Page 66 of Hot Dad Summer

Her chin wobbled. She didn’t argue. That, more than anything, told me some little piece of what I’d said had landed.

Tyler, allergic to any moment that wasn’t about him, shoved off the hood. “This is real sweet. You know what, fine. Keep her.” He jabbed a finger at his brothers. “But you three owe me. You stole my girlfriend. You owe me.”

“She was never property, so nobody stole anything,” Max said flatly.

“You left her crying on our couch via text message,” Flynn added. “We just had the sense to know what we were looking at.”

Wes stepped forward. “Here’s what you’re owed, Tyler. Out of respect for Mom and Dad, you can stay in the apartment above the family marina until you get your life together. You’ll work for it, the crew needs help on the docks. But you’re not welcome in this house, and the money is done. All of it. That’s the last door I’m holding open, and it’s more than you’ve earned.”

Tyler’s mouth opened and shut twice. He was doing the math and finding nothing left to grab. “Dad would be ashamed of you.”

“Dad asked me to look after you,” Wes said. “I finally am.”

They left the way they’d arrived, together and hating it, two people stuck with each other because nobody else would have them. Brooke’s soaked shoes squelched the whole way to the car.

The taillights hadn’t even cleared the trees before all three men turned to me, and Wes looked at me in a way that made my knees feel unreliable.

“You’ve spent all summer carrying everybody who walked into that house,” he said quietly. “Not tonight.”

And then they carried me. Actually carried me, Flynn scooping me up while I shrieked and laughed and cried a little all at once, passing me to Wes at the porch steps like I weighed nothing, Max holding the door, a relay of hands working together to carry me home. They set me down in the kitchen, on a chair at the table, and then Max crouched and slid my shoes off. Flynn stood behind my chair and worked his fingers into my hair. Wes knelt in front of me and just held both my hands in both of his, and it was so sweet and gentle that the last of my armor gave up on the spot.

“I heard you,” I whispered. “This morning. Through the office door. Tyler asked what you were doing with me, and the door shut, and all I caught was ‘not after September.’” My eyes burned. “I’ve been thinking about that all day. That you were deciding how this ends.”

The three of them went still. Then Wes made a rough laughing sound and squeezed my hands.

“Daisy. Sweetheart. You caught the middle of a sentence.” He waited until I was looking right at him. “What I said was that I couldn’t imagine this house without you in it after September. That was the whole conversation. We weren’t planning an ending. We were trying to figure out how to ask you to stay.”

“We know you have a whole life in Atlanta,” Flynn said into my hair. “An incredible business you built. Kacey. A city that puts you on TV. We’d never ask you to give up any of it, and we’d never take it from you.”

“But if there’s a way you would stay in our lives,” Max said, still crouched at my feet with my ankle resting in his big hand, “staying here, going back and forth, however you could make it work, it would make us the happiest men on this lake.”

“The happiest men anywhere,” Flynn corrected.

I was crying for real now, and it felt like my whole body was filling up with love. Flynn came around and crouched so all three of them were at my level, and he took my face in his hands, and every ounce of the joker was gone.

“I love you, Daisy. I’ve loved you for three years and I’ve been in love with you all summer, and this morning I watched you run from my dock thinking I’d hurt you, and I’m never letting a single day pass again where you don’t know exactly where I stand.”

“I love you,” Wes said, steady as bedrock. “I thought that part of me got buried and was gone forever. You made me want to be alive again. Sharing you is still better than missing you, and I intend to share you for the rest of my life.”

Max was quiet the longest, because his words always seemed to cost him the most. “You’re it for me. I could never quit you. You’re it, and you’re staying, if I have anything to say about it.”

I laughed through my tears. “That’s the most romantic threat I’ve ever received.”

“Believe me, I have more.”

“Okay.” I wiped my face and sat up straighter. “My turn.” I took a breath. “There’s a sign in the window of Sweetwater Sweets and Treats. The Hendersons are retiring. The building’s for sale. And I’ve been walking past that sign for two weeks and dreaming of a future I didn’t know if I could be a part of.”

Three men went very still.

“I called my lawyer about it before Hank’s birthday. Before Tyler showed up.” My voice held. “I already wanted to stay. Not just for you. For all of it. For the kids and this town and a second bakery with my name on it and, fine, for the best sex of my life and the greatest three men I have ever known. Kacey’s been running Atlanta better than me for a year anyway. I was staying either way, and you were all just going to have to deal with it.”

Three faces broke open at once. Flynn lit up like the Fourth of July and let out a whoop that probably carried across the lake. Wes’s whole face relaxed, the grumpy lines smoothing out into a grin so wide I barely recognized him. Even Max was smiling, really smiling, and he repeated “best sex of my life” under his breath like it was his new favorite thing anyone had ever said. The kitchen turned into happy chaos, everybody talking over everybody, and Wes was already trying to invest in my new bakery before my feet touched the floor. I told him he could buy one dollar of it and we’d negotiate the rest never. And my head, my ridiculous head, was already three months ahead, filling itself with maple sugar and lake-blueberry buckle, cider doughnuts in October, a wedding cake case in the window, a whole Sweetwater Cove menu writing itself behind my eyes while three men looked at me like I’d hung the moon over the lake personally.

“Okay, stop, all this talk about sweets is making me starving.” I hopped off toward the refrigerator. “I haven’t eaten anything today except Mrs. Kowalski’s egg rolls, and we paid dearly for those.”

I made it exactly one step before Wes caught me around the waist.

“No, ma’am. Sit.” He lifted me up onto the kitchen island like I weighed nothing, and I found myself perched on the cool wood where I’d rolled a hundred pie crusts, three men between me and my own refrigerator. “You don’t cook. We feed you.”