And I had the strongest urge to hand the baby back to her, grab Mallory, and leave.
But just when I’d thought things couldn’t get any more awkward, the door opened, and two of my other cousins, and one of their wives, poured into the house.
Within seconds, the three of them were talking over each other, calling out, “Hey,” “Man, you walked right past us,” and, “No way! Is thistheMallory?”
I risked a glance at the woman in question and felt my chest tighten at her carefully blank expression as she stared down the people in front of her—only one of whom she’d met before.
Swallowing uncomfortably, I turned for the kitchen instead, muttering, “I need a drink,” to Madison as I passed her.
Even though the afternoon had been eerily similar to all the other weekends I’d spent with my cousins over the past months—filled with a chaos that only came from the amount of kids running through the house, laughter from all of us beingtogether, and more food than any of us knew what to do with—it had been tense, to say the least.
A tension that all came down to the fact that Mallory hadn’t said a word to me since we’d set foot in the house. Something I thought had only been obvious to me until my cousins went suspiciously quiet after we’d finished clearing lunch away.
My brow furrowed as I watched them.
The youngest, Sawyer, was trying to look into the living room where all the women were gathered—not that it was visible from where we were standing around the kitchen island—while Cayson and Hunter seemed to be listening as the women talked.
Well, all but Mallory, who I had no doubt was silently sitting there with the same observant expression she’d worn the past few hours.
“What happened?” Cayson finally asked me once Sawyer straightened. When I just lifted a brow in question, he gave me a deadpan look and explained, “Between you and Mallory.”
“Because y’all haven’t been like this any of the times I’ve seen her,” Hunter added.
Cayson grunted in agreement, and Sawyer lifted his hands before letting them fall to the granite island.
“Not that I would know,” he said, considering he hadn’t met Mallory before today, “but I wouldn’t have expectedthisfrom everything you’ve said about her.”
“This is just a lot for her,” I said with a shrug since it wasn’t technically a lie. “Y’allare a lot.”
My cousins stared at me before Cayson sighed. “Right, so what really happened? Because we’re not the only ones to notice,” he added meaningfully.
“Well, your wife clearly did,” I said, my voice dropping to a low hiss as I swung my arm in the general direction of the living room. “She came up out of nowhere and stopped me every timeI tried talking to Mallory, all while playing music, like that was gonna solve everything.”
The corner of Cayson’s mouth tipped up. “The Chicks?” When I just glared at him, he shrugged and held out his hands in surrender before folding his arms across his chest. “It’s an Emberly thing, man. I don’t understand it, but it somehow works.”
“On what?”
“On people who are going through whatever y’all are,” he said pointedly.
“Right,” Sawyer took over for him, “so what happened?”
“And something clearly did,” Hunter added. “You said you didn’t want to do thisright nowwhen I caught up to you downtown. So, let’s do it now.”
Sawyer smacked his arm. “When were you gonna tell us?”
Hunter shrugged without looking at the other two. “Now.”
I forced myself to release my next breath slowly as I thought of what all to tell them, especially when the woman at the center of it all was in the other room.
Before I had the chance to decide on any one thing, Sawyer assumed, “You slept with her,” forcing a curse from me.
“No,” I hissed. “Why does everyone think that?”
The three of them met my demand with identical, meaningful looks that said I already knew the answer.
When they all continued waiting expectantly, I roughed a hand over my jaw before placing both hands on the island. Leaning closer, I dropped my voice so it was barely audible when I explained, “She’s just been letting me know recently that I’m not someone she trusts.”
Cayson’s eyebrow ticked higher. “Not that I buy that, but what’d you do for her to feel she had to make that known?”
