“What the fuck is going on here?! Are you all on drugs! This is a real police investigation and you’re all about to be charged with interfering with an active investigation! Everyone needs tosit down and shut the fuck up!” Mustache grabbed Cash by the back of his shirt and dragged him towards one of the police cars.
My heart was pounding and I shot to my feet, unsure of what to do. I couldn’t comprehend everything. I couldn’t make sense of their words or if they really meant them. Did they really love me? Where had they been? Why had they said what we had was fake? “You don’t mean it, do you? Is this about the PR plan?”
The cop who put Cash in the backseat of their patrol car didn’t shut the door all the way before turning to assist their partner in gaining control over Jay Kong and the second he stepped away Cash was out of the car and back at my side. “Fuck the PR plan. This is real. What we have is real, Cassidy. You know that. You feel it, too. I know you do.”
“I thought it was real but you hurt me. You guys said it was fake when I needed your support the most. You left me. You didn’t try to come see me at all.”
“We came that night, Cassidy!” West struggled to his feet after having been cuffed and pushed into the grass. “We came straight here and we wanted to talk to you but Jolene threatened to castrate us.”
Aunt Jolene came up for air and glared at West. “It didn’t take you long to snitch, did it?”
“You came that night?” I turned on Aunt Jolene. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“They needed to spend a few days understanding how amazing you are. They needed to miss you and I knew if they didn’t come back to fix it, you were better off.” She smiled up at Elvis. “The good ones come back.”
“You know what?! Is anyone here pressing charges?” Mustache was fed up. He’d gone bright red and there was a vein pulsing in his forehead that screamed for a break.
“I… I don’t know.” I wrapped my arms around myself and shook my head. I couldn’t handle another let down.
“You don’t know if you’re pressing charges?”
“What? No, I’m not talking to you.” I looked at the three men I loved, all standing still, ignoring police orders, and watching me with so much hope in their eyes that I lost my ability to form words for a few seconds. They loved me.
“Go for it, honey!” Aunt Jolene had finally been peeled away from Elvis and he was currently being pushed towards a patrol car. “Hey! Where are you taking him? He didn’t do anything wrong! Elvis would never hurt anyone!”
“Elvis is dead!” One of the neighbors thought they’d get involved, it seemed.
“You’re dead if you don’t shut the hell up! Why are you even out here? Get a life! You act like you’ve never seen a brawl in someone’s yard before! You’re the worst kind of Texans!”
“Cassidy!” Cash was being taken back to the car he’d escaped. “Give us one more chance. Please!”
West appeared at my side with one of the cuffs gone. He grabbed the back of my neck and pulled me close. “You’re not going to chicken out of taking a chance on us, are you?”
“Dammit, West! Do not goad her right now!” Hayes was stomping towards us but got stopped by two cops. “Come on, y’all! Nothing happened here. No one’s pressing charges and no crimes were committed. Let us go. We’re trying to win back our girl and you’re killing us.”
“Everyone who looks like they were fighting is going in to cool off. We’re not leaving y’all out here to start another fucking fight.” Mustache grabbed West and pulled him away. “And we’rerealhappy you’re figuring out your love life because you’ve sucked in practice lately, but now’s not the time!”
“Hey! It’s been a shitty week. And those are closed practices.” West pouted back at me. “The only thing that’s going to make me feel better about how this guy just crushed my ego is if you say you’ll take a chance on us.”
Jay Kong had calmed down slightly but when he heard the practice talk he must’ve clued in on who he’d been fighting. “The Ford brothers?! I can’t wait to tell everyone I kicked all three of your asses at once!”
“Tell ‘em you gave us swirlies and atomic wedgies for all I fucking care, dickhead. You’re the size of an SUV! Of course, you kicked our asses! But this isn’t about you! It’s about that woman forgiving us.” Cash was yelling over the head of the cop trying to shove him into the car. “What do you say, sweetheart?”
Mustache looked back at me and groaned. “Just say you forgive them so we can go already. I’ve got a headache and this is pissing me off.”
I looked down at the ground but my lips gave me away. The smile stretching them wide couldn’t be hidden. The sound of my men cheering made me laugh and when I looked back up at each of them I couldn’t miss the way they looked at me with so much care. And love. I’d never been looked at the way they were looking at me and I was glad for the first time that Cole had never loved me. Nothing I’d ever had or felt with Cole could compare to the feeling of them staring at me with their hearts on their sleeves.
“I forgive you.” Before I could gather the courage to tell them that I loved them, too, the cops finally got tired of our shit and hauled all the men off to jail.
73
***Hayes***
Asober night in the drunk tank later and I was standing shoulder to shoulder with my brothers, waiting to be officially released while a group of PR underlings fluttered around us, making us presentable. Deacon Holmes was standing in front of us, back so stiff he looked like he might break at any second. He was even more furious over the fact that we weren’t as upset as he thought we should be.
“You could’ve ruined your careers before they started! Brawling in someone’s front yard like you’re auditioning for Jerry Springer is absolutely the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard. The draft is coming up, people are watching you, and you’ve already had a scandal this season!” He was basically speaking to himself because I was still flying high on knowing that Cassidy forgave us and I knew my brothers were, too. “Alright, dammit. We’re going out the back way. Someone leaked the news that you three got arrested and there’s a crowd of people out front demanding answers.”
The same cop who’d taken us in the evening before, the one with the strong mustache, walked up to us and the smile on his face was so opposite of what we’d seen the night before that I flinched. He laughed and patted my shoulder. “You caught me at the end of a shift last night and I was not in the mood. Watching the bodycam footage back this morning had all of us at the station rolling, though.”
