With the sounds of the breeze and the tide lapping the shore, we couldn’t make out what was being said as he spoke, but his expression filled with emotion as he stood there, grasping her hands. I’d known Lucas practically my whole life. I’d seen him look at things that made him happy, things and people he loved, but none held a torch to how he looked at Callie Bennett.
And as I watched him pour his heart out to her down on that beach—and look damn near elated to do it—I found myself once again wondering whatthatwould be like, to look at somebody with the amount of affection and adoration he looked at her with. Totrustsomeone that much.
I couldn’t fathom willingly andhappilyplacing your heart in someone else’s hands, giving them all the power to break you, but somehow knowing they never would. It was a wild concept for me to grasp onto.
I could see the moment Callie realized what was happening, and a breathy chuckle came from my left. I glanced over to see Morgan, her eyes glistening with unshed tears as she watched the moment unfold.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Lucas move,dropping to one knee…but I didn’t take my eyes off Morgan. For reasons I didn’t know, Icouldn’t.
And then she looked at me. In the sunlight, her amber eyes looked like glittering pools of honey, and I found myself momentarily lost in them. Something undecipherable passed between us as we held each other’s gazes, and I felt my chest tighten with it, but it vanished as quickly as it came when she looked away.
It was only when I heard the sound of a squeal that I finally snapped from my daze and looked away from Morgan, realizing I’d missed Lucas’s and Callie’s moment entirely. Callie was now kneeling in the sand with him, their arms wrapped around each other, and I could see something sparkle on her hand when it caught the sunlight just right.
Lucas lifted a hand from her back and beckoned us over. Morgan was the first out of the pathway, followed by Gabe, holding his phone so Blake could see.
I let out a breath, wondering what the hell that obscure moment between me and Morgan was. Before I could think too much of it, I shook my head and brushed it off as I followed behind them.
Chapter 30
Ashbourne Hall wasone of the most historic residences in the High Battery on Charleston’s peninsula and was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. It was nearly ten thousand square feet of architectural perfection.
It was also Lucas’s grandfather’s home, where Lucas’s and Callie’s engagement party was currently being held.
The party was thrown only a month after they got engaged, but that was Lucas’s call and with Callie’s full blessing. He wanted Blake to be able to attend, so he made sure the party took place during his pre-deployment block leave. He didn’t care if it was deemeduncouthin his world for being last minute as long as his best friend—and one of his groomsmen—could attend. And his grandpa was so elated that Callie was making an honest man out of his grandson that he didn’t give a damn about what anyone else thought. Emmett Ashbourne was quite the character, and when it came to Callie, I was pretty sure he favored her over his own flesh and blood.
“I still can’t get over this place,” I said, looking at the view of the harbor from the rooftop deck.
“It’s definitely something,” Blake agreed as he leaned against the railing beside Gabe.
“Did you guys come here a lot with Luke when you were kids?”
“Yeah. Luke spent so much damn time here, and Gramps always invited me and Wes to come along.”
“Ya know what else I noticed?” I chuckled as I looked down from the rooftop into the privately walled garden and gestured to where Lucas’s grandpa was surrounded by a group of men and women his age. “They all have that posh southern accent.”
“That’s the old southern money accent,” Blake said, doing his best impression of it.
As we continued to people-watch from our place on the rooftop, I spotted Wes walking along the grounds toward the house alongside Lucas, Callie, and some guy I didn’t recognize as they talked. My eyes didn’t leave him until he disappeared inside.
Something about this thing between me and Wes seemed a little different lately. If I had to pinpoint when the shift happened, I’d say it was about a month ago, right around the time we witnessed the proposal. We were still our usual selves with our bickering and sabotaging. We still had our secret deal to use one another for release—although, we’d scrapped the no sleepover rule because we figured we already broke it and realized that sometimes it was easier just to stay the night. But it was those moments together that felt different.
Every look, every touch, every kiss…it all seemed to be charged with an unfamiliar air of intimacy that had never been there between us before.
I chalked it up to the fact that Wes and I weren’t the same people we were a little more than a year ago when we made that deal. I think it was safe to say that we’d both grown and looked at one another differently now, without the layer of utter disdain and loathing that was there before. And we had this secret, one that no one else knew. It was just ours. And that gave us this sort of bond that I don’t think either of us anticipated when going into it. Those moments felt more intimate because we were closer.
Wes and I…we werefriends, but only behind closed doors when it was just the two of us in our own little fucked up secret world.
“Enjoying yourselves?”
I turned at the sound of Callie’s voice, seeing her approach me, Gabe, and Blake. “Yes,” we answered in unison.
“I still can’t get over this house,” I said.
Callie chuckled. “Well, you’ve always been a bit of an architectural history nerd.”
“I resent the ‘nerd’ part of that statement.” I peeked over her shoulder to where Lucas and Wes were talking to some guy. “Who’s that?”
“Corbin Blackwood.”
