Page 226 of Twins for Three Bad Boys

“And you told Kline no when she offered you your job back,” I add. “That part was hot, honestly, darlin’.”

June turns around in her seat enough to look at me. “Rex.”

“What?” I say, innocent as a church bell. “It was. That woman tried to hand you your old life back like it was some kind of prize, and you just shut the door in her face. That does something for a man.”

Wayne snorts.

Fletcher says, “You’d flirt at a funeral.”

“I’d flirt at my own funeral if the lighting was right.”

June shakes her head, but she’s smiling properly now.

For the next hour or so, that relief keeps loosening things up inside the truck. Not all at once. In little pieces.

June starts talking more, just observations at first. The school sign still being awful. Mrs. Kline somehow getting more irritating with age. The fact Denise always smelled faintly of lavender hand cream and photocopier toner. The ridiculousness of Tiffany choosing violence in front of a bulletin board that said Kindness Is Contagious!

By the time Wayne mutters, “Should’ve stolen that sign,” even Fletcher laughs.

It feels good, that part.

Feels earned.

We went into something ugly and came out of it still ourselves.

June leans her head back against the seat and closes her eyes for a minute, smiling to herself. “I’m really glad I didn’t go back there alone.”

Wayne’s thumb moves against her knee. “You weren’t going to.”

“I know.”

She says it softly, easily—like she believes it all the way through now. That matters more than I can say without making the whole damn thing too tender for my own comfort.

A little later, traffic thins out and the road opens. Trees start swallowing the horizon again. Less concrete. More sky. More distance between us and everything that happened.

June glances out at it, and her shoulders drop another inch. “Feels different already.”

“Good different?” I ask.

She nods. “Yeah. Like…” She trails off, searching. “Like maybe now I can stop carrying it everywhere.”

Finally, Wayne says, “You can.”

June looks at him, then out the windshield again. “I want to.”

“You will,” Fletcher says.

And because I’m me and because solemnity makes my skin itch if it goes on too long, I lean forward and say, “Plus, if that woman ever comes within a hundred feet of Redwood Run, I’m setting Bolt on her.”

June laughs. “Bolt is ninety years old and basically deaf in one ear.”

“Exactly. Psychological warfare.”

That gets me the eye roll I was aiming for.

By the time we stop for a break, the sky’s started to shift into late afternoon, light going thinner and softer at the edges. Wayne pulls off at one of those roadside places with gas pumps, a fast food counter, and a picnic area that looks unloved since the eighties.

“Bathroom,” June says the second the truck stops.