Doyle, Jordan, and Dig had me cornered—shirtless—in the kitchen, while Tally hid in the bathroom under the guise of taking a long, hot shower. At this point, she was well past the acceptable timeline of a post-coital rinse and creeping into definiteavoidanceterritory.
Not that I could blame her.
She wasn’t just hiding from her brother, her best friend, and her brother-in-law. She was hiding from me.
Because last night had changed everything.
The tension we’d been winding tighter between us for months had finally come undone, and it wasn’t the physical relief that had wrecked me—it was everything else. The way her fingers threaded into my hair like she’d been waiting her whole life to hold on. The sound of her laughing quietly in the dark when I cracked a joke that wasn’t even that funny. The way she whispered my name like a prayer, over and over until she felt that release too—more than once. Not like I was counting or anything.
I’d felt all of it. Not only through my hands but under my skin, buried deep in a place I’d tried to keep locked up. And I couldn’t stop replaying it or wondering how the hell I was supposed to go back to pretending it hadn’t happened.
“Charlie,” Doyle snapped. “It’s one thing to screw my sister in my bed. It’s another to stand there, half naked, clearly replaying it in your head, while you drift off in my damn kitchen.”
I coughed and adjusted the waistband of my pajama pants. “Sorry. Just—uh…”
Dig laughed, arms crossed over his chest like he was tryingreallyhard to appear tough. “I may come off as the Betty White of the gays here, but don’t get it twisted. I’ve been doing chorus-line squats for a month straight. I could Rockette your ass into the next ZIP code if you so much as bruise her heart.”
Jordan grumbled under his breath and busied himself pouring mimosas.
I leaned back a little and looked down at the only creature in the room not actively threatening me. “I wouldneverhurt your mother, Nance,“ I murmured to the poodle, who blinked back at me with zero faith.
“It’s not you we’re worried about,” Jordan said mildly, handing me a champagne flute. “It’s Tally. You never know when she’s gonna get that look in her eye and decide she’s done here. That she needs to run. Somewhere else. Someone else.”
Dig drained his glass and topped it off with champagne only, not a drop of juice. “Honestly, I thought she’d end up back in New York with me. We could raise the baby together, have a perfect lavender marriage, and co-parent the next Broadway prodigy. It’d befabulous.”
Doyle snorted. “I figured she’d run back to Momma by now.”
I groaned, dragging a hand down my face. “What if she stayed?”
That shut them up for exactly two seconds. And then they all laughed in unison, a joke that I wasn’t a part of rising in the kitchen and blanketing the group of us.
“Tally?” Doyle scoffed. “InSavannah? Withyou? A stable, responsible man who’s hardly ever left Savannah and has the organizational skills of an Eagle Scout?”
“Wild,” Jordan added.
“Bold,” Dig said, nodding.
I rolled my eyes at all of them. “This is why she is caught in a constant state of fight or flight, you guys. She doesn’t think anyone believes in her enough.”
I told them everything about our weeks together. The conversations we’d had, how she worked so diligently to find what she’d been searching for, and what had landed in her lap was so fucking perfect for her.
“She’s got an Excel spreadsheet and everything. She’s fucking smart. And fucking determined. You all should stop making her the damn punch line of every single joke.”
“The thing is, Charlie,” Doyle started, voice locked low and gaze on mine. “It’s not funny,” Doyle said, his voice low. “Not when we’ve seen her come up with grand ideas and then… poof.” He made a little explosion with his hands.
I was about to fire back when I caught movement from the corner of my eye.
A flash of hair and a shadow disappearing down the hall.
Chapter Thirty-Four
CHARLIE
“Yougotlaid.Holyshit.Yougot laid," Lee whispered conspiratorially the next morning as we helped Magnolia set up for Christmas Eve brunch.
I was exhausted—half from staying up all night finishing the piece for Magnolia, the other half from not sleeping at all once I moved back into my studio. It wasn’t her fault, or, hell, maybe it was. But I couldn’t shut my brain off. I kept replaying that night, over and over. Her soft, beautiful face. The way she looked at me when I touched her, the sounds I knew I’d be able to drag out of her, given the chance. The way she whispered my name in the dark like a prayer.
Now, Lee was grinning at me with the smug satisfaction of a man whoknew.
