Page 103 of Rhodes

"I still owe you dessert."

She turns back to me, climbing on top. The phone slides off the blanket, landing with a thud on the hardwood. I get my hand in her hair, and she hums against my mouth.

It's a long, slow kiss, her hips moving against mine before she pulls back. "I really don't want to leave you, but I have to shower and get ready. I'd much prefer round two, but I can't be late again."

"You've got five minutes."

"You cannot do anything useful to me in five minutes."

"That's insulting."

"I wish I could," she says with a smile, then swings her legs off the bed. "Tonight."

"I'm going to hold you to it."

"As you should."

She hunts for her jeans on the floor, tugs them on, grabs a shirt off my chair, one she left there this weekend, and pulls her hair up as she walks out of the room.

By the time I get out of the shower, she's gone. The fridge gives me half a block of cheese, three eggs, and a jar of mustard. I take the cheese to the counter and cut off the end while the phone rattles on the granite.

Coop's face fills the screen, then freezes, then jerks back to life.

"Brother! Do you even go to class anymore?"

"I don't have class until noon, dickhead. Your sun is setting and my day is just getting started."

"I've got no idea what time it is anymore, and I don't care." He's outside somewhere, wind chewing up half his words, the sky behind him going gray-blue over water. "I'm ready to be done with the classroom part. I've got four more weeks there, then I have a couple of site visits, then I'm on a plane back home. I still haven't decided if that means Charleston or New Orleans. Since I let my apartment go, it's Charleston for now. Unless you want to trade one Maybank for another. I'm sure you're ready to have your house back to yourself, so I won't do that to you."

"I guess we're going to have to be adults after graduation. When do you come back stateside, anyway?"

"End of May." He grins so wide it eats his whole face. "Twenty-ninth."

"Nice."

He means getting my house back like it's a gift. The flicker comes, and I let it pass.

"Yeah," I say. "I've gotten fond of having some noise in here, as it turns out."

"I don't know what I'd have done, Rhodes. Leaving her in my apartment alone right after Mama, I know I couldn't have gone. I won't forget what you did for our family. You have no idea."

"You'd have done it for me."

"I would've." He rubs the back of his neck. "How is she, anyway? Everything good?"

I could say it right now. She's more than okay, Coop. She's in my bed most nights, and I'm gone on her. The words are sitting right there.

I run it forward before I open my big mouth. He tells Granger, Granger tells Banksie, and suddenly Tallulah walks into a room to fight for Oak Moss with three men looking at her differently because she’s sleeping with me. Like that somehow says a damn thing about whether she knows what she’s doing out there.

It’s bullshit. It shouldn’t touch her credibility at all. But she told me the land comes first, and it’s not my call to trade her timing for my clean conscience.

"She's doing great," I say. "She's fighting for Oak Moss like it's her whole life. That company she found, Rockville Coastal, confirmed that she was right the whole time. You'd be proud."

"God, yeah." His whole body eases. "That's her. That's Mama's kid. I am proud of her and happy the old men are listening."

The twenty-ninth of May is eight weeks out. That's plenty of time for Oak Moss to settle before he comes back, if everything goes her way. Then she and I walk into that kitchen and tell him together. It's her news and her brother, so it comes out of her mouth with me.

I can only hope she gets that answer from Banksie before then.