“I take it back. You’re not a dork—you’re a menace. And you’re only encouragin’ them.”
Will snorted. “Like Nat needs any encouragement.”
“That’s true,” I said, tipping my beer bottle toward my sister. “Except I’m out of stereotypes…”
“How about the one that all musicians are selfish in bed?” Will asked.
“Ouch,” Asher said, his hand to his heart. “What’d I do to get thrown under the bus?”
“Oh! Asher, I’m sorry. I didn’t?—”
“Damn, Willowtree, you’re feisty tonight,” Finn said with a laugh.
Asher waved her off. “Nah, I’m just messin’ with you. Don’t worry about it, Will. It doesn’t pertain to me anyway.”
“That so?” I asked with a raised brow. “Because therewasthis rumor that went around in high school about you…”
“Which one was that?” Nash asked dryly. “He had a few.”
“We all did.” I laughed. “But I’m talkin’ specifically about the one that said he was a bad lay.” I glanced over at him with a brow raised, the strings of lights around the tent casting his face in harsh shadows.
“You never heard that,” Asher said, completely unbothered. As if the mere thought of such a claim were preposterous.
I had absolutely no doubt it was. For one thing, he’d proved it with a simple make-out session earlier that morning. For another thing, I’d made the whole thing up.
“I totally did! Swear,” I insisted, lying through my teeth. Thank God I was an excellent story weaver. “It was the Monday after senior prom. Stacey James wouldn’t shut up about it in the locker room. She went on and on about it—how you didn’t go down on her, how you only lasted ninety seconds, how you have a small dick…”
“You know at least one of those isn’t true,” he said under his breath, only loud enough for me to hear.
My breath caught, my nipples growing tight as images swarmed my mind all while laughs erupted around the table.
“Shit, man, you better up your game,” Finn said before sipping from his beer.
“He’s not lyin’.” Hudson shook his head. “You need to do a hell of a lot more than a minute and a half in missionary once a week if you have any hope of keepin’ a Haven girl.”
“How the hell did I get thrown to the wolves here?” Asher asked. “We proved all the other stereotypes untrue, but this random rumor from senior year is somehow accurate?”
Everyone inserted their opinions, laughing as they ribbed on one another, but it all transitioned to white noise in my head, my thoughts stuck on what Hudson had said.If you have any hope of keepin’ a Haven girl.
Except, there was nokeepingwhen it came to me.
Today felt surreal, and what was supposed to be a courthouse wedding had somehow been transformed into one that felt all too real. But I had to remember one very important thing—itwasn’t. I was only staying as long as Asher needed me to…until the custody was finalized. And then I’d be off, and Asher…wouldn’t be.
For better or for worse, he was hoping Havenbrook would be his permanent home. How he was going to make that work with his career, I had no idea. Now that the wedding was behind us, he would, no doubt, be putting all his focus on that. Even if it meant he’d be giving guitar lessons to anyone within a hundred-mile radius, I knew he’d do whatever it took to make sure he’d be able to raise his sister’s kids where she’d wanted them to grow up.
I glanced around at the faces of those I loved and felt a pang of longing for something I wasn’t even sure I’d wanted in the first place. I’d stayed away from Havenbrook all these years because it held the kind of shackles I’d spent my whole life running from. I didn’t know if it was the events of the day, the amount of alcohol coursing through my veins, or the simple fact that I’d missed my sisters more than I thought I had, but I could see now why Aubrey had chosen Havenbrook to raise a family in. Why my parents had. Why my sisters still lived there, too.
There was no denying the sense of community in this place. Of family, even with those who weren’t connected by blood. And that was something one didn’t experience everywhere in the world. Turned out, Havenbrook wasn’t as bad as I’d alwaysmade it out to be. It had changed in the years since I’d been gone.
Or maybe it wasmewho had changed and grown into someone different than the feral eighteen-year-old I’d been when I’d fled.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ASHER
It was nearingtwo in the morning by the time Nat and I got home, and even though, thanks to Gran and Caroline, we weren’t going to have an early morning wake-up call courtesy of the kids, we still had to pick them up at a reasonable time. Which meant we needed to call it a night.
The only trouble with that was, I couldn’t get Nat’s words out of my mind. Had she seriously spent the past eight years under the assumption that I was bad in bed? Normally, I wouldn’t be bothered by something like that, certainly not enough to feel the unrelenting need to redeem myself like an actual thrum in my veins. But that most definitely wasn’t the case tonight.
