My whole life, I’ve been the loyal one. The dependable one. The guy who picks up the phone at midnight, who shows up with tools when your sink breaks or bourbon when your heart does. Charlie Pruitt. The solid one. The one who holds it all together.
I’ve been the foundation. For Magnolia. For Sutton. For Lee. For everyone else in our circle. Even when it felt like I was barely hanging on myself.
And somehow, within one night, Tally had turned me from the golden retriever best friend everyone could count on into the guy in the corner, snarling and snapping, unsure how to clean up a mess for the first time in my life. She didn’t just rattle me. She’d looked straight through me and saw something I didn’t want seen.
She saw the asshole underneath.
And I hated that. Hated how it made me feel like I wasn’t as unreadable as I thought. Like perhaps the armor I’d spent a decade welding around myself wasn’t as bulletproof as I needed it to be.
Because if she could see the mess behind the curtain after knowing me for all of two minutes… how long until everyone else did, too?
I was the guy who held everything together.
But standing there, elbow-deep in dish soap, thinking about the flash of her eyes and that defiant curl of her mouth…
I couldn’t shake the feeling that maybeIwas the one coming apart.
***
Back in the studio, I tried to work. Opened my sketchpad. Stared at a blank page.
I kept thinking about last night—her lying on that table, barely conscious, and the worry that shot through me even though I didn’t know her. And then today, when I actually got the chance to talk to her, I’d been a complete ass.
I glanced down at my forearm—the linework I’d finished last month, tributes to mentors I’d lost and the people I loved. I wondered if she’d noticed the ink last night. The way her eyes had flickered over my arms before she went down.
The sketchpad dropped to the coffee table. I grabbed my beer and took a long pull.
I’d spent my whole life being the foundation—for Magnolia, for everyone. Solid. Steady. Dependable.
So why did one night with a stranger make me feel like I was the one coming apart?
Chapter Eight
TALLY
Iwashalfwaythroughalist of things I needed. So far, it included exactly one item: “The will to live.” Not super helpful, but at least I was setting the bar low.
My camera bag sat open beside me, holding the essentials. A couple of flashes, two charged batteries, a wide-angle lens, and my 50mm prime—which, despite everything, I still called my favorite like it was a person. But the rest of my gear? Light stands, tripod, reflectors, editing setup—all of that was still in Brooklyn. Along with any real intention of making this a job again. Even if, once upon a time, it had been the dream.
I leaned back on the ridiculously plush couch. One of those expensive, designer monstrosities that felt more like a cloud than furniture and definitely did not need a crusty poodle turning circles on it. I let out a breath so long and shaky it felt like my bones deflated right along with it.
I’d been taking pictures for as long as I could remember. My camera hung around my neck like armor, steadying me when nothing else did. It made me feel real. Seen. Like I had purpose, even if I wasn’t the one being captured.
In high school, I was president of the photography club and worked on the yearbook. Entered every contest I could find, from the ones printed in the back of glossy magazines to the dusty state fairgrounds where judges smelled like menthols and funnel cake. I built a portfolio full of ribbon-winners, the kind of work teachers said would take me far.
And they were right. I got into some of the best photography programs in New York. Full scholarship. A golden ticket.
But I didn’t go.
I’d been waiting for Doyle to graduate so we could move together, the two of us taking on the city we’d imagined in endless conversations and late-night dreams. When the time came, my admissions had expired, but I didn’t bother to reapply. My brother and I had finally made it to New York together, and we could conjure up a new dream—a different one we could hold onto together.
And when that didn’t work, and Doyle eventually found his own path lit by the embers of a love I’d never known, I set off on my own, chasing a meaningful life the way other people chased love. Weddings in Tuscany, street food in Bangkok, fireworks over Tokyo—proof I could build a life through my lens.
And then, in Australia, I met a boy with salt in his hair and a laugh that made me forget what I was running from. We fell fast, burned bright, and when he eventually left, because they alwaysdo, I told myself it was just another picture that didn’t develop. That’s how it always went—catching love, never keeping it.
It had been a little over two weeks since I’d landed in Savannah, and I was already unraveling. Unsettled. Embarrassed. Exhausted—not only from the pregnancy, but from that deeper level of tired that settles in your chest and makes everything feel too loud, too bright, too much. The what-have-I-done sort of tired.
The kind that comes from trusting the wrong person. Again. From mistaking chemistry for connection and ending up with a nine-month reminder. The fallout? All mine to bear alone.
