Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Lennon
Nevan kisses me, and I let him.
For one whole second, I let him, one warm and gentle second that tastes of banana bread, birthday, and something distinctly Nevan, which is a combination I did not previously know existed but turns out to be extremely compelling.
My fingers curl into the fabric of his hi-vis vest without my permission as the fairy lights above us blur into soft gold, and for a moment, the world reduces itself to exactly this.
His mouth against mine.
His hand slides into my hair.
The swing creaks faintly under me, and he kisses as if he means it, like he’s been thinking about it. But then my brain, which has apparently been on a brief unauthorized holiday, comes back online.
Paul.
Ridge.
The stomach-dropping awareness of both of them, and the fact that I am currently kissing neither of them, and the further fact that I have been kissing neither of them, plural, in various states of dreaming, waking, and general emotional chaos, and that Nevan does not know any of this, and that I have just…
This is Nevan.
Oh God.
I pull back.
My hand comes up between us on pure instinct, fingers spread wide, and I stare at them in the fairy lights like I’ve been trained to, counting quickly, waiting for them to look…
Five. Normal. All of them exactly the right shape.
“Lemon. You okay, baby?”
I look up at him.
He’s still crouched between my knees, one hand braced on the swing rope beside me, the other hovering in the space between us like he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to close the distance again.
His eyes are doing the thing I can’t look at directly right now, being open, warm, and patient in a way that makes the whole situation approximately forty percent worse.
Which is, objectively, a fair response to me doing a reality check immediately after he kissed me.
I press his shoulder for him to back up and stand, and then I walk, not away from him exactly but forward, because it’s the only direction my body has access to right now, and my brain is doing the emotional equivalent of a blender that someone turned on without the lid.
I have been kissed by—or kissed—or done things adjacent to kissing with—three separate men, which is three more than the six months before that, and I am apparently handling this by developing feelings for all of them simultaneously like some kind of catastrophic overachiever.
I am, without question, a terrible person.
I push back through the door into the inn and immediately into the noise, the bodies, and the Halloween playlist, and Jasper materializes out of nowhere as if he has a radar for when I’m about to do something stupid.
“Hey,” He grabs my arm. “What happened? Where’s Nev?”
“I don’t know.” I gently remove his hand and keep moving.
“Lenny, your face is doing the thing—”
“I’m fine, Jasper.”
He doesn’t look convinced, but a guest cuts between us with a happy birthday banner, and I use the gap without guilt.
I slip through the crowd toward the front door, moving faster than I technically need to, because I can hear Nevan behind me now—not close, but there, his voice doing the apologetic thing it does when guests stop him, and he can’t be rude about it.
I need about forty-five seconds of air and open space to figure out what is happening in my chest before I can use words about it.
I push through the front door and stop on the porch, pulling in a breath of cold air.
The cold helps, marginally. My face is still hot, and my chest is still doing the blender thing, and I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to say to Nevan when he catches up with me, which he will, because that’s what Nevan does.
He shows up. He crouches in fairy lights with his hands on my face and kisses me as if he means it and then looks at me with those gray eyes all open, patient, and…
God. I kissed him back.
I kissed him back, and it was good, and I felt it.
I also thought about two other people in the same breath, which makes it clear that I don’t deserve any of them, and standing out here in a yellow dress, having a crisis about it isn’t fixing anything.
I should go back inside, find Nevan, and say something that resembles a coherent…
Derek’s car pulls into the lot, my poor, already overreacting heart does a full, traitorous flip, because Ridge is in the passenger seat.
This development is really not helpful.
But he came.
Derek goes to the back and hauls the wheelchair out of the trunk, wheels clicking softly over the uneven gravel as he brings it around to Ridge. He pulls the door open, and I can see from here that they’re arguing about something.
Ridge’s hand cuts through the air in frustrated movements. Derek’s jaw is tight as he argues back, but Ridge gestures toward the porch. I look around at the guests with drinks and the staff clustered by the garden gate, hearing the pockets of laughter drifting across the cold evening.
It’s an audience.
A couple in matching costumes crosses right in front of the car, and they glance at Ridge and Derek curiously. Ridge’s gaze lowers, and his shoulders curl inward.
Shit, have I asked for too much?
Derek crouches beside the open door, but whatever he says has Ridge shaking his head. Hard.
As if he can feel me watching, Ridge’s eyes snap to mine. I smile at him, and his face shifts. It’s not relief exactly, not even confidence. More like… resolve.
He draws in a slow breath and rolls back his shoulders, then he reaches for the door frame. Derek moves out of his way immediately, but still hovers, ready to help.
Ridge ignores him.
His fingers tighten on the frame as he transfers into the wheelchair. It doesn’t look graceful or easy, but stubbornness gets Ridge exactly where he means to be.
By the time I realize I’m moving, I’m already halfway down the steps. When I reach the bottom of them, Ridge is rolling up the path toward me, jaw set, eyes fixed straight ahead as if he lets himself look anywhere else, he might falter.
I walk faster, and when his gaze flicks to me, one corner of his mouth lifts. “Nice costume, sweetheart. Very you. I particularly like the—”
A hand closes around my arm, and Paul spins me around. For one second, my brain simply produces the word no, not because I don’t want him here, but because it’s too much.
Paul, Ridge, and Nevan are all here, within approximately thirty feet of each other and of me, and I’m shivering in a yellow dress on the edge of a breakdown, and…
“Lennon.” Relief moves across Paul’s expression. “I’m so sorry I’m late, I tried to call but…” He balks when he sees my face and drops his hands. “Are you all right?”
I try to produce a normal expression. “You’re here.”
“I’m here. I wanted to be here earlier, but I had to stay with Mrs. Vaughn for a bit. She wasn’t doing well. Tessa had an episode.”
The world drops out from under my feet.
Everything else goes thin around the edges. The porch, the party, the stupid yellow dress.
All of it.
“An… episode?”
“With her breathing.” He searches my face, and that quiet clinical attention I usually find steadying is unbearable.
“They’re talking about managed oxygen in a hospital setting…
” He pauses, almost looking like he regrets telling me.
“I know that’s a lot to process. Do you want to go somewhere and talk about it? ”
My throat closes so fast it hurts.
No. I want my best friend.
I want my mom.
I want the people I would call about this.
I want to be the kind of person who knows what to do next.
“Hello, Dr. Bennett,” Ridge says from beside me. “Fancy meeting you here.”
Something crosses Paul’s face that isn’t quite surprise but is close to it.
“Ridge.” There’s a beat, long enough for the air to fill with tension. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”
They know each other?
Of course they do. This town probably has a group chat.
Ridge tilts his head. “Didn’t know you ventured out after dark.”
“Guys,” Derek mutters.
Ridge chuckles. “Should we get you a nightlight?”
Derek smacks the back of Ridge’s head. “Knock it off.”
Ridge rubs the spot dramatically. “What? Can’t I joke a little with my former best friend?”
Derek sighs and answers him, but I barely hear any of the conversation that follows. The words are there, the familiar crackle of Ridge’s sarcasm and Paul’s cool replies, but they slide past me, while I’m unable to catch them.
Tessa had an episode.
Breathing.
Hospital.
Oxygen.
What the hell am I doing here?
I’ve been out here under fairy lights kissing people while she can’t breathe.
While she’s fighting for air, and I’m…
God. I’m such a terrible person.
I have done nothing, I have solved nothing, I have just been here accumulating people, complications, and—
“Lemon.” Nevan steps up beside me, out of breath. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have kissed you like that. I didn’t mean to make you run, please just—”
“You kissed her?” Ridge and Paul ask in perfect unison. Both of them turn toward Nevan, and both of them start talking.
“You—”
“Why would—”
The absurdity of it would almost be funny if I weren’t already halfway to breaking.
They’re both going again, overlapping, pointless, and territorial, and I stand in the middle of it, feeling a very quiet and very final sensation settle into place inside me.
None of them needs this.
Needs me.
They’ll be fine. They were fine before I got here, and they’ll find their way back to fine after. I complicated everything I touched, and the kindest thing I can do now is stop touching it and do the one thing I actually came to Vernonia to do.
Tessa needs me.
“I have to go,” I say, and nobody hears it.
Derek is the only one looking at me. I grab his sleeve and pull him aside while the argument keeps going behind us.