Guard Me Close (Lucy Falls #6)

Chapter 1

ONE

TWIGGY

As far as parties go, tonight’s Friendsgiving ranks solidly in the “not a complete disaster” column.

I’ve definitely had worse…good times.

There’s food, for one. A ridiculous amount of it. There’s laughter. And nobody’s tried to make me play any party games that involve group sharing or eye contact for longer than three seconds.

Would I be happier at home in my leggings with multiple monitors open and three case files pulled up? Obviously.

But sitting at the long farmhouse table in Shiloh and Gunner’s dining room, watching the people I love most in the world argue over which type of cranberry sauce is better, doesn’t suck.

Also, the bourbon is excellent.

I take another careful sip, letting the burn curl down behind my ribs. Wyatt brought it to Gunner as a “you need to drink something other than that wine you make” early Christmas gift. It smells like oak and smoke and bad decisions. I like it.

I glance around the table, cataloguing everyone out of habit.

Shiloh, her bright curls pinned up, cheeks flushed from wine, is laughing at something her bestie Cotton just said. Gunner’s at her side, big hand absently running through her hair like he can keep both of them anchored with touch alone.

Brodie’s at the head of the table, one arm hooked around the back of Cotton’s chair. She’s rosy and round and beautiful, one hand resting over the swell of her belly as she watches her husband with that soft, melted look I pretend not to notice.

Sam, Shiloh’s brother, and Harriet, Wyatt’s wife, are mid-argument over mashed potatoes versus macaroni and cheese as the superior carb.

Sammy is making big Italian gestures with his fork, even though he’s about as Italian as apple-fucking-pie.

Harry is countering with statistics that I’m ninety percent sure she’s making up.

Although she was a college professor before she quit in order to start doing something with food chemistry and recipes, so I don’t know. She probably knows more than he does.

Jack stands near the doorway, not quite in the circle but not on the outside, either, leaning his shoulder against the wall with a bottle of beer in hand. Sheriff-mode never really turns off. Even here, even with us, he’s an apex predator in flannel.

I sit near the end of the table with my bourbon, my laptop resting against my shin, its weight comforting even when it’s asleep.

“Y’all are all…sooo nice,” I tell them, voice coming out thick around the edges. It feels like a good time to share the information currently swarming my chest. “I love you guys.”

Silence drops like a curtain.

Cotton is the first to recover. “Oh boy.” Her amber eyes go wide as she leans toward Brodie. “How many drinks has she had? You guys know she can’t hold her liquor.”

“I can too hold my liquor,” I protest, affronted. “I’m just…expressing appreciation. Big difference.”

“I watched you mix wine and bourbon, Twig.” Shiloh squints down the table at me. “First it was the white wine, then Harry brought the red, and now you’ve got straight whiskey. Are we…celebrating something I don’t know about?”

Gunner leans back in his chair, the wood creaking. “She is absolutely drunk. She’s on her fourth ‘I love you guys’ in twenty minutes.”

It’s possible he’s not wrong.

I am not drunk. I flip them a friendly bird instead of arguing, though, and tip my glass up for another sip. The whiskey burns a hot trail down my throat, but I don’t cough. I am Irish, after all.

We have standards.

“Eat some more mashed potatoes, Twig. You’re too skinny, anyway.” Gunner passes the bowl of mashed potatoes my way, and I push it back.

“I have eaten so much I’m about to burst. I’m fine. When I start puking, then I’m drunk.”

“I’m kind of jealous, to be honest,” Cotton says, rubbing the tiny bump of her belly. “I haven’t had the good stuff in too many months now.”

“Emery…” Brodies eyes her with playful warning. He’s the only one who calls her by her actual name.

“I think that is so sweet,” I say.

Again, there’s quiet. Harry clears her throat. “What’s sweet?”

“How he calls her by her real name, and she lets him get away with it. It’s sweet. You would light Wyatt up if he called you Harriet. And I’m the same way with my actual name.”

Gunner tips his head and puts a finger to his lip, as if he’s thinking. “What is your real name? I seem to have forgotten…oh yeah! Tallulah!” Laughter rings out.

I growl. “That’s it—” Gunner dodges the roll I throw at him.

Part of me floats above all of this, watching it like a scene in a movie I accidentally walked into. The long table, the soft overhead lights, the clink of glass and flatware, the blend of voices. The way everyone seems to slot into their places like they were always meant to be there.

There’s a strange, sharp ache under my breastbone.

I love them. That part is simple. I love Shiloh’s too-big heart, Jack’s gruff-cat loyalty, Brodie’s steady logic, Cotton’s sunshine. I’d die for any of them without thinking twice.

Sometimes, though—nights like this—I feel like I’m standing just outside a window, palms pressed to cold glass, watching everyone else’s life happen.

I’m the friend who fixes Wi-Fi, hacks into clouds when you forget your password, and tracks down the stalker who tried to kill you. The brain in the corner who makes sure the monsters are held at bay.

It’s an important job. It just…doesn’t come with plus-ones or shared tax returns.

“We should do a toast,” Harry says suddenly, lifting her wine glass. “To surviving another year in the murder capital of scenic Appalachia.”

“Harry,” Shiloh hisses.

“What? I’m kidding.” She shifts, face softening. “To—fine—to family, I guess.”

Everyone lifts their glasses. I lift my lowball, too.

“To family,” I echo. The word hits something hollow in me, rings there.

Brodie’s phone buzzes on the table and he glances down, thumb swiping the screen, then lays it back face-down again. His gaze catches mine, and for a second his features soften with a kind of big-brother worry that makes my throat tight.

By the time the dishes are cleared and we’ve migrated to the living room, the sharp edge of the bourbon has dulled into a fuzzy warmth that my brain keeps trying to catalogue and label.

Point-zero-eight blood alcohol content, I estimate. Functional but compromised.

My mother would be horrified; Dad would be properly proud.

Shiloh and Gunner claim the big couch, and Cotton curls up in Brodie’s lap like a cat.

Harry sprawls in one armchair and Wyatt another, with Sammy taking up more floor than is strictly necessary.

I sit cross-legged on the rug, back against the coffee table, my laptop open at my hip more out of habit than need.

Jack lingers by the window, fingers on the dial of his radio. Always half at work, never fully off-duty.

“I’d call that a success,” Shiloh declares, stretching her legs out to nudge my thigh with her foot. “Right? We did it. Friendsgiving. Nobody burned anything. Nobody cried.”

“Yet,” Harry mutters. “Wyatt and I still have to go home to a passel of kids. There will be tears, I can practically guarantee it.”

“We should try for another,” Wyatt says.

“I will stab you with a turkey fork,” she tells him sweetly.

Their bickering hums in the background, a familiar soundtrack. I let my gaze wander around living room—at the mismatched throw pillows, the photos on the mantle, the tiny sock pinned to the wall with a clothespin that says “Baby’s First Christmas Soon.”

Somewhere, my chest squeezes again. I press my thumbnail into the seam of my cup until it hurts.

“Twig’s thinking face is on,” Sammy observes lazily from the floor.

“I can hear it from here,” Brodie says. “Gears grinding.”

I roll my eyes. “I’m just…processing.”

Processing the fact that I’m happy and lonely at the same time. That I’m glad my friends are building families, even while some tiny part of me whispers it’s never going to be my turn.

Processing the fact that a quiet holiday in Lucy Falls never stays quiet for long.

As if summoned by my thought, Jack’s radio crackles.

He turns the dial, muting the chatter with two practiced flicks of his wrist. The sudden silence in its place is deafening. Whatever warmth I’d been floating on evaporates.

Lucy Falls has been peaceful for more than a year. No stalkers. No missing girls. No bodies turning up where they shouldn’t.

Peace in this town always feels like the pause before a second shoe drops.

Jack’s phone buzzes in his back pocket. He pulls it out, glances at the screen, and his shoulders stiffen in a way that makes my palms sweat.

He turns away from us slightly as he answers, voice low. “Brady.”

We all pretend not to listen. We’re terrible at it.

“Yeah,” he says after a moment. “I’m here. How bad?”

His jaw tightens. The muscles in his forearm flex as his fingers clench around the phone.

Every hair on my arms stands on end.

“Jack?” Harry asks finally, cautious.

Jack kills the call and slides his phone back into his pocket. When he faces us, his expression is carefully neutral, but the lines around his mouth are deeper than they were a minute ago.

“I’ve gotta go,” he says. “Hiker found a body up at the Falls.”

Shiloh’s hand flies to her throat. “No.”

“It could be a fall,” Sammy says quickly, tone forced-light. “Plenty of people wipe out on those rocks when they’re iced over.”

“We’re not going to jump to conclusions before we have facts,” Jack agrees. “Stay put. Lock your doors. I’ll keep you posted as soon as I know anything.”

He doesn’t look at me when he says it, but I feel the emphasis anyway. Lock your door.

My stomach flips. I’m one of the few of our group who live alone these days. Harry and Wyatt were the first to couple up, their relationship coming out of the blue when Harry discovered her husband wasn’t just cheating on her—he was a bigamist with an entire second family.