thought it was strange that their quarterback made most of the tackles for the rest of practice, they didn’t say anything.

Being a girl was so much
work
.

Gabby stood in front of Sierra’s closet and closed her eyes, blocking the sight of the dresses and skirts Sierra had told her to help herself to.

There were too many choices. Some were too fancy, some were too casual, some were too sexy, some weren’t sexy enough. She felt like frickin’ Goldilocks, but she had yet to find something she’d label as just right.

Then there were the colors—black, red, white, blue, green, silver.

And then there was the fact that she never played poker dressed like this. Jeans with bling on the back pockets were about as dressy as she got and even that was very rare. Her typical attire was shorts and a T-shirt.

She definitely never had to worry about walking in heels at a poker game.

What if that threw off her game? What if the dress’s tight fit was distracting? What if she was constantly worried about the front dipping too low and showing more than she intended?

She couldn’t do this.

Gabby turned away from the closet and headed for the kitchen. And the RumChata she’d brought.

Even before Sierra had told her that she wouldn’t be home for a couple of hours but to help herself to anything in her closet or makeup drawer, Gabby had known she’d be drinking.

She could do girlie. But a girl’s night out or a friend’s wedding or something was not the same thing. Then she could look nice, but she wasn’t the center of attention.

The poker game was different. Ricky Donovan was expecting the sexy, fun-loving girl from the Facebook photo. The girl Gabby was maybe ten percent of the time. If that. She was also going to be the only woman sitting at a poker table. Michael had confirmed that fact when Ricky had tweeted the names of the final players.

So, yeah, there would be a few eyes on her.

She really didn’t need this extra pressure.

She needed to concentrate and play well. Worrying about, and being pissed at, her brother was already messing with her mojo, along with the fact that Conner had wanted to push things and been clearly frustrated that Gabby was at Sierra’s tonight.

She knew he’d wanted to talk, but she’d been honest when she said she couldn’t handle that right now on top of what was going on with Josh and this poker game. It wasn’t fair to Conner to have a deep talk about their feelings and relationship when her mind wasn’t all there. She’d so wanted to tell him all about this—the game, Ricky’s stupid crush, the pressure to get the money back for him and her parents, her urge to punch her brother in the face. But none of this was Conner’s problem.

She’d done one of the things that drove him crazy about girls—she’d filled his guest bathroom with
girl stuff
. Though most of it was in her bag now and she’d apparently convinced him that girl stuff could be tolerated, after all, with her little speech the other night. But she was trying to avoid doing the other two things that made him crazy.

She didn’t want to be one of the girls who brought drama to his life—and her family was full of drama. She also didn’t want to be one of the girls who got her feelings hurt easily. So she was keeping the poker game a secret. She’d also hightailed it out of the apartment before he could see that she was a little hurt that he hadn’t tried to hug or kiss her and hadn’t said “I love you” as she was leaving.

Yes, those three words had complicated things immensely. No, she hadn’t been giving off hug-and-kiss-me vibes. He still should have grabbed her and laid a big, hot, sweet kiss on her. She could have definitely used that. An “I love you, Gabby” as she was leaving would have been nice.

But she’d been trying to discourage the I-love-you thinking. And the kissing would have just muddled things.

She sighed. She hated feeling confused and second-guessing herself.

Falling in love kind of sucked.

With a full glass of RumChata and root beer—okay, a little more liquor than root beer—she headed for the living room. She was going to watch a movie and relax before she tried to figure the closet out again.

Never mind the makeup. That had never been her strong suit.

Maybe Sierra would be home by then.

She’d just settled onto the couch when the doorbell rang.

Dammit.

She took a swig of her drink and paused the movie on a big-screen shot of Ryan Reynolds before heading for the door.

The moment she pulled it open, she had to resist the urge to slam it shut.

Emma, Isabelle and Olivia Dixon stood on Sierra’s front step.

“We’re here to help.”

Oh crap.

“Ladies,” she greeted, trying to keep calm. “What are you doing here?”

“Okay, we know they shouldn’t have,” Emma said, stepping into the house without invitation.

Gabby barely got out of the way as the girls swept in, each carrying several hangers and bags.

“But the guys filled us in on what’s going on,” Emma finished as she deposited her supplies on Sierra’s dining room table.

“The guys?”

“Ryan, Nate, Shane and Cody.”

Oh
crap
.

“Look, girls, I know that this is a lot to ask, but you can’t tell Conner anything—”

Isabelle laughed. “Don’t worry. We have a lot of experience in keeping things from Conner.”

Gabby took a deep breath. “Okay.” Then she frowned. “So what are you doing here?”

“Helping you,” Isabelle said.

“Helping me what?”

“Get ready for tonight,” Olivia said.

“You are?” She looked from one girl to the next and the next.

“It’s poker, right? Poker’s all about who can keep their cool the best,” Emma said with a big grin.

“You’re going to help me keep my cool?” Gabby asked.

“Better,” Emma said. “We’re going to help you keep them from being cool.”

Oh boy. “What do you mean?”

“They’re all guys, right?” Olivia asked.

“The other players? Yeah.”

“Then it’s gonna be easy,” Isabelle said, holding up a short red dress.

Oh.

Gabby looked at Conner’s sisters. She’d been around long enough to know that if these girls set their minds to something—especially their collective mind—there was very little anyone could do to stop them.

So she was their new project.

It wasn’t a horrible idea.

Letting these girls dress her up would certainly cut down on her frustration—and RumChata consumption.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

“That no matter how great you are at poker, it’s a good idea to use every asset that you have,” Olivia said. “Your smarts, your confidence—”

“Your boobs,” Emma inserted.

Isabelle shrugged. “Well, yeah. Kind of. Remind them constantly that you’re a woman,” she said. “And that they all have chivalrous tendencies, deep down. If you’re one of the guys, they’ll try to beat you. But if you make it impossible to forget that you’re a woman, they might take it easy.”

“I don’t need them to take it easy,” Gabby protested.

Emma met her eyes. “Maybe not. But in this game you need to use any advantage. Whatever it takes.”

“Whatever it takes,” Gabby repeated. Emma was right. This wasn’t like playing with her family. She had to swallow her pride here.

“I’m not saying play dumb,” Emma went on. “But you need to tone down the kick-ass girl stuff.”

Gabby looked at her in surprise. “Kick-ass girl stuff?”

Olivia laughed. “Gabby, you pull people out of mashed-up cars, you see people bleeding and dying and you stop it, you’re going to medical school, you handle a whole family of guys, you can fix your car’s transmission—” she paused and said seriously, “—you’ve turned Conner inside out. You’re definitely kick-ass.”

Gabby didn’t know what to say to that. She was trying to process that Conner had apparently been talking about her—to his sisters or Cody and the guys or both—but she was too hung up on Olivia’s words about her turning Conner inside out. She liked that. A lot.

“I agree,” Isabelle said, having evidently considered her sister’s words. “You are kick-ass and if you walk into the game like that, it’s going to put up all their defenses. These guys are egomaniacs, they love to show off. You can’t make them look bad. You have to let them make themselves look bad.”

These girls were definitely completely filled in on what was going on tonight. Gabby didn’t know what to think about that. But she looked at them, their eyes and smiles bright—their clothes and hair perfect—and decided she wasn’t stupid enough to send them away.

“Okay, how do I do that?”

Emma held up a tiny hot-pink dress. “Distract them.”

They were debating about if she should wear her hair up or down when there was another knock on the door.

Grateful for a moment to escape talk of twists and braids, Gabby headed for the front.

She knew it was stupid to hope it was pizza, considering no one had ordered pizza, but a pizza would be really awesome right now.

She pulled the door open to yet another crowd of people.

“We have the best news,” Michael Sullivan announced with a big grin.

She stared at him. He was holding hands with the young girl next to him, presumably his girlfriend, Shannon. Nate and Shane and Cody were behind them.

“Does the news involve pizza?” she asked.

Michael looked behind him, then back to Gabby. “You want pizza?”

“In my experience, pizza helps with a lot of things.”

“We can do that.” Shane pulled his cell phone out.

“But we have news about poker too,” Michael said.

Gabby sighed. If she never heard the word
poker
again, it would be fine with her. She stepped back to let them all in.