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“Drive safe and text me when you get home. Enjoy the roses.” He smiles at me, taking a step back and sliding his hands in his front pockets as I start the golf cart.
“I will. And I’ll also look up what purple means.”
“You do that,” Shepherd winks at me as I start backing out, wondering if my heart will ever stop fluttering every time I’m around him.
Twenty minutes later when I’m home, I’ve texted Shepherd that I’m safe, and I’m curled up in bed wearing just one of my Hawks T-shirts with his name on the back, I grab my phone from where I have it plugged in on my nightstand, pulling up Google.
My breath hitches when the results pop up within seconds, my eyes fill with tears, and I feel exactly like I did the minute I turned around on the beach earlier and saw everything Shepherd had done for me. Like I can’t believe it’s actually real.
Because according to Google, the purple rose means “love at first sight.” And Shepherd didn’t just give me a small handful of purple roses. He filled the beach with every purple rose he could possibly buy. Because a man who loves glitter and knows how to use a glue gun, who spends hours on Pinterest while also commandeering the help of his mother and sisters for our date, would know exactly what the purple rose meant.CHAPTER 12Shepherd
“Make sure you cover all the bases.”“He needs to take things slow and not overwhelm her.”
“My dude had thousands of roses flown to the island on a private jet, one to represent every day he never took his shot with her. He basically just took a shit on caring about that. I say full speed ahead, bruh.”
“Fine, so the roses were pretty cool, but still. He needs to slow it down a bit. She’s been through a lot, and I’m just saying. She’s a nice, small-town girl. She’s not a baseball groupie ho. He needs to have some respect.”
“Have some respect for that ass, am I right? Ow, fucking hell, Pal!”
“That’s my future sister-in-law you’re talking about. Next time, I’ll punch you in the throat instead of the arm. He needs to take a step back and court her like a proper gentleman.”
“Like you courted her sister in that maintenance shed on the back nine at the golf course? Is that what we’re calling it now? That was some loud, aggressive courting. You almost courted her right through the shed wall. You even courted her panties clean off of her. Did you ever find those babies?”
“We’re not talking about me; we’re talking about him. And he needs to remember she’s a mom.”
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“You just have to be… gentler.”
“No, you don’t. Wren’s a total MILF. Lady in the streets, freak in the sheets.”
“Don’t ever say that in front of me again,” I finally speak, looking up from the pumpkin pancakes I’ve been shoveling in my mouth across the booth from Palmer and Bodhi at The Barge while they discussed my life without me.
“Can I say it when you’re not in front of me?” Bodhi asks, pointing his fork at me with pancake pieces stuck to the end and syrup dripping down onto his plate.
“Um… sure.”
“Right on.” He smiles, shoving his fork in his mouth and then talking around a mouthful of pancake. “I’m so glad Tess and Birdie are finally letting us be friends with you. Sorry about the sweatshirt burning. I tried to hide all the lighters from Tess, but she’s a goddamn ninja with those things. I think she sews them in her bras. It looked like a really nice sweatshirt too. Palmer will buy you a new one that’s less flammable.”
“Why do I have to replace the sweatshirt? It wasn’t my girlfriend who torched it,” Palmer complains.
“Who drove the getaway golf cart? It certainly wasn’t me who has an obnoxious blue cart with flames painted on the side, spinning rims, and a full lighting and sound system,” Bodhi reminds him.
Palmer looks over at me with a small grimace.
“Yeah, that was me. But you need to understand just how persuasive Birdie can be. I am powerless when she takes her shirt off. If it makes you feel any better, I definitely did not let them stop at the liquor store on the way home to buy a celebratory bottle of vodka. Right home to bed for all of them to think about what they’d done.”
When I got a text from Palmer this morning asking if I wanted to grab breakfast with him and Bodhi, I couldn’t have been happier. Nick has been busy with the season, and we haven’t had time to do much more than exchange a couple of texts since I got here. I thought it would be great to finally make some new, close friends, and it was an added bonus they were already a part of Wren and Owen’s lives and could give me some much-needed advice on how to move forward with her. I realized my mistake as soon as I sat down, placed my order, and haven’t been able to say one word since then. So much unsolicited advice has been given that now I’m second-guessing everything I’ve done and said to Wren since I got here.
