Tilly smiled as she listened to all the little things Cody did that made him perfect. The breakfasts in bed. The constant checking on her. The hard work to make the house everything Harper had always dreamed.
“That’s amazing, Harper,” Tilly said after listening to her friend for a solid twenty minutes while drinking way too much rum. She was already almost finished with her second cocktail and feeling the effects. “Like really amazing. You deserve all the good things.”
“Thank you. I feel so lucky to have him and be here. Maybe that’s why a part of me has this reckless trust in you and Kayden.”
“Really? We’re back to Kayden?”
“I just want you to be happy. I mean, you could always just text him and ask him how he’s been.”
“Why would I do that?”
Her friend lifted a shoulder. “It’s like an olive branch for the friendship.”
“Kayden and I have never been friends.” She finished off her second drink.
“Finished! Time for more cocktails.”
Tilly shook her head. “No, Harper, I think—”
“This is for me too, Tilly. And I need some rum punch!”
Before Tilly could stop her, Harper was grabbing the empty glasses and moving back behind the bar.
Her gaze shifted to her phone on the table. Would it hurt to text him? Shedidmiss him. God, she missed him so much. And he’d been so sweet for the last week…
She lifted her phone and clicked into his name, her fingers hovering over the keys.
She shouldn’t, right? It would be crazy after what he’d assumed of her and the things he’d said. She was about to set the phone down when a text came through.
Kayden: I miss you.
“How was Avery tonight?”
Kayden gave his cell one more glance before looking up. He sat on Eastern’s couch as his brother carried a beer over to him from the kitchen. He’d just gotten home and changed out of his sheriff’s uniform.
“Same as usual, amazing,” Kayden said, taking the beer from his brother. “You have a good kid.”
Eastern sat opposite him. “She is, isn’t she? God, I love her.” He looked down the hall like he wanted to go into her room and wake her up.
“You heard from her mother recently?” Kayden asked.
A muscle tightened in Eastern’s jaw. “She called last week. Said she’s met someone. That she still doesn’t know when she’ll be back.”
Anger roared through Kayden’s veins on behalf of his brother. That the woman could just up and leave her daughter like it was the easiest thing in the world. Some people would give anything for a kid like Avery.
“Does Avery ask about her?”
“That’s the thing. She doesn’t. She asks about Sadie more.”
Sadie was her former nanny and also Mrs. Sandler’s granddaughter. She’d left town right around the time Kayden had returned home because her fiancé had gotten a job in Atlanta.
Kayden glanced down at his phone screen before looking back at his brother. “Maybe she’ll come back and visit.”
“I hope so. I didn’t know her well, I just knewofher. I think in recent years, she’d looked after Avery a bit less though…probably Jamie’s way of hiding this drinking problem she’d developed.”
Kayden’s back teeth ground together. Another thing that had come out once Eastern got home. Avery’s mother had been drinking far too much on a daily basis, to the point where Avery was being sent to school in dirty clothes and without lunch. If Kayden had known, if the woman had let him have access to his niece, he would have done something about it. He and Cody both.
Eastern’s fingers tightened around his beer. “Every so often, Avery will mention something about the last year, and each incident makes me angrier.”
