Page 60 of Sundown Somewhere

I nod, trying to keep it subtle so that maybe only he’ll see. Except I’m not that lucky.

“Wow,” Gus comments.

“No way,” Jace tacks on, his words almost drowning out Gus’s.

Anton flips around. “What? What?”

“We’re not actually having this fucking conversation in the middle of a peach grove, are we?” I grumble.

“Good a place as any,” Ewan points out. For being the youngest and quietest of the bunch, he tends to speak up with all the damn good points exactly when needed. “And you lucked out in a moment that Willa isn’t here to gloat about it.”

Again, baby brother comin’ in hot…

“What?” Anton asks again.

“So, how?” Milo asks, that knowing smirk still sitting pretty.

Yeah, I definitely want to smack it off his face.

“We really have to go into this?”

“What?” Anton asks again, his frustration rising.

I glare at him. At least he’s forgotten about the trees. Still, of all of them, he’s the one who has given me the most shit about how I needed to go back on that pinky promise and see what was in front of me.

I do believe his exact words were “wife her up.” The black eye he got for that one was well worth how bad my hand hurt and the dressing down I got from Miss Belle.

“Good for you,” Jace says. “It’s about fucking time.”

“Are you for serious?” Anton exclaims. “You’re not fucking with us?”

Heaven help me…

I look upward, blinking hard as I inhale deeply, the blue, clear sky filling my vision as I try to tap dance out of talking about this. Can we go back to the hard freeze and it killing the peaches? That was a much more enjoyable line of conversation now that I think about it.

“No, I am not fucking with you. And Milo, to answer your question…it…it just did. It’s hard to explain, but…” I sigh, throwing my arms out wide. “Look…I don’t know exactly what it is, or where it’s going, and we’re not putting a label on it. And for that matter, Dolly doesn’t want it talked about or anything like that. Okay? So all of this stays in this peach grove.”

I let out a long, hard breath, my lungs screaming from holding on to it for so long. Letting these jokers in on my secret is a relief, and yet…I’m still tied in knots. Because now they all know that I maybe haven’t been completely honest about things where Dolly is concerned.

None of this changes the fact that I’m still not good enough for her.

Wordlessly, Milo walks over to me and wraps his arms around me, squeezing tight. He holds me against him for a long moment, same as he used to when we were little kids and he was letting me know everything was going to be alright. Just like it did then, that same warmth runs through me.

“There’s no need to know what it is or where it’s going or even what it’s called. As long as you and she are on the same page and are happy with where you are, that’s what matters,” he tells me as he lets go. “If being with Brenna has taught me anything, it’s that sometimes you simply have to let it happen.”

I laugh, pushing him away. It’s damn good advice, I’ll give him that. I’m just not sure when he became our father.

“You’re the last person I thought would be giving me relationship advice.”

“Last?” he questions. “I would have thought I’d at least outrank Gus.”

“Eh, someone was always bound to marry him for the money,” Anton quips.

We all burst into laughter, the wind rustling the leaves of the trees enough to make it sound like they’re joining in. Even Gus cracks a smile at the joke. There’s no question that Margeaux isn’t with him because of the Hayes name—being a smart and successful businesswoman in her own right before getting her law degree and joining our company—making it that much easier to tease him about it.

But just as quickly as he cracks a smile, Gus’s face falls.

“So, if you’ve got all this going with Dolly, I take it this would be a bad time to tell you that Project: Second Star has been rejected?”