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“Have you met Sterling yet?” Penn asked, stealing the conversation back to her.
Veronica shook her head.
“Let’s go. We have so much to discuss.”
“Penn you know it’s not your wedding right?” Cole asked.
She sneered. “It might as well be. Sterling is my best friend. We shar
e everything.”
“Except for me.” Jack sidled up to the group with Sterling on his arm.
“Ugh, she can keep you to herself.” Penn shot Jack a look of disgust but it quickly morphed into excitement when she pulled Sterling forward and introduced her to Veronica.
At that point Neil had tuned out. Weddings in his barn had been appealing when all he was thinking about was money. But since Carson… weddings had taken on a different meaning. Did he even want a wedding? Maybe, if it was with Carson. Unlikely to happen now that she hated his guts.
But it was for the best. Probably. That’s what he told himself.
“It’s not about being the man you think you are.” The sound of Jack’s voice knocked him out of his own head. “It’s about being the man she makes me want to be.”
His brother pulled Sterling into his arms and kissed the top of her head. Both Veronica and Penn looked on with tears in their eyes.
He had missed the conversation. He had missed what prompted his brothers’ deep thoughts. But suddenly, everything became clear.
Penn slapped him on the shoulder and pulled him away from the group. “It’s show time, boss.”
“I…I’m not ready.” He was having a moment. A self-realizing, how-huge-did-I-fuck-everything-up, moment. Because he was…
Penn waved him off as she jerked him through the crowd. She heaved him up onto the makeshift stage where she had set up a podium just for him. He noticed his brothers and friends take position in the front by the edge of the riser.
He pulled at the collar of his dress shirt and put his hand up to cover his eyes as flashes of a camera stung his vision.
Finally, he stared out into the crowd. They were all nameless, faceless individuals. The only person he wanted to see was Carson. He missed her. He…
The realization slammed into him with the strength of a freight train.
His heart thumped a mile a minute in his chest. His suit jacket was all of a sudden two sizes too small. And underneath that jacket, he was sweating like he’d just played twenty innings of baseball.
He loved her.
She made him a better man. She made him want to be a better man. And he could be, he knew he could be. With her by his side.
“Neil?” Penn whispered from his right. “You’re supposed to be talking now.”
His hands gripped the side of the podium, he took a deep breath, and looked out into the crowd.
“This isn’t what my mother wanted.” The words blurted out before he even coordinated the sentence in his head.
Murmurs from the crowd grew louder, camera flashes went off again. “This is what I wanted. What I needed to make it all right in my head.”
The people in the front of the crowd stared at him with a confused looks on their faces.
“I…I’ve spent the last seventeen years wondering why I’d gotten so lucky. Why a woman like Vivian Madewood would take in a broken kid like me just didn’t make sense. What she wanted with four of us just didn’t make sense.”
Neil looked off to the side, his three brothers watching over him. Jack had an I-told-you-so gleam in his eye. Finn sent him support with a soft smile and Cole just looked sick, expressing feelings not his strongest suit.
“But I wasn’t lucky. We weren’t lucky to have been taken in by the most generous, beautiful, loving woman in the world. It wasn’t luck. It was the way it was supposed to be. I may not have the Madewood name, but I’m a Madewood. I will follow in my mother’s footsteps giving back to this city that she loved so much. Beginning with the Madewood Farm. It embodies everything my mother loved, good food and family. I thought I was doing this for her. But I’m doing this because it’s what I love. I didn’t fully realize it until this very moment.”
