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“Hi, sweet pea,” he says into her hair, before he turns and points a finger gun at Iris and me. “Iris. Buttercup.”

“Hi, Bud.” Iris grins, her face splitting into a childish smile.

“Hey, Bud.” I wave.

“What’s going on down here?” Bud asks again, looking between the three women who have terrorized him for over a decade, a wide grin on his face.

“Sienna is staying with Iris,” Grandma Mary continues, leaning back into Bud’s chest. “And we’re going on a three month cruise.”

“Grandma, Iris hasn’t agreed to this,” I protest.

Bud watches us, his big hand sliding to her hip.

“We’re going to do so much catching up, Birdie!” Iris’s whole face lights up like somebody flipped a switch behind her eyes, and I can’t help but smile when she uses the nickname Grayson gave me as a kid, Songbird, which turned into Birdie over time. “You didn’t think I’d say no, did you?”

No, but I can’t stay at the Douglas farmhouse with the wraparound porch that creaks on the third board from the left. The screen door with the broken latch. The kitchen with the green countertops where I realized I had a crush on Grayson Douglas. The bedroom on the second floor that belongs to Iris, and down the hall from it, on the other end of the house, the bedroom that has, for as long as I’ve been alive, belonged to Grayson.

“Iris,” I try, my throat tight. “I love you. You know I love you, but I can just stay at the Franklin Bed and Breakfast in town and⁠—”

“Annette Franklin?” Iris’s eyes narrow into slits. “Absolutely not.”

“Thank you,” Grandma Mary chimes from her spot against the counter.

“That woman gossips like it’s her job,” Iris snaps. “You’d be on the front page of the Free Press before sundown.”

“I have a hat. I have sunglasses. I have my huge hoodie, and a bank account I can use to bribe her to be quiet.” I shrug, everyone’s disappointment staring back at me.

“Sienna.” Iris sinks onto her knees, leveling me with those deep blue eyes I’ve been losing arguments to since first grade. “I have a guest room. Brand new sheets. An entire maid-and-chef service that would love to serve you because you are so much easier than Gray and me. Come home.”

I look at Iris, on her knees in front of me, the bun on top of her head listing to one side, her hands warm through the denim of my jeans. I look at Grandma Mary, leaning into Bud, smiling at me like she has already won. I look at Bud, who shrugs at me with both hands up in surrender, like don’t drag me into this one, kiddo.

I’ll be staying at the Douglas farmhouse. For a month. In the bedroom across the hall from a man I haven’t spoken to in two years.

And because of all the pressure and all the love, I say, “Okay,” even though my heart is trying hard to drown it out and stop me from making a decision that might just turn my life upside down.

Again.

5

GRAYSON

“I don’t give a shit what Pratt thinks, Henry,” I bite out. “The vendor is dragging his feet, and the certification is non-negotiable. Get him on the phone today, or we’re pulling the contract.”

I hit a pothole and barely break stride. The AirPod in my left ear hums with the wet, irritated breath of a man who hasn’t been told no by anyone under forty in two decades.

“Grayson, with all due respect, this is a thirty-year relationship—” Henry presses.

“Thirty years of him passing certifications,” I cut in. “Then, the second the company changes hands, he decides we’re negotiable. Read between the goddamn lines, Henry.”

“You’re being heavy-handed,” he warns.

“I’m being correct,” I shoot back.

The board has a single setting, and it is delayed. Sixteen men in their sixties who have spent four decades fattening themselves on the back of a company my great-grandfather built from a single warehouse in Bangor, and now, when one of those decisions costs them a personal phone call to an old friend, the appetite vanishes. They want my father back because my father, in his prime, was a generous man with the patience of a saint and an endless pot of gold he called a wallet. He let them coast. He let the company coast.

He believed in handshakes and second chances and the gentleman’s agreement, and the gentleman’s agreement is precisely how Douglas Corp went from a forty-percent market leader in Northeast oil and gas distribution to a twenty-three-percent market afterthought that the board cannot bring themselves to admit is dying. I have been at this job in earnest for eleven months, and I’ve already gutted three contracts, fired two regional managers, and pulled us back up to thirty-one percent. They hate me for it. They will hate me even more before this is over.

“Grayson,” Henry tries again, “the man has been a friend to your father for⁠—”