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He stormed to the tree and started to shake the trunk forcefully. “Now get your ass down here so I can kick the fuck out of it already.”
“Shit,” JB muttered as he lost his grip on the branches and was literally shaken from them. As he went tumbling out, spiraling toward the earth, I gasped and raced forward, right along with about a dozen other people.
It was Dad who actually caught him. Not intentionally, of course. He’d still been shaking the trunk when JB landed on him, and they both crumbled to the ground in a heap.
“Oh my God!” I cried. “Are you okay?”
“No.” I’d been asking JB, but it was my dad who answered on a pathetic groan. “I think he took out my fucking eye with his goddam elbow. Jesus!”
“Let me see,” Quinn instructed, pulling his son off my dad and then tugging Dad to his feet.
“God...damn, that hurt,” Dad whined, clutching his eye.
I moved to JB just as his mom reached him and started to look him over. “I’m fine,” he insisted, lifting his hands to ward us off, only to reveal bloody scratches marring his arms and torso.
“I think your eye will be okay,” Quinn announced, patting Dad on the side of the arm companionably as if my father hadn’t just been trying to murder his son. “You’ll probably end up with a bruise though.”
“Are you fucking serious?” Dad cried. “Unbelievable. I haven’t had a black eye in nearly twenty years.”
Uncle Noel chuckled. “Must mean JB really is your future son-in-law then if he’s the one who was able to give you a shiner.”
“Shut your fucking mouth,” Dad warned, glaring at my uncle before he transferred his scowl to JB. “I don’t care if he is my favorite non-nephew. This is just too…”
“What’s the main concern here?” Felicity’s husband, Knox, asked. “Even if they had done something together tonight, JB’s a good kid. And Teagan’s an adult now; she not going to become a nun, either. Wouldn’t you rather be secure in the fact she’s with someone you know and trust? One of us. Or would you rather she end up with some asshole stranger? You didn’t see me flying off the handle when my daughter ended up with Noel’s weird kid, now did you?”
“Dad,” Bentley scolded from her tent. “Beau is not weird.”
“Knox has a point,” my mom told Dad, hooking her arm through his and kissing his cheek. “If you turn into an ass about this, you’re going to act just like Noel did when you and I started dating.”
“You mean, when you ran off with my best friend and married him behind my back?” Uncle Noel asked his sister.
Dad scowled at Uncle Noel before turning to his wife and whining, “But she’s my baby girl.”
“And I’m not actually dating JB,” I put in. “Plus, we did not hook up…at all.”
When I glanced JB’s way to make sure I hadn’t given off any tells with that statement, he winced and shook his head.
Shit. Just what the hell did I do when I lied?
“Oh, Jesus,” Dad moaned, clutching his head and turning in a circle as if disoriented. “They really did do something in that tent. With all of us sleeping around them mere feet away, too. I think I’m going to be sick. What if she’s pregnant? I’m too young to be a grandpa.”
“Hey,” Uncle Noel muttered in insult. “There’s nothing wrong with becoming a grandparent at our age. Knox and I are about to be grandparents.”
“Oh, shit.” Dad turned to Mom in a panic. “I don’t look as old as those two geezers, do I?”
“But we didn’t—” JB started innocently, only for Quinn to shake his head and silently warn him to shut up.
“Maybe we should all just calm down and discuss this rationally,” Aunt Aspen suggested evenly.
“I mean, sure,” Mom agreed, nodding brightly. “I’m totally open to compromise and having a fall wedding.”
“Oh my God,” I moaned, closing my eyes and pressing my palm to my forehead, worried someone was going to plunk me into a white dress and shove me down an aisle before the night was over.
“Why don’t you two kids just sit tight?” Uncle Noel motioned toward a tree stump we’d used as a chair all evening as if he expected us to wait there like good, obedient little children until they decided our fate for us. “We adults will get this all sorted out in no time.”
“Get what sorted out?” I asked.
“You do realize we’re no longer kids, right?” JB asked, even as he dutifully moved toward the tree stump and plopped down, sitting with a petulant slouch.
