"If you put your hands on me, I'll call the cops," Jodi warned.
That only made Billy's smile get a little bigger. "Sounds like a good time. Oh, and coming to trash your ex's event is something most people gave up after high school. Grow up, ladies, and go home."
"Some of us are tired of your stupid games, Jodi," Maisie said. "If you don't like the people of Southwind, then you should've stayed away."
"And we don't need your permission or approval to come here," someone else said.
Luke simply pointed at the door. "I will not let you terrorize our daughter, Meredith. I won't let your friends do it either." Then he made a point of sniffing at her. "Just tell me that one of you was sober enough to be driving?"
"Like you care!" Meredith huffed.
"Out!" Darnell ordered, nudging Jodi's shoulder as the three guys herded the women towards the door.
Reluctantly, they left. The guys followed them out, and the moment the door closed, everyone in the room started talking. Words like bitch and asshole were a little too prominent. I headed over to the door to make sure that the women were actually going to leave, only to see Berto and Cy coming around from opposite sides of the house. Evidently, the men were one step ahead of us. But as everyone else got the women in their car and waited until they began driving away, Cy came in the front door.
"Everything okay?" he asked, grabbing my hand.
I nodded, squeezing his fingers reassuringly. "Thank you. They didn't get the chance to do more than cause a scene, but you might want to go check on the kids. Faith sounded like she was a little upset."
Cy leaned in to brush his lips across mine. "I'll check, but I'm sure she's fine. The guys are going to wait to make sure they don't come back."
Then he turned and jogged up the stairs. I didn't think anything of it till I turned back to the room to find a few too many eyes looking at me. Only then did I realize that he'd just kissed me in front of all of them. He hadn't been shy about it, and he also hadn't made a scene, but I had a funny feeling that people had questions.
Then Ash just cleared his throat and then chuckled. "Yeah, so it's complicated…" he said. "The four of us have an arrangement that works, and it's not cheating. It's also no one else's business, but as you've just seen, some people hate us for it." Then he sighed, ducked his head, and shoved his hand through his hair. "Which really isn't what tonight is supposed to be about. I'm sorry, everybody. I didn't mean to drag my personal life into your faces."
"So is that why they say Southwind is evil?" Maisie asked.
Ash huffed something that was supposed to be a laugh. "In all honesty, I don't know. Some people are pissed because Violet won't sell our home. This is where all of us grew up. It's where a woman started out as a stranger and became a grandmother. It's where most of us got a chance to become something other than trash. Other people hate me because I happen to think that men are sexy. I like broad chests and big muscles, so sue me. They hate Violet because she's beautiful, and want to destroy Luke because he put his daughter above somebody else's business. Yes, we know they hate us, but that wasn't what tonight was supposed to be about. I honestly just wanted to talk about lingerie."
"Sorry, Ash," I told him. "I didn't mean to make a scene."
Maisie caught my eye, and then smiled. "You know, I've been trying to figure out why those guys hated you. So Paul Simmons is threatened by you, huh? I'm guessing he's the one who wants to buy your land, because he's bragged about it all over town. Has to really piss him off that someone isn't going to bend over backwards to make him happy."
"I told him I wasn't selling," I admitted. "First, he tried to make me a stupidly low offer, and then he started talking trash about my grandmother. I don't care if people say crap about me, but talking about my family is very different."
"I'm pretty convinced that Vera was a saint," Deena said. "I also don't care what Paul Simmons and his cronies think. I want to know more about lingerie, because these are the most comfortable panties I've ever worn."
Chapter Forty-Five
The girls made it out the gate and turned up the road. We all waited until their headlights disappeared from view, then the guys began to disperse. I assured them that I'd make sure they didn't come back. The truth was that I needed to cool off a little. How dare Meredith show up at my house and act that way in front of our daughter? What the fuck was she thinking?
Oh, I knew that Faith was gonna be okay. I wasn't completely convinced that her relationship with her mother would be, but Meredith would have no one to blame for that but herself. Over the last few months, my daughter had proved that she was a lot stronger than I had ever imagined. The problem was that I couldn't say the same.
Right now, I was mortified. Ash and Cy had both tried to warn me that coming out would be harder than I expected, and they were right. All night, I had been telling myself that this was fine, and that it didn't matter if the whole town knew who I slept with. Unfortunately, dealing with that should've been more than enough. Having my ex show up and make a scene? That tipped the scales just a little too far, and I really wasn't ready to show my face in the house.
So I headed down the length of the porch until I couldn't be seen through the windows, and then leaned over the banister. Yes, all of this was worth it. Violet, Cy, and Ash were worth everything, but that didn't make the embarrassment go away. I felt like I needed to practice saying that I was a bisexual man a little more, but that was bullshit. I knew how to say it. I just hadn't figured out what to do when someone was disgusted by it yet.
When a pair of headlights turned up the drive, I was still out there trying to get my head on right. The car moved slowly, and the headlights weren't the same as Jodi's car. Curious, I waited. Eventually, the vehicle got close enough that I could see it was a truck. A small truck, which was why I had initially thought it was a car. Then it turned to angle the passenger side towards the front door and stopped.
The window rolled down and a woman poked her head out. "This is Southwind, right?" she asked. "Did I miss the party?"
"Nope," I told her. "Pretty sure they're still getting warmed up in there. Just park wherever you can find a space and head on in."
Instead, the truck rocked slightly like it was put into park, and the driver side door opened. At the same time, the woman got out on the passenger side. I was just about to tell them that they couldn't stay there because it would block traffic when the driver made it out and I recognized his face.
"John?" I asked, shocked beyond belief to see my own brother.
"Go on in, honey," John told the woman, even as he made a straight line towards me. "Luke?" he asked. "Is this where you've been?"
