Sliding into the driver’s side, he fastened his seatbelt with a frustrated sigh. He didn’t look at me, but there it was—the edge. Not anger, exactly. More like a pot starting to boil.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
He started the truck, one arm slung over the seat as he backed up. His forearm brushed my neck—warm, rough, close enough to short-circuit a few brain cells. Not nausea. Not nerves. Just trouble.
The cab of the truck smelled like paint thinner and old beer—maybe pine sap or sawdust if you leaned in hard enough—and the dash was cluttered with Charlie’s brand of lived-in disorder. There was a photo taped to the vanity mirror. The five of them—Charlie, Magnolia, Lee, Sutton, and Dane—grinning in mismatched formalwear, probably from some high school dance or prom they’d stormed together.
I leaned in slightly to get a better look at the grainy photo. “Sutton looks the same.”
He glanced at the picture, then returned his eyes to the road, a tight smirk pulling at one corner of his mouth. “Probably because no one’s ever stuck around long enough to suck the life out of her.”
I didn’t laugh. Something about the way he said it felt pointed, even if it wasn’t directed at me.
We rolled over the cobblestones in silence for a moment. The truck groaned softly beneath us, the windows fogging slightly from the heat inside versus the chilled December air outside.
“Did something happen?” I asked, carefully. “With your sister? Or Lee?”
He adjusted the gear stick, flicked on his blinker even though no one was around, then shrugged. “Nothing specific. Just... everything.” His voice dropped lower. “Dane’s in Atlanta, tied up in court until after the new year. And Lee’s using the opportunity to—what? Win her back? Even though he’s got some maybe-girlfriend here who just left to go back to Nashville for the holidays that he seems to have already forgotten about.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what anyone’s doing anymore. Magnolia won’t tell me anything. Sutton’s being weird. And Lee—” he broke off with a grunt, rubbing his hand over his mouth. “I don’t know. I feel like everyone’s playing a game and I don’t get the rules.”
I listened, hands folded in my lap. I hadn’t heard him say this much in days. Maybe ever. And there was a thread of disappointment or disorientation in his voice that tugged at me.
“You’re a good friend, Charlie,” I said softly, laying my hand over his where it rested on the shift stick. I meant it as comfort, nothing more. But the contact sparked the inevitable embers flickering between us and he looked over at me, eyes shadowed and unreadable.
Then, as quickly as I’d reached for him, I pulled my hand back. I turned my face toward the window, pretending to be interested in the brick buildings rolling past us.
Chapter Twenty-Five
CHARLIE
Thewaitingroomfeltlike a test—some twisted endurance challenge designed by the ghost of a midwife with a dark sense of humor. There were too many bodies and not enough chairs, and every surface radiated a quiet, sticky tension. Somewhere behind the check-in desk, Enya hummed faintly from a speaker, clashing spectacularly with the soundtrack of small children wailing in various keys and women moaning and bouncing in their seats, teetering on the verge of giving birth at any moment.
Tally sat next to me, bolt upright, her spine so straight it looked painful. Her hands were folded over her belly, fingerstwitching every few seconds. She wasn’t breathing like a person who wanted to stay in the room.
To our left, a woman balanced two squirming babies in her lap—both red-faced and wailing, their fists thrashing. And if that wasn’t enough, she was clearly pregnant again, her belly rounding out beneath a stretched t-shirt. She bounced her knees in an endless rhythm, eyes glazed with the kind of exhaustion that no amount of sleep could fix, thumbing through her phone, probably looking for an escape route or a portal to another dimension.
Then came the toddler.
Barefoot, dressed in nothing but an oversized t-shirt and a sagging diaper, he wobbled across the carpet like a tiny drunk uncle at a wedding and zeroed in on Tally. He stopped right in front of her, looked up into her face like she was the Virgin Mary herself, and then—without warning—hacked a lung directly into her lap. Before either of us could react, his chubby fingers had latched onto a fistful of her curls with terrifying strength.
There was a cacophony of screeching—hers, then his, then mine, if I’m being honest—as we scrambled to dislodge the kid and return him to his equally horrified mother.
When it was over, Tally didn’t say anything. She stared at the exam room door, her eyes wide, mouth parted slightly, like she was seriously considering launching herself out the nearest window.
“You good?” I asked carefully, my voice low. I didn’t want to spook her more than she already was.
She didn’t look at me. Didn’t move. She kept her gaze fixed on the door, hand braced on the waiting room chair, ready to bolt.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” she whispered.
I turned her toward me, slow and careful, like defusing a bomb with zero training. My hands hovered at her elbows, waiting to see if she’d cry, snap, or both. When her eyes met mine—wideand panicked—I gave her my best version of calm, which was probably closer toplease don’t explode on me.
She recoiled like I’d flashed a knife.
“What is that face?” she hissed, like I’d somehow made it worse.
Immediately, my mouth fell back into its usual, well-worn scowl. “I’m trying to comfort you,” I muttered, though it came out more growl than whisper, like my voice didn’t know how to operate at bedside-manner volume.
