June leaned in, said something low in her ear, and Noelle threw her head back laughing. Full, uninhibited. The kind of laugh that took up space. The kind that said:I’m safe here.
“Looks good on her,” Rhett said from beside me, flipping a burger without looking.
I didn’t have to ask what he meant.
“Yeah,” I said. “It really does.”
He nodded and handed me a bun. I slid a burger patty onto it, grabbed a paper plate with one hand and a beer with the other, and made my way toward Shane and Holden, who were now chatting with Ivy and Ash. Holden was very seriously describing his last stint in Guatemala to Ivy, who only half-listened, and Shane rolled his eyes toward me when I came close.
“Bored already?” I asked under my breath.
Shane sighed. “I’m afraid your only available brother has his head so far up his own ass that he couldn’t possibly be interested in someone else’s.”
Holden didn’t even hear him.
I laughed. “Hey…Whit’s available.”
Shane’s eyes found Whit, who was leaning against the kitchen counter, listening to Delilah tell him a story like he’d never heard anything more interesting.
“No, he’s not.”
Shane took a sip of his drink, surveying the whole crew—my family, our friends, all the folks in town who had loved us and supported us and seen us through curses and angels and demons.
Then he cleared his throat. “I talked to Willow and June,” he said. “Timeline seems to be pretty quick with your family.”
I frowned. “Meaning…?”
“When you fall, you fall hard. You propose fast. You don’t blink.”
I gulped down my beer, palms suddenly sweaty. “Are you the one I gotta ask for permission?”
He cocked his head at me, squinting. “How much do you know about Noelle?”
“Not a lot,” I admitted. “Just what she’s shared—and my impression is that a lot of it is public.”
Shane nodded. “Right…okay. Well—yeah, I would be the one you ask for permission, mostly because she doesn’t have any family left. Raised by her grandma, who died…brother died, of course, that’s public. And I’ve never seen her stay with someone for more than a few months; she burns fast and burns out.”
That made my stomach churn, condensation on the beer bottle sliding over my knuckles and making me afraid I’d drop it. No…I hadn’t thought about that.
I hadn’t considered, in all the times Noelle asked me if I was some kind of player, that maybe she was the one who would get bored. Would she lose interest now that we were official?
If I told her I loved her?
If I married her…would she disappear on me one day?
“Hey,” Shane was saying, snapping his fingers in my face. “You still with me?”
No, I was fucking spiraling. I plastered a smile on my face, nodding. “Yeah…yeah, I gotcha.”
“I don’t feel like you’re understanding me.”
I shrugged one shoulder, trying desperately to play casual. “I get it, she’s not one for serious?—”
“—which is why I think you’re it,” Shane finished for me.
I blinked. “What?”
Shane didn’t smile. Just lifted his cup and took another slow drink, eyes scanning the yard.
