Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
GRIFFIN
When the song ended, the look of awe on Jules’s face ended with it—like a spell breaking. She stepped behind a woman and disappeared. The floating feeling vaporized and I crashed back to earth.
At the crowd’s insistence, twenty minutes later, Cash and Charlie were still on stage singing their hit mashup “Hard to Love You / Hard to Leave You.” James, Theo, and I killed time at the dartboard.
Maddie and Sophie tore up the dance floor.
Maggie, Bowen, and Jules sat in the booth sharing a basket of fries.
Two guys had already stopped by to talk to my wife.
She’d sent them both quickly on their way.
But I kept glancing over, my stomach in a knot, because the next guy—and as beautiful as my wife was, there would be a next guy—might be the one to convince her to take a turn around the dance floor.
And I’d have to stand here watching. The only thing stopping me from going over and standing guard was the fact that she was glancing at me almost as much as I was at her.
“Dude,” James said. “I’m telling you. Let her go.”
“No,” I growled. “I can’t.”
“Good,” Theo said, releasing another dart. Bullseye. Theo was unnervingly good at anything that took aim. He said it was all the video games he’d played. “Juliette is awesome. And she loves you.”
“Did she say that?” I asked.
“No.” He tossed another dart and hit another bullseye. “But she looks at you differently than the rest of us.”
“Yes,” James said. “Like she’s enjoying destroying him, one piece at a time.”
“Would you stop it?” Theo turned to face him, voice tight.
“Your incessant woman-hating is nonsensical, and honestly, getting old. Sage didn’t choose to leave you.
She adored you, man. She was so excited about the life you were building together.
You think she wanted to miss out on raising Willow with you?
” He waited, jaw set. “You want to be angry at God, go ahead. I don’t blame you. But leave Sage out of it.”
“Screw you,” James said. “I get to feel however I want to feel.”
“You do,” I said calmly. “But…”
“What?” he snapped. “If you want to say something, say it.”
I shook my head. Obviously, he was struggling. I didn’t need to cause more friction.
Apparently, Theo had no problem causing friction, though.
“Willow’s going to feel it,” he said pointedly.
“Do you think Sage deserves to be hated by her own daughter? If roles were reversed, Sage wouldn’t be angry at you, and she would do everything in her power to make sure Willow knew all the best parts of you. ”
Exactly.
“Whatever.” James stalked to the board to retrieve the darts.
Theo’s gaze flashed over my shoulder. “Incoming.” His lips pressed together like he didn’t have time to say more.
“Oh, my gosh,” a female voice tittered, and I was thirteen again. “I thought that was you.” Kynzleigh Brown stepped in front of me.
Kynzleigh—whose parents had overcorrected with her first name to compensate for her dull last name—was my first crush.
A petite blonde around five-foot-three, she looked the same as the day we’d graduated high school.
Same hair, same pasted-on smile. She even stood the same, with her hip cocked to one side.
The tattoo was new, though. Framed by low-rise jeans and a crop top, the ink circled her belly button—part snowflake, part compass, part please notice me.
My eyebrow raised as I edged away.
“Griffin Dupree.” She moved in closer, slapping me on the chest. “Wow.” Her gaze traveled up the length of my body, slow and obvious. “That was you on the wall in Hollister last summer when I went to buy a bikini, wasn’t it?”
Theo just stared at us, no help at all.
“Yes,” I said flat. It was nicer than what she deserved.
You see, Kynzleigh was a mean girl through and through, and she’d known I had it for her bad.
Three weeks before summer vacation of our eighth-grade year, she’d lured me in, making me believe she’d finally noticed me.
For three weeks, we were that couple. We walked the halls of Seddledowne Middle School together.
Spent hours on the phone, wrote each other letters, and promised to be exclusive through high school.
She was the first girl I ever told, “I love you.”
So imagine my surprise when I showed up at the spot she’d picked for our first kiss and found an envelope addressed to me, taped to the wall.
Inside was a letter thanking me for helping her win a bet with her friends, and she “hoped I understood” that while we would not be continuing our relationship, it was all in good fun.
As a consolation, she gave me a five-dollar Starbucks gift card.
A freaking gift card.
The devastation and humiliation took years to get over. So I was about as excited to run into Kynzleigh now as I would be to gargle broken glass.
She slapped me on the right pec again and giggled. “Oh, don’t be so modest. You had a full-on glow-up.” Her eyes widened, and she glanced at Theo like they were best buddies. “Amirite?”
Theo, bless him, just tilted his head like he was trying to figure out how she’d made it this far in life.
“So.” She stretched, arms above her head, forcing her crop top up another three inches, probably trying to get her money’s worth out of the tattoo. “What’ve you been up to? I saw that you graduated from Virginia Tech, right?”
I raised one eyebrow. “Correct.”
The polite thing would’ve been to ask her about wherever she’d graduated from. If she’d even graduated. I couldn’t remember what college she’d gotten into. William and Mary? Virginia Commonwealth University? Longwood? I hadn’t looked her up on social media a single time since high school.
“C’mon, silly.” She thumped my chest again. “Tell me about yourself. You’re a firefighter, right?”
Clearly, she’d done some digging. “Yes.”
She puffed, looking annoyed at my one-word answers.
“C’mon, Griff,” James said, lining up his second dart. “Tell her all about the shirtless firefighter calendar.” He waggled his brows. “Griffin makes one heckuva July.”
I groaned inwardly and glared at him. Yes, I’d been on a firefighter calendar. Our unit had done it as a fundraiser.
Kynzleigh made a sound like she’d just won something. “A shirtless firefighter calendar? Where can I get one?”
“Sorry,” I said. “They’re all sold out.”
“Not true,” James said. “Mom has at least twenty at home in a box somewhere.” He winked at Kynzleigh. “No worries, I’ll hook you up.”
Kynzleigh squealed and pumped her fist. “Yes.”
I rolled my jaw, trying to bleed off the pressure. It was that or deck my brother in the face. “Just remember, Jim-Bo, I know where Dad keeps the bander.”