“Dang.” I tug my forefinger and thumb over my eyes. “You hit the nail on the head there, Wheeler.”
“Aww, Ryder.” She runs a hand over my back. “I didn’t mean to make you emotional?—”
“I’m glad you did.”
“Should we get a priest?” Sawyer pretend-whispers. “Some holy water at the very least?”
“Not funny,” I say, even as I scoff.
“Just to add a little fuel to your fire,” Wheeler says, “it was only when I stopped pretending that everything was ‘just fine’ that I was able to be who I really was and do what I really wanted. My parents still don’t love that I chose to be entrepreneur instead of a lawyer, but I had to let that go. Embrace my messiness.”
Mollie raises her glass. “You had to live your truth.”
“I’ll cheers to that.” Wyatt raises his glass, eyes on mine. “So what’s your truth, brother?”
I suck in a breath through my nose. “Truth is, I miss Mom and Dad, and I’m sad—angry—fucking gutted, really, that they’re gone.”
I’ve never said those words out loud.
I’ve never admitted to having those feelings. How could I when I didn’t even allow myself to feel them in the first place?
I wait a beat, then another, for the freight train of grief to hit. For the shame and the regret to bowl me over.
It’s all there, right in my chest and belly and blood. But surrounded by the people I love, that awful shit doesn’t feel near as, well, awful.
Cash sniffles. “They couldn’t get over your cheeks. How chubby they were. When Mom was getting an ultrasound when she was pregnant with y’all, apparently all they could see were how fat y’all’s cheeks were.” He glances at Duke.
“Cheekies!” Junie shrieks. “I love them.”
Sawyer leans over to kisshercheek. “Yours are scrumptious.”
“Your scruffies are not.” She recoils, making the table burst out in laughter.
“I remember Dad pretending to eat your cheeks before every meal,” Wyatt adds. “We thought it was hilarious, the way he’d use thisSesame Streetvoice while nibbling on y’all.”
Cash laughs. “I would ask him to stop because I was worried you wouldn’t have any faces left when you got older.”
“Aw, baby, you may be the handsomest, but you were never the smartest, were you?” Mollie wags her brows.
“I was.” Wyatt gives us the side-eye.
More laughter.Damn, Billie would fit right in here, wouldn’t she?
She’d join in on the ribbing. The jokes and the innuendo.
“If gambling like a degenerate was a marker of intelligence, then for sure you’d be the Einstein of the family,” Sawyer says.
Wyatt holds up his hands. “Never said I was an angel.”
“Definitely no angel.” Sally’s got stars in her eyes as she beams at her husband. “Thank goodness for that.”
“Mom never put you down.” Cash nods at me. “I remember Aunt Lolly coming to visit and asking Mom why you were always on her hip. Mom told Lolly to stick it where the sun don’t shine. You were her last baby, and she knew very well that babies don’t keep.”
Duke pulls his brows together. “Why didn’t she hold me that much?”
“Because I was cuter,” I say matter-of-factly.
“We literally have the same exact face.”
