“You okay?” Adele asked for the third time since they’d pulled into a field next to a red barn. The Hazelthorne house, according to the Berry sisters, was another mile up the road, but the Two Turtledoves event started in this grassy area near a paddock, where what seemed like a wild pack of horses waited with plaid flannel blankets draped over their backs.
“I’m fine,” Brighton said robotically. And she was. She could do this. It was just a horse, and one used to having people on its back. Granted, Gertrude, the Demon Horse of Western Michigan, had been the same. Then again, Brighton had been thirteen. Everything was scary at thirteen, and she wasn’t thirteen anymore.
She was a grown-up, dammit, complete with a dead-end dream and a lackluster love life.
She suppressed a groan and focused on the atmosphere around her, which she had to admit was idyllic. Snow covered the ground, an expanse of fields that seemed to go on forever to the east. Just ahead was the drive that curled through tall oaks and led to the house, and to her left, an evergreen forest rose up before her, snowy and verdant all at once, a tiny path carved through the middle. The air was crisp and cold, perfect for her blush-colored infinity scarf, hat, and mittened fingers, which warmed around a cup of hot apple cider.
Then there was the company, at least twenty people of different genders, races, and ethnicities gathered for the event, all of them ranging in age from midtwenties to midthirties, if Brighton had to guess.
And some of them very, very cute.
Her attention caught on a woman with brown skin and short dark hair, her hands in the pockets of her navy puffer coat, clunky Doc Martens on her feet. Their eyes met, and the woman smiled. Brighton smiled back, but then her gaze immediately slid to Lola, who was standing by Sloane, her posture ramrod straight in her tailored peacoat, somehow marred by what looked like a mud stain. Brighton shook herself inwardly, forced her eyes back to the woman in the Docs, whose wide and confident stance sent just the right kind of pheromones in Brighton’s direction.
“Hey,” Brighton said to Adele. “Do you know all of these people?”
“Most of them, yeah. Why my mother thinks Sloane and I are gonna find true love amid the people who used to make fun of our hair behind our backs and ask uswhat we were, I’m not sure.”
“God,” Brighton said. “They actually asked you that?”
Adele gave her a look. “Oh, my sweet summer child.”
Brighton winced. “I’m sorry. That’s awful.”
Adele took a sip of her cider. “That’s having a white mom and a Black dad in a small town. It wasn’t everyone, though. In fact, there are a lot of pretty decent people here. Queer people too.” She motioned toward a Black guy talking to Sloane. He had short hair with a fade and a neatly trimmed beard, a jawline that could cut glass. “That’s Wes, Sloane’s boyfriend her junior and senior years of high school and all through college. Good dude. One of the only pan kids at our school. Owns a restaurant downtown.”
“He’s cute,” Brighton said.
“He is.” Adele smiled. “Looks like he thinks the same of Charlotte.”
“What?” Brighton said, eyes snapping to Lola once again, who was now offering a smile to Wes’s outstretched hand. Lola hated shaking hands, said it was the equivalent of licking a subway turnstile in New York City, but she caved after a shoulder nudge from Sloane, showing all of her teeth as she slid her palm into Wes’s.
His smile widened.
Brighton’s stomach tightened, something that was absolutely not jealousy pulling at her insides. “What about her?” she asked Adele, nodding toward the woman in Docs.
“That’s Gemma Villanueva, Sloane’s first queer crush. She’s also my mom’s best friend’s kid, so we all sort of figured out our queerness together.”
“Sweet.”
“And swapped spit around, you know,experimenting.”
“Gross.”
Adele laughed, then nudged Brighton’s arm. “We’re all very platonic now. She’s good people. You should go for it.”
Brighton just frowned, watching Gemma laugh at somethinga person next to her said. She glanced back at Lola, who was still talking to Wes and Sloane. His body was definitely angled toward her, and she was still smiling, smiling, smiling. Fake smiling—Brighton would know Lola’s grin-and-bear-it look anywhere—but she was still interacting, never glancing in Brighton’s direction. They weren’t even twenty-four hours into their stay in Winter River, but Brighton was already exhausted from all the wondering and caring and looking she was doing.
She needed to stop.
Needed to focus on something else.
Go for it, Adele had said. There was nothing stopping her. Granted, she lived in Nashville, and Gemma—all of these people, for that matter—either lived here or was only home for the holidays, but still. Why shouldn’t she have a little fun? Why shouldn’t she spend time with someone who was hot and thought she was hot too and, you know, actuallyspoketo her? If they ended up making out and Lola just happened to hear about it, well, all the better.
Because Lola was clearly fine without Brighton Fairbrook in her life. Clearly, Brighton’s betrayal five years ago had been the best decision for both of them. Clearly, Brighton just needed to let it the hell go.
Let Lola go.
“Yeah,” Brighton said, taking in a deep gulp of cold winter air. “Maybe I will.”
