“I doubt that. I thought we weren’t going to talk about this.”
“Talk about what?”
I glared at him, and he smiled at me, his dimple appearing and making it impossible for me to stay mad.
“I wanna be gross with you,” he said.
“Well … when you put it that way…”
He leaned in, grazing his lips across mine. My body instantly reacted, craving nothing else but him. I reached under his shirt, running my fingertips up his back.
“No,” he whispered. “I don’t mean that.” He pulled away, fishing my hands from his shirt. He sighed. “It’ll be a year ago tomorrow night that I saw my baby brother in more pain than I’d ever seen him in before.”
“Looks like it all worked out, though.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself. I look at them and remember what it took to get there, how confused and stubborn Abby was and how Trav never gave up.”
“Tyler…”
“Don’t say it. We’ve got a whole weekend left.”
He kissed the corner of my mouth and then stood, pulling me up with him. We walked downstairs, hand in hand. Abby eyed us until Tyler let me go to join his brothers in the next room.
“Still just friends?” Abby asked.
“You get right to the point, don’t you?”
She shrugged. “No sense in beating around the bush. These boys have been through a lot. For some reason they’re also gluttons for punishment.”
“I guess you’d know,” I said, pushing up on the counter to sit and grabbing an apple out of the fruit bowl. I rubbed it on my jeans and took a bite. “Who interrogated you for Travis?”
Abby arched an eyebrow. “Touché.”
“Easy, girls. We’re all on the same side, here,” Camille said while I crunched.
Abby smirked. “Are we?”
“Tyler is a friend,” I said.
Camille and Abby traded knowing glances, and then Abby leaned on the counter next to me. “That’s what we all say. So … are you going to bring that camera to my wedding?”
I looked at the two of them gazing back at me expectantly. Finally, I nodded twice, slow and emphatic. “I’d be honored.”
“America is going to shit,” Camille warned.
“Who’s America?” I asked.
Abby seemed amused. “My best friend. She’s planning the whole thing. She doesn’t like it when I interfere.”
“With your wedding?” I asked.
“Travis and I eloped, so I sort of owe her one. I don’t want to plan it, anyway, but if we have a photographer in the family now…”
“They’re just friends,” Camille teased.
“Oh yeah,” Abby said with a wink. “I forgot.”
“Baby!” Travis called.
Abby excused herself to the next room where the Maddox boys were sitting around a table staring at the cards in their hands. Abby leaned over her husband’s shoulder to check his hand of cards and whispered in his ear.
“Fucking cheating assholes!” Trent yelled.
“Goddamn it!” Jim snapped. “Watch your mouth!”
“They’re cheating!” Trent said, pointing all four fingers at Travis and Abby.
“We quit playing your wife, Trav,” Tyler said. “If you don’t knock it off, we’ll stop letting you play, too.”
“Fuck all of you. You’re just jealous,” Travis said, kissing Abby’s cheek.
Tyler glanced at me for half a second before returning his attention to his cards.
My stomach sank. Travis and Abby, disgustingly happy and shameless in their PDA, were where Tyler thought we were headed. That was why he refused to believe me or even listen. He knew Travis and Abby had survived whatever they’d been through and thought we could do the same.
I hopped off the counter and tugged on the handle of the fridge, seeing bottles of Sam Adams lined along the shelf in the door. I grabbed one and popped the top, taking a swig. My body instantly relaxed, and I let my worries and guilt slip away.
“Are you coming back for Christmas?” Camille asked.
I shook my head, beginning to voice my doubts, but Tyler interrupted. “Yep. We’ll be going back to Colorado for my birthday, though. Taylor’s decided he wants to throw a party.”
“Am I invited?” I teased.
Abby’s mouth pulled to the side. “I hate that you guys live so far away. You could sell insurance here, you know.”
Tyler shifted, and I saw recognition flicker in Abby’s eyes. She was a human lie detector. She knew they weren’t being honest.
“Yeah, but what we do is good money, Abby. And we like Colorado.”
“You boys are doing well. Keep doing what you’re doing if it’s what you love,” Jim said. He and Abby traded glances.
Holy shit. Jim knew, too.
“Does anyone know the Latino gentleman who’s been parked out front in a rented Lexus for the last half hour?” Jim asked.
Abby ran to the window to see, and the boys’ expressions immediately turned severe. Chairs grated against the faded, chipped tile floor of the dining room as they stood to walk across the small house, between the sofa and television, to look out the windows. They discussed the driver for a moment, none of them recognizing who it was, but they all seemed sure their dad was correct that he was staking the house.
I wondered if it was Trex, and Tyler was feigning ignorance, but he wasn’t that good of a liar, and Abby didn’t seem to pick up on it.