She laughed and leaned against me, nudging my shoulder until I finally lifted my arm to allow her to burrow into my side. She shimmied in with a sigh. “Much better.”
This casual affection from her had taken some getting used to—my brothers weren’t exactly touchy-feely, and my sister would just as soon wrap her hands around our throats as she would her arms around us for a hug—but after years of friendship, I’d grown to expect it from Everly.
Grown to crave it, too.
“I mean, I’m grateful Aunt Shirley gave me this place when she died,” Everly said, “but it’s not exactly in tip-top shape, you know? I don’t need anything fancy, but I draw the line at doing my own dishes.” She balanced her salad on her lap before pulling out her phone and navigating to her messages.
I glanced down at the screen and saw a text thread at the top from someone named Sebastian. The preview read,See you tomorrow.
Every muscle in my body tightened. Who the fuck was Sebastian, why the fuck did he have her number, and what the fuck was he doing with her tomorrow?
“What’re you doing?” I asked, but I couldn’t keep the bark out of my tone.
She raised a brow but didn’t look in my direction. “I know, no cell phones during the movies. Sorry, sorry. But I’ll forget if I don’t send Ford a text right now. I just want to see if he has time this week to—”
I reached over, snatched the phone from her hands, and slid it into my pocket.
“Hey!” She huffed, elbowing me in the side, so I grabbed that, too, and pulled her even closer, caging her against me. “I was almost done.”
“Don’t bother. Addison’s been keeping him pretty busy at the resort.” Not exactly a lie, considering our baby sister was a dictator when it came to bossing her brothers around. “But I’ll swing by your place and see what I can do.”
Correction—I’d take care of it, whatever it was, and she wouldn’t have to worry about it at all.
She rested her hand on my chest as she shot me her thousand-watt smile, and something tugged low in my gut. A tug I batted away easily since I’d been doing so for two years. Everly wasn’t interested in a relationship, and she’d said as much when she’d broken up with that tool she’d been dating when she’d first moved here.
Besides that, I couldn’t go there with her. I didn’t make friends easily—or at all—and other than my family, Everly was it for me. I refused to screw that up. Not when I had a one hundred percent fail rate for every past relationship I’d ever had, dating all the way back to Jackie Henderson in the sixth grade.
Everly was too important to me to take a chance on something that would, without a doubt, crash and burn.
CHAPTERTWO
EVERLY
Movingto Starlight Cove hadn’t been in my five-year plan. Or my ten-year plan. Or my life plan, period, actually. While I’d spent every summer break of my childhood here with my aunt—Starlight Cove’s own Dr. Doolittle—being her shadow as she cared for every animal within seventy-five miles, uprooting my entire life to a tiny dot on the map three thousand miles away from home hadn’t been on my radar.
But then she’d died two years ago—not unexpectedly, thanks to a CT scan that had showed cancer almost three years before she’d passed—and bequeathed me her home and attached vet clinic—completely unexpectedly, thanks to the fact that I technically wasn’t even a Bowman. Aunt Shirley had been my dad’s only sibling and hadn’t had any children of her own, but still…I hadn’t expected this. None of us had.
Yes, I’d studied veterinary medicine, and it’d been my plan to become a vet since I was ten years old and had witnessed my first calf birth right here in Starlight Cove. And yes, Aunt Shirley had taken me under her wing and shown me the ropes before I’d even realized this was what I wanted to do with my life. But the fact of the matter was, I was a Bowman in name only. Even though my younger brother had zero interest in caring for animals and preferred to spend his time with numbers,hewas a Bowman by blood.
That I was adopted had never been a secret. Neither had the fact that my infertile—or so they thought—parents had miraculously conceived my baby brother just a few months after adopting me. I was their angel, and he was their miracle—that was what they always said. They’d never once made me feel like an outsider, despite our differences as apparent as a billboard. Being the only short, blue-eyed redhead in a family of people the tall, dark, and handsome moniker was based on led to a whole lot of mailman jokes that I hadn’t made heads or tails of when I was younger but had sunk in, nonetheless.
My family may not ever have tried to make me feel like an outsider, but I had that covered all on my own, and I’d spent my life overcompensating for the fact that I didn’t always feel like I belonged.
So now, despite that Starlight Cove hadn’t been in my plans, there’d been no way I’d turn my nose up at the gift my aunt could’ve given anyone else. Plus, it’d been an adventure—a sometimes rocky adventure, but an adventure, regardless. I loved meeting new people, making new friends, immersing myself in new surroundings.
And, okay, so Starlight Cove and I hadn’t quite settled into a rhythm yet. After two years, I still felt like an outsider most days—fine,everyday—but it wasn’t all bad. I’d found one safe space in this new life.
I snuggled into the warmth of Beck’s side, one of my few comforts in this town, and stared blankly at the inflatable screen showing the first movie of the double feature. As much as I tried, movies rarely held my focus—my brain was always going a million miles an hour, and nothing seemed to keep it from doing so. Not meditation, not music, not brain exercises…nada. Which meant I had to ask Beck every fifteen minutes what was going on. My grumbly bestie justlovedthat.
“Do we know who that guy is and why he’s there?” I whispered around a mouthful of Nanaimo bar as I pointed to the man in the corner of the screen.
Beck slid his eyes to me, the irritation plain on his face, even under the cloak of darkness. “Theyjustexplained who he is and why he’s there. Fuck, sunshine, you drive me crazy.”
“Can’t help it.”
“I think it’s more than that. I think you do it on purpose.”
“I do not.”
