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Like stated, it’d been easy, nice and certainly wasn’t worth all the ragging my buddy was doing on me now. He was fake-hitting me upside the head while I was telling him everything, getting a good jostling in, and I rolled my eyes. Fawn and I had a good day and the rest of it we just spent with my family. We only all broke it up so us kids could get back to school at a decent hour. Typically, we stayed until Sunday but Sloane realized one of her art projects was due early Monday morning, so we all agreed to come back early to give her some extra time to finish it.
“Weird to see you like this.”
I looked up. “Like what?”
“Happy?” He stated this like it was obvious. We had a few bags left, and he handed them off to me. “I haven’t seen you smile like this in, well, forever. You don’t smile like this.Ever.”
All my buddies were making it sound like I really was unhappy with my life, but I just didn’t express emotion like they did.
“Always so serious.” He posted fingers in his face, doing a fucked-up Joker smile, and I kicked at his ass. He barked a laugh. “Anyway, it’s nice to see.”
We’d been talking lightly up to this moment, and my smile fell away. The tone had ironically grown serious.
Dorian might have said something more, but Thatcher showed up, and I found myself relieved by that.
“The fun has officially arrived,” Thatch announced, waving a hand as if he were royalty. He had a neck pillow on like some fucking goober, and if this guy wasn’t a prima donna to the highest fucking power. He was always extra as fuck and shameless about it. He pushed a hand over spiky hair, intentionally messy. His sharpened earrings flickered off the sun. “Y’all miss me?”
I was sure his staff didn’t, and I took his fresh laundry shit from him. He had a big-ass mesh bag that smelled like country cotton. I lifted my eyes at it. “Hardly, and definitely not your staff with all this shit. You need to start doing your own laundry.”
He made apsshsound. “Can’t see why when they’ll do it.” He flicked a finger at me. “Also, I heard it from my sister this morning about you bringing a girl to town and not setting up a meet and greet.” He grinned. “She said the next time you bring Fawn around, she wants to meet her.”
I was sure Bow Reed did, nosy like the rest of my brothers. She’d be coming along to Pembroke U next year I could imagine. She was a senior in high school right now.
In any sense, Bow shouldn’t get her hopes up. Fawn and me definitely wouldn’t be a thing next year, and the more people I kept out of all this, the better.
My jaw shifted. “Where’s Wells?”
“Said he’d catch up,” Thatch said, smirking. “Had a thing or something.”
Meaning he was fucking someone, and Dorian and I both lifted our eyes to the heavens. Between the two of them, I was honestly surprised Thatcher had shown up on time to depart.
Dorian barked at Thatch to get Wells’s ass on the phone. Meanwhile, I was trying to ignore the fact that Fawn was approaching with my parents and Sloane. Lucas was behind them all, but I wasn’t focused on him.
Fawn was basically arm in arm with people I cared about so much in my life, and my mother actually did have her arm around her, rubbing it. Of course, the bus thing had come up, but I’d warned her and Dad about it.
They’d thought I’d been just doing something fun too.
People really were worried, at least about how I’d been, and I hated how it felt to see Fawn with Sloane and my parents. They were all grinning around her, and Mom and Dad’s especially couldn’t be denied. If I’d been smiling since we all got to town, my parents had been fucking beaming, and my selfish heart loved that. I’d do anything to make them happy.
Anything to keep their world right.
* * *
Fawn
I kept falling asleep on this guy.
He certainly made it easy.
His arm around me, Wolf brushed his fingers casually against my elbow. He stared out the window, seemingly in his thoughts.
At least, until I adjusted.
His attention flicked away from the dark world, the bus humming around us. I didn’t know how long we’d been driving, but we’d left Maywood Heights pretty easily. No traffic or anything. A grin touched Wolf’s lips. “Didn’t even make it an hour this time, Red. I’d hate to see you on a real road trip.”
My finger lifted, flipping him off, and he laughed albeit lightly. Something told me I hadn’t been the only one asleep.
I gazed up to find Sloane’s dark head against Dorian. He had his arm around her too, holding her. The couple was about four seats up, and Wells and Thatcher were toward the front. I couldn’t really see them much, but they looked like they were playing another card game. Hard to do on a moving bus but they obviously managed.
