27. Hux
27
HUX
“Did you check her apartment?”
Of all the stupid questions Anton could ask, that is right up there.
I turn my head, looking down the long rough-cut bar at Pour Decisions toward my brother. Gus sits in between us, and right now that’s probably the only thing stopping me from reaching over and smacking him upside the head.
“Shit,” I say, letting the sarcasm flow freely. “Why didn’t I think of that? Milo, why didn’t I think to go see if Dolly went back to her place after she ran away from me pouring my heart out to her and showing her the playground I designed for her?”
I’d rushed through presenting Neverland Park to the town, leaping off the stage before anyone could stop and ask me questions. First place I stopped was the diner, immediately followed by her apartment, and then a last-ditch effort at her parents’. No sign of her anywhere.
Dolly didn’t just run away from me in that moment. She ran away from Hickory Hills.
Milo raises an eyebrow, his expression unmoving as he places a beer in front of me, ignoring my comment. “I went with preference over occasion.”
Good man…
I grab the pint glass, taking a sip and letting the tart taste linger for a second. Of all of Southern Brothers’ brews, the Silver Lining Sour is hands down my favorite. And absolutely the right call for the moment. Although Sob Story, one of the two original beers—which is undoubtedly what Milo was referring to when he said occasion—certainly fits the overall mood better.
Because if a stranger were to walk in and find the five of us Hayes men lined up, solidly perched on the stools, with Milo on the other side, they would certainly pick up on a very specific vibe.
Melancholy.
“Just sayin’…” Anton continues. “Only so many places one can go in Hickory Hills. One more thing to rule out before asking if she was abducted by aliens.”
Okay, I take it back. That’s the stupidest thing he could suggest.
“Pretty sure right now Hux is wishing you were abducted by aliens…” Ewan mutters to my right.
And ten points for baby brother…
“I heard that!” Anton calls down the bar.
“You were meant to.”
I shake my head, trying to tune them out. I need to focus. Especially since I’m not entirely sure what I’m focusing on. I can’t make heads or tails of what is going on.
All I know is this—I don’t understand what happened.
Oh, and that my heart is in a million pieces.
“At the risk of asking another dumb question,” Jace says hesitantly. “You texted the girls, right?”
I nod. Because that was the first thing I did when I discovered she wasn’t in any of the obvious spots. Well, the second thing—after calling her a couple of times. No one answered. Dolly, Alice, Emily—not a single one of them returned my calls or texts.
Hell, I’m this close to texting her sister, Whitney, to see if she’s heard from her. What she’s going to do from all the way in Valdosta, who the hell knows.
Nothing, that’s what she’d do. Because as desperate as I am to talk to Dolly right now, she is clearly feeling the exact opposite.
“I still don’t understand why you didn’t go after her,” Anton continues.
“I was respecting her wishes,” I grind out.
I’ve answered this. Told them exactly how it went down and that she said not to follow her, so I didn’t. Never mind being too stupefied by her response. It’s called being respectful.
Or so I’m telling myself.
If there was ever a time to not be respectful, maybe this was it.
“You should have gone after her,” he pushes. “Instead you just stood there like a chump.”
What did he just say?
I’m up and off my barstool faster than I can blink, a clattering noise filling the air as the wood and metal of the stool clang against the cement floor. Of course he doesn’t fucking understand. Anton wouldn’t know what to do with a woman if we locked him in a room with one. He hasn’t been in a relationship in who the fuck knows how long. But to comment on my actions—on my respecting her wishes—is too far.
“Want to say that again? To my face?” I challenge, closing the gap between him and me.
I shove him off his stool, ready to throw down. My heart is racing, anger thrumming through me like whitewater rapids, a mix of the hurt from earlier and his own instigating nonsense. I’ve had enough. He wants to poke the bear; he can fight him too.
“Hux! Knock it off!” Milo warns from behind the bar, as Gus inserts himself in between Anton and me.
I throw him a look, the desire to hit something—anything really, not necessarily Anton—still flowing through me. A desire I need to squash. Because it’s not going to solve anything.
Nodding, I hold my arms up in surrender, stepping back and picking up my stool to right it. It wasn’t all that long ago I was pulling Milo and his best friend, Brandt, apart in this same bar, so I owe it to him to not pull a repeat incident.
“He started it,” I mutter.
“Did not,” Anton counters.
“Did fucking too,” Jace comments. “Like you have any room to talk or give anyone advice.”
“I do just fine…”
I raise an eyebrow, sharing a look with Gus. Unless there are women popping up out of the peach groves we don’t know about, then Anton must have a different definition of “just fine.”
“Really? I bet you anything that you can’t find a date to Willa’s wedding,” Jace challenges.
We all stop, waiting on Anton’s reaction. Our little sister’s big deal is mere months away at the end of the summer and is going to be one hell of an event. Willa doesn’t do anything small.
“I’ll take that bet.”
“Really…” Gus says.
“Easy!” Anton notes.
“Easy?” Milo questions, drying a pint glass and then placing it on a stack. “Weren’t you just complaining that all the bridesmaids for said wedding were taken?”
Yes, yes he was. He lamented about the lack of “hot bridesmaids” for Dolly’s wedding too. He and Jace both. Small-town problems.
“That was a joke,” Anton defends.
“She has to be new,” I tack on, my ornery side rising up. Call it payback; call it something else. Either way, I can’t help but push back at the one who is always poking at us. “No asking Alice or Emily, or any one of the other girls we’ve been friends with for years.”
Or Dolly…
My heart clenches, the realization that I won’t be taking Dolly as my date to that wedding hitting me. All the little fantasies I’d had about dancing with her, teasing her about if she was going to try to catch the bouquet, and then taking her home and doing dirty, dirty things to her all fly out the window.
“Fine.” Anton grimaces. I can tell he’s not happy about the new stipulations, but he’s not one to back down. “Challenge accepted. Wait ’til y’all see what I make you do when I win.”
Cocky SOB…
Gus clears his throat. “You mean what each one of us makes you do when you show up to the wedding by yourself?”
Anton gives our oldest brother the single finger salute, something that should have me laughing my ass off. The thought of him failing—or if nothing else this is going to be hilarious to witness—would normally have me dancing in my seat. Tossing around ideas of what he has to do when he can’t hold up his end of the deal with my brothers. No doubt we’ll come up with something epic. Something that we’ll talk about for years to come.
Instead, the numbness inside starts to spread, sucking the joy out of it.
“Should I be worried that all my sons are in a bar this early in the day?”
Miss Belle’s sweet, almost soothing voice wafts through the air, surrounding us like a dense fog. A true Southern belle if there ever was one, she knows how to lay it on in such a way that no matter what she says, it can feel like both a warm hug and a slap in the face at the same time.
Which is exactly how this question lands.
“In my defense, I own the bar,” Milo remarks, shrugging a single shoulder.
“And the rest of you?” she inquires, sidling up to us, placing one hand on my shoulder and the other on Gus’s.
“Solidarity,” Gus answers.
“In a bar. At noon.” I shift just enough to see her judgmental expression take root, our mother not bothering to disguise her critical commentary. The lightness in her tone clues us in that she’s not pissed, but she’s certainly looking for answers. “I appreciate your commitment to the company, Gus, but I would like to think that at this point in his life, Milo has his business figured out enough that he doesn’t need the moral support of all five of you like this.”
“Who said we were supportin’ Milo?” Anton quips.
I take a long pull on my beer, silently wondering what got into him today that he feels like mouthin’ off to our mama is a good idea. I’m one thing, but her? Damn, dude. If he lives through this, we should consider trying to channel his feral middle child energy into something productive.
“Who said what you’re doing is being supportive?” Jace counters.
Mama squeezes my shoulder gently, distracting me from their antics. I take another sip of beer, trying to pretend like I don’t feel it, but she does it again, this time a little stronger, holding on for a beat or two more, letting me know she’s on to my tactics. So much for that.
“I hear your gift didn’t go over as expected.”
That’s an understatement…
“You could say that,” I grumble. “Of all the things I’ve done, all the shit I’ve pulled over the years, who would have thought that this would be what made her realize that I’m not good enough for her.”
The snap of Milo’s bar towel cracks, stinging my skin as it hits the side of my neck. The sharp pain is punctuated by a chorus of reactions from my entire family, the loudest of which echoes off the walls.
“Are you fucking out of your head?” Milo scolds.
“Are you stupid?” Anton asks.
“That’s enough beer,” Gus says, sliding the pint glass away from me.
I snatch it back, picking it up to try and chug what’s left, but it’s intercepted by our mother.
“Huxley Adams Hayes.”
Oh shit. Triple named. I am in deep shit.
Miss Belle says each name so clearly, so precise and pronounced, you’d think it was a stand-alone sentence. And if I thought that her expression earlier when she was giving us grief over starting our day drinking early was judgy—well, I was wrong. Because the look she’s wearing now could stop traffic.
“What are you goin’ on about?” she continues, that same sweet, Southern I could just as easily hug you as I could whoop you woven in.
“She deserves better than me. Everyone knows it. Grandma Dolly even said so.”
I sigh, letting the little bit of pride I have left deflate out of me. That last tidbit has always been my secret, but after today, I might as well share it. Dolly certainly made it clear, running away like she did.
“She did not,” Miss Belle corrects me, her voice incredulous. “I know for a fact that Miss Dolly believed no such thing.”
I spin off my stool, planting my feet on the ground and facing my mother. My heart thunders, all my muscles contracting as she stares me down. I might be a thirty-six-year-old man, tear down trees for a living, and even have a few inches on my fairly tall mother, but this former beauty queen does scare me a little.
Okay, more than a little.
“She did.” I nod, standing strong in knowing what I know. Grandma Dolly’s words haunt me, so I’m not likely to forget them. “It was the Rhythm and Brews right after we’d graduated from college. I had been working up the nerve to finally tell Dolly that I wanted more. That I wanted to break our pinky promise. That was the year where the Enrights’ goat ended up on stage in a dress. Which I still deny any involvement in.”
A single, impeccably manicured eyebrow lifts on Miss Belle’s face, her … and I still don’t believe you coming in loud and clear. But I press on.
“Standing there, in all the chaos of getting the goat off the stage, the two of us laughing our asses off, Grandma Dolly looked right at me and said, “ Maybe it’s a good thing y’all vowed to only ever be friends, Huxley Hayes, because you are nowhere near good enough for our girl… ”
A shiver rips through me, those words just as painful now as they were that day. No—I take that back. They’re more so now. As of this morning they’ve grown new barbs. New thorns to cut through my skin, making me bleed. Like swallowing glass each time I try and push them down.
Warm, loving arms wrap around me. Instantly, I feel like a toddler again, the safety of my mother’s love creating a bubble that makes everything okay. Even a broken heart.
“I want you to listen to me, very closely,” she whispers, only loud enough for me to hear. “Because I am your mama, and I know things.”
I nod, trusting her.
She lets go, locking our gaze.
“Son, you misunderstood Miss Dolly. Or maybe she misunderstood you. But that was not her disapproving of you.”
Excuse you?
“That was her issuing a challenge. She was tired of the two of you missing what was so perfectly clear to the rest of us, so she thought maybe a little reverse psychology would work. That Mr. I-Never-Back-Down-From-a-Challenge would rise to the occasion and think he was sticking it to the man. Or well, the woman. When you didn’t, we realized that either you had more respect for your elders than we thought, or maybe there truly wasn’t something there.”
Reverse psychology. Are you fucking kidding me?
All this time I’ve thought that the one person whose approval I needed, I didn’t have. When in reality, it’d been signed, sealed, and delivered long ago.
Holy shit…
“You mean to tell me we almost watched Dolly walk down the aisle toward someone else because you misunderstood some reverse psychology bullshit?” Gus asks, incredulous. “I don’t want to hear anything about my smudging a phone number ever again.”
“Nope, you’re still gonna hear about it,” Jace quips.
I tune them out, trying to wrap my head around this news. Around the idea that I’ve been working off some bad data. Hope begins to rise in me. I could turn this around.
Until I remember.
Dolly walking away from us—telling me that she can’t do this—has nothing to do with what I may have misinterpreted more than a decade ago. That was all her.
“Doesn’t change anything,” I say, deflating again. “She still?—”
“Hux, go fight for her,” Ewan declares. “Go be the guy who stood in the peach grove that day and told us that he was just happy being the man in her life. Be the man in her life.”
When Ewan got so wise, I don’t know. But his words hit me like a sledgehammer through concrete. I promised to be the man in her life, no matter what. And that’s what I’m going to be.
Which means talking to her and figuring out what’s wrong.
Without another word, I push past Miss Belle, heading for the door. I still don’t have a fucking clue where she could be, but I won’t find her by sitting on my ass in Pour Decisions.
Here’s to figuring this out.