“I’ve loved him since I was fourteen. Half my life.” My voice comes out smaller than I want. “Eleven years of pretending. But I guess it’s not all bad, he was gone for nine of them. Now I watch him across rooms and act like it doesn’t gut me to lie to the people I love most because the truth is a bomb I can’t figure out how to diffuse.”
The words scrape out of me before I can stop them.
“I miss my mom.” A pathetic sob bubbles up and I swallow it down like I’ve done thousands of times before.
The hot tub goes quiet. Even the jets seem to soften.
“She would've known what to do. She always knew.” I swipe at my cheek, annoyed at the tears that have no business showing up right now. “My brothers—I love them, but they're not exactly equipped for conversations about feelings. And Dad tried, but...” I shrug. “He wasdrowning too. So I just... handled things. On my own. Because that's what I do.”
“Oh, honey.” Charlie's voice is thick.
“It's fine. I'm fine. I've been fine for?—”
“If you say 'fine' one more time, I'm throwing this thermos at your head,” Charlie warns, but her eyes are damp. “And I'd have to get up, which would be a whole production, so please don't make me.”
A watery laugh slips free, easing the pressure squeezing my chest.
Holly reaches over and takes my hand under the water. “You don't have to be fine. Not with us.”
“She's right.” Eve's voice is uncharacteristically gentle. “Whatever happens with Everett, whatever you decide—you're not doing it alone. Not anymore. You've got us.”
“You're stuck with us,” Charlie adds from her throne. “Whether you marry into this chaos or not.”
“God help you,” Dixie says. Then, softer: “God help all of us.”
Something warm blooms in the lonely place inside me that’s been searching for where I belong. A place with a foundation built on something other than obligation or pity.
Somewhere, I actually fit.
Maybe—after all these years of being “one of the guys,” of swallowing my feelings because there was no one safe to share them with—I finally have women in my corner.
Women who won't let me carrythings alone.
Women who'll throw thermoses at my head if I try.
Mom would've liked them, I think. And for once, the thought doesn't just ache. It glows.
“I don't know what to do,” I admit. “He's done hiding. He basically said as much. And I'm?—”
“Terrified,” Holly finishes.
“Paralyzed,” I counter.
“Same thing.” She shrugs. “But here's the question you need to ask yourself: What scares you more? Telling your brothers the truth? Or spending the rest of your life wondering what would've happened if you'd been brave enough to try?”
I don't have an answer.
Because I've played out every version of this in my head. Every possible future, every catastrophic ending.
The one where I stay silent and watch him move on. Find someone else. Marry someone else. Have kids with someone else while I smile through their wedding and pretend I'm happy for him. Pretend my heart isn't being fed through a wood chipper every time I see him build a life I was too scared to reach for.
And the other version. The one where we try—and destroy everything. My brothers never speak to me again. Everett loses the men he chose as brothers and his business partners in one hit. We implode under the pressure, turn on each other, shatter into pieces too jagged to reassemble. Never have kids. Never have anything. The lodge dies anyway because there are no Morgans left to run it, and all that legacy, all that history, crumbles because I was selfish enough to want him.
Both futures end in rubble.
At least in one of them, I still have my brothers.
Right?
