“That’s not what I’m talking about, and you know it,” she snaps.
“I have no clue what the hell you’re on about.”
She doesn’t respond right away.
Instead, she glances past me. Toward the porch. Then back to me.
Great.
Charli clocked it.
Of course she did. The woman notices everything.
“You need to be very careful,” she says.
I laugh once, but it isn’t funny. “About what?”
She just stares.
I glance over my shoulder.
Jovie chooses that exact moment to jerk her gaze away from me and look down at her plate.
Fuck.
When I turn back, Charli is watching me closely.
“I’m not doing a damn thing.”
“You sure about that? Because it looks like you’re playing with fire.”
“Positive.”
She nods once. “Good. Because that’s one match that can’t be extinguished once you strike it. And it’ll burn a lot of people.”
I exhale slowly. “I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah.”
I look toward the porch again. Toward Cabe, toward Jovie, and their twenty years of history.
“You know me, Charli. I’m not the kind of man who plays with somebody else’s matches.”
Her expression shifts.
Then she glances toward the porch again and lifts her chin.
I follow her gaze.
Jovie’s looking this direction again. The second our eyes meet, she looks away.
Again.
“She may not be anybody else’s match, but you have to know for sure.”
I shake my head. “Yeah, she is.”
