She didn’t move right away, and the air between us tightened with her disappointment.
“That’s okay,” she said eventually. “Who wants to have a sleepover with their baby sister anyway?”
I looked down at her and smiled, even though I knew it didn’t quite reach my eyes.
“Me,” I said. “Always.”
***
It was past midnight when I stepped outside. Savannah was quiet—the kind of hush that only settled in on holidays, when everyone was inside with full bellies of Christmas dinner and wine, and the city exhaled for once.
I walked.
No destination in mind but burdened with the need to move. My breath fogged in front of me, and the fairy lights strung between gas lamps made the brick sidewalks shine. I passed Lafayette Square, then Monterey. At Whitefield, I slowed.
The gazebo stood in the center, familiar and still. I stepped inside and sat down on the bench, stretching my arms across the back of it, letting the cold bite into my fingers.
This was the part I didn’t know how to do.
I could build furniture out of scraps. Rewire the lighting at O’Malley’s with one trip to Lowe’s and a twelve-pack. I could keep Magnolia afloat through a broken heart and a collapsing business. I could survive hell and come back smiling.
But love? Love was different. There wasn’t a tool for that. No blueprint. No instruction manual. Only the risk of putting your heart in someone else’s hands and praying they wouldn’t drop it. And I had no idea how to hand mine to Tally without losing her in the process.
I didn’t want to scare her. Didn’t want to put one more weight on her shoulders when she already had enough to carry. I didn’t want to reach for it too soon and ruin what we’d found—this rare, slow-burn thing we’d built between bickering and bourbon and her throwing up on my shoes.
But I loved her.
God, I loved her.
I loved her laugh, and her messy curls, and the way she still said y’all even when she was pretending to be too sophisticated for this place—the part of her stint in New York still so ingrained in her soul. I loved how hard she tried to act unaffected when I walked into a room. How she softened when she didn’t think anyone was looking. How she lit up when she looked at Nancy Reagan, or the baby on the ultrasound.
She didn’t see herself clearly. But I did. And I didn’t know how to hand her that truth without making her run.
I sat there a while longer, breathing in the cold and listening to the sound of the city settling into bed. Somewhere off in the distance, a church bell rang.
I stood and shoved my hands into my coat pockets. My boots scuffed the floorboards as I left.
As always, I had shit to do.
***
Back at the studio, I opened the door and was met with the smell of cedar and sawdust, along with the faintest trace of her perfume—citrusy and floral, but not overpowering. My chest ached.
The piece for Magnolia was already wrapped and leaning against the wall. Lee was coming by in a few hours, and if I thought I could muster it, I’d get a few hours of sleep.
But first, I sat down on the loveseat where she’d once curled up and fallen asleep. The very spot where she had spent hours sitting there, watching me, figuring me out in a way no one else had ever bothered to. Where she told me all of her stories, and I listened with all the intensity of someone hearing their favorite song for the first time. I ran a hand down my face and exhaled.
I didn’t know what tomorrow would bring.
But I knew one thing for sure—Tally River Aden had gotten under my skin. Into my blood. She’d worked her way into the softest, most guarded parts of me. And the truth was, I’d already fallen. Harder than I planned.
It scared the hell out of me, because I’d seen what happened when people mistook the rush of new love for something unbreakable. Magnolia and Dane had started with fireworks, too, and now the fallout was simmering right in front of me. Tally had her own history of crashes, the kind that left you wary of anything that felt too good to be real.
And here I was, standing on that same edge, wondering if saying out loud what sat between us would make it real—or send her running.
Because wanting her wasn’t the problem. It was deciding if I could have her without losing everything else.
Chapter Thirty-Five
