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The ugliest part of it that tasted like dirt on my tongue.
“She was having an affair.”
“The fuck, man?” Ryder spat, disgust rolling from him as he roughed a tatted hand over his face.
“She’d come back after being gone for days, and I’d smell him all over her.”
Always coming in smelling like expensive cologne. Smelling of lies and cheating.
Cody sat forward in his chair, his elbows going to his knees as he looked sidelong at me. Reservations flew through his expression before he came to a conclusion. “I saw her out once…in a park back behind some trees. I couldn’t hear what was actually being said, but it was clear it was a heated argument. The type that just didn’t sit right, if you know what I mean.”
Regret filled his voice.
“It seemed too farfetched for Brianna,” he continued. “She’d always seemed so damned cool. I think I talked myself out of it, wrote it off, not wanting what was clearly going on between them to be true.”
Unease writhed through my senses. Did I fucking want to know?
“Who was she with?” The question scraped free, anyway.
Cody’s head sagged between his shoulders, and he looked to his boots. “That prick Hayden Obermeyer.”
A scoff of disbelief gusted out, and my eyes instantly moved to the piece of shit who was across the yard. Disgust roiled. Part of me wanted to cross the space and kick his ass just for the sake of it. The other part knew it wouldn’t change a thing. He wasn’t fucking worth it.
“Of fucking course,” I mumbled.
“I’m sorry, brother. I should have told you, but it seems like you already knew.”
“Yup, guess I did.”
Caleb was sitting on the other side of me, and he reached out and squeezed my shoulder. “Sucks, man. I’m sorry.”
Caleb had never met Brianna. He’d been living in Seattle during the time all that shit had gone down, dealing with his own issues.
“It does suck, but I thought it was time you all knew I haven’t been suffering a broken heart.”
I’d just been riddled with suffocating guilt since I hadn’t been there for her when she’d actually needed me. But how the hell was I supposed to know? Her favorite game had been crying wolf, those wails loud enough to cover up her misdeeds, right up to the point that I couldn’t hear them anymore.
Ryder sank back deeper into his chair, gazing over at where our girls were hanging out under the shade of a tree. “It’s different with Savannah, yeah?” he asked.
“Yeah, it’s different. It’s everything.”
“Not just a fling?” he asked.
“Hell no.” It came out sharper than I intended.
Cody chuckled. “Looks like someone’s ready to do a little of that claiming.”
“Yeah.” Because there was no piece inside me that wanted to deny it.
FIFTY
SAVANNAH
“Are you having a good time?” I already knew Ezra was there, easing up behind me where I stood beneath an enormous tree that stretched out over the yard. I was taking in the party from a distance as the evening settled over the crowd. Food and dessert had been served, and the mood had grown light and airy.
Twilight had seeped in and cast the yard in that magical hue that clung to the sky in the last few moments before the sun fully fell away.
The children had spent the afternoon being led around on the backs of ponies, playing games, running, and laughing, while the adults had mingled and conversed and relaxed.
It seemed every ten minutes or so, Owen and Oliver had come racing up to drag me over to see something that they wanted to show me, and each time when I wandered back to where Ezra waited for me with that adoring look on his face I’d been staggered.
Overcome.
My heart overflowing.
Which was why I’d found myself loitering off in the fringes by myself.
Giving myself a moment to absorb it. To soak up this unanticipated new life.
I peeked back at the man who stood behind me.
His handsome face tweaked in a soft, curious smile.
God, he looked good in the fading day.
Hell, I’d come to accept he looked good in every moment. Every second. And I’d never tire of looking at him.
“The best time.”
He wound an arm around to my front and pulled me against him. Warmth surged through my body.
“Then what are you doing over here all by yourself?” he murmured where he nuzzled his nose into my hair at the side of my head.
“Sometimes you need to stand back to appreciate the things you’ve been given. Memorize them.”
So they could still be a part of you once they were ripped away.
It didn’t matter that I left off the last. I might as well have issued it aloud.
Ezra pulled me tighter, and his breath wisped around me. “And sometimes you have to stand right in the middle of it to know that you truly belong.”
