God help Savannah.
Chapter Two
CHARLIE
Morninglightstreamedthroughthe tall windows of my River Street studio, catching the dust in the air and throwing gold streaks across the floorboards. I’d been up since before dawn, hands buried in the week’s haul of discarded treasures—a teak porch swing with a busted slat, a box of tarnished brass drawer pulls, a stack of vintage postcards someone had tossed behind the antique shop on Bull Street.
Other people’s junk. My livelihood. My comfort zone. The only religion that ever made sense to me.
Once the new finds were sorted into their usual pile of organized chaos, I spent the rest of the morning elbow-deep insalvaged wood and sweat. Which, in my opinion, beat dealing with whatever fresh hell Magnolia was spinning up. My sister had a way of turning everything into a melodrama, and I’d spent too many years trying to keep her from lighting it all on fire.
Figuratively. Mostly.
The rhythmic sanding of an old barstool helped drown out my thoughts, but not completely.
O’Malley’s, our family’s bar, was still standing, but barely. Magnolia had been doing everything she could to keep the place afloat since she’d inherited it after our uncle died, but it wasn’t easy, not with the financial strain or the constant pressure of trying to make ends meet. And certainly not with that look she got sometimes—the one that said she was holding it together by force, afraid she couldn’t do it on her own.
Her ex, Lee, returning to Savannah, had also stirred something in her. And if I were being honest, it had stirred something in me, too. He hadn’t been back long—long enough to throw our routines off balance, but not long enough for anyone to admit how much it mattered that he was finally home again.
Leland Wilder. Magnolia’s teenage heartbreak and my oldest friend. He was the reason I finally took that restless, half-formed part of myself that wanted to be an artist and turned it into whatever this career had become.
He was the first person who ever looked at my sketches and saw potential instead of pastime. Back when we were kids, digging through the junk piles his mom brought home from estate sales, he told me I had a rare eye. That turning trash into art wasn’t just a way to cope—it was a calling. A way out.
He’d left Savannah over ten years ago, chasing music and Grammys and the shiny new life you can only find when you leave the town you grew up in. Now he was back, acting like no time had passed and the wreckage he’d left behind had just... vanished.
It hadn’t. In fact, it had gotten a hell of a lot worse.
For the last decade, my life had been pretty damn simple: work hard, take care of the people I love, don’t let anything fall apart. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was steady. Predictable. I knew my role. I knew what was expected of me.
Since our Uncle Cole died, everything felt off—like a picture frame hanging crooked that I kept meaning to fix but never did. I kept thinking one day I’d wake up and things would feel right again. That day hadn’t come.
Magnolia’s name lit up my phone screen, cutting through the quiet.
Speaking of my crazy-ass sister.
I exhaled sharply and answered. “What’s up, Mags?”
“Am I making the right choice?” she asked, skipping the pleasantries entirely.
I paused, sanding block hovering over the chair leg. “You’re gonna have to be more specific.”
Magnolia let out an exasperated breath, and I could picture her now—pacing behind the bar at O’Malley’s, chewing on her thumbnail, pretending she wasn’t unraveling at the seams. “Dane,” she finally admitted. “All of it. The almost-engagement, the business, the way things are just… going.”
Ah. So we were there now.
I didn’t answer right away. I wasn’t sure how to.
Her boyfriend, Dane, had nearly proposed a few weeks ago—even though neither of them was remotely ready for that kind of forever—and if that hadn’t been enough to rattle her, Lee showing up out of nowhere certainly had. It got under her skin in a way I hadn’t seen in years. The hesitation in her voice was new. I didn’t like it.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, because I didn’t. “Do you love him?”
She stayed quiet on the other line for a beat. And the hesitation, however small, was enough. Because she didn’t know which “him” I was referring to—her boyfriend, or his brother who was back in town.
“You’re a real shithead sometimes, Charles Abner Pruitt.”
I smirked. “I try.”
She heaved out a tired sigh. “Maybe I’ll get some clarity today, and it will all click into place. I don’t know.”
