Chapter 13
Stepping onto the porch just after Emberly knocked on the door, I met Mallory’s blue stare. The desperate plea still lingered there, even as her defenses slowly slid into place, preparing for whatever she’d be met with inside.
Or maybe it was just me.
As I had so many times throughout the years, I instinctively reached for her. Only this time, I didn’t stop myself the second I realized what I was doing. This time, I let my fingertips trail against her palm and felt my pulse go wild when she stiffened but didn’t rip her hand away.
And her quick, nearly inaudible inhale that filled my world the second my skin touched hers?
I was sure I’d never forget that sound.
Every one of those earlier defenses fell away as if they’d never been there at all, and her eyes widened with something undefinable when my fingers curled around the tips of hers.
But then, as if the moment had never happened, Mallory shifted her hand away and looked toward the door just as it opened to someone already talking.
“. . . knocking instead of just coming—” Hunter’s wife cut off mid-sentence, her face lighting up with the excitement she always showed for everyone and everything when she noticed us standing there.
“Hi, friends! You know you can just come in; you don’t have to knock.
Oh!” she quickly went on in that adorable rambling way of hers.
“Great timing, actually. Can you take my that?”
A huff of a laugh wrenched from my suddenly strained lungs when Madison held out her baby girl for me to take. “Your that?” I teased, since she had a habit of calling everything her this and that.
Madison playfully glared at me. “I need extra hands right now. Mostly because there’s about twenty million kids in this house and—” Her eyes widened and mouth formed a large O when she stepped back to let us in, only then noticing Mallory.
“Oh, I’m so—” An excited gasp left her as she reached forward to place her hand on Mallory’s arm, not seeming to notice or care when Mallory flinched at the casual contact.
“Are you Mallory? Is this Mallory?” The second question was directed at a smirking Emberly before Madison’s attention snapped back to Mallory.
“Oh my word, I’ve heard so much about you. ”
I gave her infant daughter an exaggerated look, making her smile, even as I reproachfully said, “Rude to assume, Madison. What if she was someone else?”
Madison just huffed and gave me another playful glare. “Like you’d bring anyone else here,” she said before focusing on Mallory again, “I can’t believe I’m, like, the last person to meet you!”
“Not the last one,” Emberly corrected from where she stood at my other side, music still playing, earning a triumphant look from Madison.
“I’m sorry, does that mean I’m right? This is the renowned Mallory?”
I kept my stare firmly on the baby in my arms so I wouldn’t search out and try to analyze Mallory’s expression from this short conversation as I said, “She is right there and can answer that for you.”
“Y’all haven’t given her a chance to say anything,” Madison shot back.
I gave my cousin’s wife a knowing look. “I haven’t given her a chance?” I muttered as a wry smirk tugged at my mouth.
“You hush,” Madison said as she smacked my arm, then hurriedly gestured us inside. “Come in. Everyone else should be heading back any minute.”
“I am Mallory, by the way,” Mallory awkwardly confirmed once we were inside the restored farmhouse, the chaotic sounds of kids playing and screaming filtering down from upstairs.
Madison just gave her a wide smile as she backed into the living room. “Oh, I know. We hear enough about you—”
“Madison,” I said in low warning.
A look crossed Madison’s face, as if she couldn’t figure out what was wrong with what she was saying. Which wasn’t her fault because, like the rest of my family, she’d been forced to listen to me go on and on about the girl standing at my side.
My best friend.
The fierce warrior who’d captured my heart and kept me at arm’s length.
The woman who’d slowly destroyed me over the past three months.
The enigma who’d managed to stun me multiple times with her reactions, all within a couple days.
But Mallory probably wouldn’t have reacted well to what Madison was about to say on a good day. Today wasn’t exactly a good day.
Just as Madison drew in a breath to continue, she abruptly clamped her lips shut. Her eyes darted between Mallory and me as if she was only just then noticing the unstable tension radiating between us.
Her eyes drifted up in surprise and my jaw twitched agitatedly when the same music from my truck started playing through the downstairs speakers.
I looked over at Emberly to see her slip her phone back into her pocket, a proud smile tugging at her mouth that she was clearly trying to fight, then focused on Madison again in time to see understanding fall across her features as she once again looked between Mallory and me.
Subtle . . .
“Right,” Madison began as she clapped her hands together, trying and failing to come up with anything to say after.
And I had the strongest urge to hand the baby back to her, grab Mallory, and leave.
But just when I’d thought things couldn’t get any more awkward, the door opened, and two of my other cousins, and one of their wives, poured into the house.
Within seconds, the three of them were talking over each other, calling out, “Hey,” “Man, you walked right past us,” and, “No way! Is this the Mallory?”
I risked a glance at the woman in question and felt my chest tighten at her carefully blank expression as she stared down the people in front of her—only one of whom she’d met before.
Swallowing uncomfortably, I turned for the kitchen instead, muttering, “I need a drink,” to Madison as I passed her.
Even though the afternoon had been eerily similar to all the other weekends I’d spent with my cousins over the past months—filled with a chaos that only came from the amount of kids running through the house, laughter from all of us being together, and more food than any of us knew what to do with—it had been tense, to say the least.
A tension that all came down to the fact that Mallory hadn’t said a word to me since we’d set foot in the house. Something I thought had only been obvious to me until my cousins went suspiciously quiet after we’d finished clearing lunch away.
My brow furrowed as I watched them.
The youngest, Sawyer, was trying to look into the living room where all the women were gathered—not that it was visible from where we were standing around the kitchen island—while Cayson and Hunter seemed to be listening as the women talked.
Well, all but Mallory, who I had no doubt was silently sitting there with the same observant expression she’d worn the past few hours.
“What happened?” Cayson finally asked me once Sawyer straightened. When I just lifted a brow in question, he gave me a deadpan look and explained, “Between you and Mallory.”
“Because y’all haven’t been like this any of the times I’ve seen her,” Hunter added.
Cayson grunted in agreement, and Sawyer lifted his hands before letting them fall to the granite island.
“Not that I would know,” he said, considering he hadn’t met Mallory before today, “but I wouldn’t have expected this from everything you’ve said about her.”
“This is just a lot for her,” I said with a shrug since it wasn’t technically a lie. “Y’all are a lot.”
My cousins stared at me before Cayson sighed. “Right, so what really happened? Because we’re not the only ones to notice,” he added meaningfully.
“Well, your wife clearly did,” I said, my voice dropping to a low hiss as I swung my arm in the general direction of the living room. “She came up out of nowhere and stopped me every time I tried talking to Mallory, all while playing music, like that was gonna solve everything.”
The corner of Cayson’s mouth tipped up. “The Chicks?” When I just glared at him, he shrugged and held out his hands in surrender before folding his arms across his chest. “It’s an Emberly thing, man. I don’t understand it, but it somehow works.”
“On what?”
“On people who are going through whatever y’all are,” he said pointedly.
“Right,” Sawyer took over for him, “so what happened?”
“And something clearly did,” Hunter added. “You said you didn’t want to do this right now when I caught up to you downtown. So, let’s do it now.”
Sawyer smacked his arm. “When were you gonna tell us?”
Hunter shrugged without looking at the other two. “Now.”
I forced myself to release my next breath slowly as I thought of what all to tell them, especially when the woman at the center of it all was in the other room.
Before I had the chance to decide on any one thing, Sawyer assumed, “You slept with her,” forcing a curse from me.
“No,” I hissed. “Why does everyone think that?”
The three of them met my demand with identical, meaningful looks that said I already knew the answer.
When they all continued waiting expectantly, I roughed a hand over my jaw before placing both hands on the island. Leaning closer, I dropped my voice so it was barely audible when I explained, “She’s just been letting me know recently that I’m not someone she trusts.”
Cayson’s eyebrow ticked higher. “Not that I buy that, but what’d you do for her to feel she had to make that known?”
My eyes narrowed in response. “Nothing. I—” My head snapped back. “What do you mean you don’t buy that? She’s made her point several times this weekend alone.”
“You didn’t answer.”
I quickly thought over the past three months again before admitting, “I wanted to date her. I wanted to try.”