Well, obviously, I’d told Claire everything. But she would keep my secrets safe to the grave. And she was only happy for us, unlike my brothers. In fact, when we finally caught up last Sunday—she’d finally made a sponge decent enough for me to try, her words, and so she’d brought it over so we could binge bad reality TV and eat ourselves into a sugar coma—she’d said she was glad Jonah had finally pulled his head out of his ass and admitted what everyone else had known all along. And by everyone, she met herself.Clearly, she’d known he loved me long before I did.
“We what?” Will demanded.
A spiraling feeling of anxiety plunged through me. Had I made this entire thing up? I knew I hadn’t. Not really. But had I put more into Jonah’s side of things than he was really feeling?
No.No, he told me he loved me. Often. That had been real.
This sudden surge of insecurity had nothing to do with Jonah or me and everything to do with this worst-case scenario of my brothers acting the only way they knew how—like jackasses.
“What, Eliza?” Will asked with his fist pounding the table. “What is it about you and Jonah that we should know?”
As he was basically shouting at me, the door opened. I expected customers to walk in now that we were officially open. And my game plan had been to throw hundred-dollar bills at them in an effort to get them to forget what they’d walked into. But it wasn’t customers. It was Jonah.
He stormed through the door like an actual superhero, hair blowing in the wind from the whooshing door, face chiseled and firm while he took in the situation.
My brothers and I clocked him at the same time. While I was flooded with relief, both of them seemed to prepare for war.
But to all of our surprise, Jonah answered their question. A question I had almost forgotten Will asked. “That we love each other. We’ve loved each other for a long time.” He walked calmly over to the table and stood directly behind me, his hands squeezing my shoulder comfortingly.
I tipped my head back to smile at him. “Hey.”
He leaned down and kissed me directly on the mouth. It wasn’t one of his sexy long and lingering kisses. But it wasn’t a peck either. “Hey,” he murmured. “You okay?”
“Now I am.”
He turned his attention back to my brothers. “I’ve loved your sister for a long time,” he told them. He looked specifically at Will. “A lot longer than you’ve known Lola.”
Will looked betrayed. “You never said anything, man. How was I supposed to know?”
“It wasn’t your business,” Jonah replied, that hard edge of steel strengthening each word. “You didn’t ask me for permission before you found your person. And I’m going to expect the same courtesy. Eliza is it for me. Start to finish, she has always been my one. It just took me longer to get my head on right.”
“You promised.” Will genuinely looked crushed. His shoulders slumped, and his face crumpled. “You promised me you wouldn’t date her.”
Jonah squeezed my shoulders tighter, a sign that he was visibly distressed. I held my breath and waited for his answer. God, I’d been here before. I knew how this ended.
And that was with Will as the winner.
Only, this time, Jonah said, “When I was a fucking kid. This is my life, Will. Are you really trying to rob me of the greatest happiness I’ve ever known?”
Now Will looked like someone had slapped him. Also, I might have looked like someone slapped me too. The greatest happiness he’d ever known?
I forgot everything else. Why I was at the bar. Why Will and Charlie were mad at me. Why I was mad at Will. Why the sky was blue, and the grass was green, and how to breathe. Because how could I recover after he threw out sentences like those? Sentences that made me rearrange my entire future to make sure there was room for Jonah in every single part of it.
“You’re serious?” Will asked in a more subdued voice.
Charlie was less subtle. “Eliza? This Eliza?”
Just as Jonah’s tension reached his breaking point, I laughed. “Stop being assholes.”
And just like that, we all let out a deep breath. I could tell Will was still hurt. And he might be for a while. But at least, for now, he seemed to accept this was happening.
Lola walked into the bar next. I was relieved for the second time that she wasn’t a customer. She noticed us huddled around the table immediately. “What’s going on?”
And that was when I took my opportunity. “Will is opening a second bar,” I announced to the room.
Ada went sheet white and backed up three steps. Charlie's jaw dropped in utter shock, and he took a stuttering step forward. “What?” he roared.
Jonah squeezed my shoulders in a totally different way that wasn’t quite as comforting. “Eliza...” It was a warning.
