Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
VALEN
After lunch, Madi insists on an “insider’s tour” of the town.
“You can’t appreciate Happiness without seeing it properly,” she declares, herding us out the door. “Plus, how will you protect Clover if you don’t know where the best hiding spots are?”
I pause on the threshold. Does she think protection is a game of hide-and-seek? The way she ushers us along as though we’re a bunch of preschoolers makes me believe she might.
Main Street is busier now than when we drove through earlier. People openly gape at us when we walk past. It doesn’t help that Madi introduces us as the Fit Five to literally every stranger we cross paths with.
Clover wasn’t kidding about the gossip network. The speculation is almost a physical thing. Especially when people start standing in windows, waiting for us to walk by as if they each got a text message saying the king of England was making his rounds.
“That’s Agnes,” Clover whispers, nodding toward an elderly woman on a bench. The infamous Agnes. Does she have a glass eyeball? And is that Pothole the pig she has on a leash? “She’ll have your story by dinner.”
“How?” I ask, tearing my gaze away from the nosy stranger currently sizing me up as though I’m her next offering.
“Witchcraft,” Elle deadpans. “We’re pretty sure she’s psychic.”
“She’s seventy-one and bored,” Madi corrects. “But yes, be afraid. If Savvy were here, she’d tell you a story that’d make your hair stand on end. But the short version? Don’t mess with Agnes.”
The group takes on a somber note at the mention of Savvy, who went home to rest—a reminder that she hasn’t been out of the hospital all that long and still has a protracted recovery ahead of her.
It only takes a moment for one bad actor to change the course of so many lives.
Savvy was lucky with her ex—her injuries could have been so much more severe.
I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure Terra doesn’t even get a chance at Clover.
There’s no way that kind of luck will hold up twice in a row.
We stop at the Chug first. Madi opens the door, and we’re instantly hit with the scent of coffee, vanilla, and something spicy.
“Oh my fuck.” Sterling makes a beeline for the coffee stand he didn’t have time to visit earlier. “You have organic beans.” He practically beams at Blissy, and it’s a reminder that Sterling is a snob about certain things. Organic everything is one of them.
The Chug is packed full of people—some sitting, working on laptops, some milling about the coffee stand. There’s a group in the corner wearing football T-shirts, arguing over a play.
One of the boys runs toward us, and Clover gives him a big grin, so I don’t intervene. He grabs her in a giant hug, picking her up off the floor and swinging her around. “So glad you’re home,” he says. “We have a big game this weekend, but I’ll catch up with you at Uncle Braxton’s, okay?”
“Go,” Clover shoos him back to his friends before turning to me. “That’s Sage, Braxton and Greyson’s nephew.”
I stare at him until he rejoins his teammates. The Reyes men really did pack up their entire lives and move across the country for the women they love. By the looks of things, they have zero regrets.
Behind us, a group of older women are entrenched in a loud debate, with one woman waving a book that has a shirtless man on the cover.
“Book club,” Clover says, smiling at the discordant chaos happening over cups of tea.
Several people walk over to greet Clover with hugs and warm words.
“We missed you,” Moose says, squeezing her hands. “Town’s just not the same without you, kid.”
“Moose.” Her voice cracks. “I wasn’t even gone very long.”
“Long enough that we noticed.” He scowls in my direction, narrows his eyes, then huffs through his nose. “You take care of her, you hear me? There’s not a kinder, gentler soul in all of Georgia.”
Clover’s blush could start a forest fire, but she hugs the older man and tells him she’ll see him at poker tomorrow night.
He points to his eyes with his pointer and middle fingers, then directs them at me. The universal I’m watching you sign—obviously a favorite of all these old guys, and a little sliver of Happiness worms its way into my heart.
Witnessing Clover here—surrounded by people who love her, in a place that feels like it grew up around her—I understand.
This isn’t just her home.
It’s where her heart learned to love again.
And suddenly, I finally understand what I was fighting for all those years ago.
Not just her safety.
Not just her freedom.
I was fighting for this—for her to have a place where people light up when she walks into a room. Where she’s not the girl who escaped a cult, but the woman she was meant to be—the town sweetheart.
The woman who stress-cleans and always hugs her neighbors.
I lost my memories so she could make these. And standing here, hearing her laugh at something Moose says, I realize it’s worth every blank space in my mind.
She was worth it.
She is worth it.
“You okay?” Chief appears at my side, holding two cups of coffee.
“Yeah. Just…seeing it. Everything she had to lose by facing Terra the way she did.”
“What she still has,” Chief corrects. “She brought you here, didn’t she? In her own quiet way, Clover has always brought people together. She’s not losing anything, son. She’s gaining a whole lot.”
I hope he’s right.
When we return to the inn that evening, we’re commandeered by a couple of old ladies before we even make it inside.
“There you boys are,” says the woman I now know is scary Agnes. She’s sitting on the porch swing, and her glass eye appears to move, even when she doesn’t.
Next to her is the woman from the diner—Betty, I think. “Thought you might be hungry,” she says, holding up a plate of questionable leftovers.
Pops, Madi’s grandfather, sits in a rocking chair on the opposite side of the porch, scowling at the two women.
“You don’t fool anyone, Agnes.” Pops harrumphs from his side of the porch. “You’re here to see if these boys are single ’cause your granddaughter just left that jackass Marcus.”
“Hazel isn’t the only single one,” Betty says with a waggle of her hairless brows.
“Is she…flirting with us?” Sterling practically chokes on his words.
“Agnes. Betty,” Madi says in greeting while side-stepping us in her quest to the front door. “Don’t badger my guests.”
“Never,” Betty scoffs while Agnes’s glass eyeball reads us the riot act. “Besides, you’re the one who introduced them as the Fit Five. What did you expect would happen?”
“Not that the over-seventy crowd would be the first cougars on my porch, that’s for sure.” Turning to us, she waves us inside. “Ignore these two. They’re only here to give Pops grief because he intentionally ruined the plot twist in their book club read this month.”
“It was made into a movie ten years ago,” Pops grumbles. “How’s I supposed to know they hadn’t watched the damn thing yet? It’s on Heartmark every other weekend, for crying out loud.”
“Let’s go, boys.” Madi doesn’t have to tell us twice as we push and shove our way inside the inn, leaving Pops to fend for himself.
“Are things always so…wacky around here?” Roman asks while herding us into one of the inn’s parlors for a briefing.
“Always,” Madi confirms. She places a plate of chocolate chip cookies and a pitcher of freaking milk on the table. It’s like I woke up and landed in Santa’s workshop.
And I don’t hate it.
Neither does Chase, considering he’s the first to shove a whole cookie into his mouth.
“We have men and women positioned all through town,” Roman says while Chase fights Sterling for another cookie.
“Rip installed cameras on Main Street—with the mayor’s blessing—and motion cameras on the roads leading in and out of town, but the neighbors are taking their jobs very seriously.
Rip had at least twenty visitors asking everything from if he was with the government to if he was an exotic dancer, so it took him twice as long as it should have. ”
“Classic.” Chase chuckles. “It’s like we went to bed in a Tom Clancy novel and woke up in a Heartmark movie.”
“At least it’s done,” Roman grumbles. “Unless Terra treks into town through some remote area off the coast, we’ll see her coming.”
Grant grabs two more cookies, and Chase leaps to his feet. “How many have you had?”
“It’s not my fault you’re too slow, little brother.” Grant sits back and shoves an entire cookie into his mouth too. We all freeze for three full seconds. One thing is for sure—Grant is not his typical self here in Happiness.
What the fuck happened to my uptight, slightly anal cousin? He winks at me. Grant fucking winks. At me. And the organ in my chest shifts again with a…rightness—a sense of belonging that I’ve kept at arm’s length.
And for what?
Terra’s stolen so much more than just my memory, and I’ve never hated another person more.
“Focus,” Roman barks.
Ah, I guess Roman has taken over big brother duties while Grant is on a mental vacation from his faculties. “The local sheriff has been briefed—sort of.” Roman grimaces. “I left out the incriminating parts.”
“We’re as ready as we can be,” Sterling says, and even he appears relaxed. “But we should go over the plan in case she shows up.”
“When,” Clover corrects from the doorway. “When she shows up.”
Dark circles have formed under her eyes. She’s exhausted.
“When,” Grant agrees gently. “When you don’t turn up at the safe house we’re using as a decoy, she’ll search for you here.”
“And then what?” Greyson asks as he rolls Savvy’s wheelchair up to the impromptu meeting table. “Contain her? Turn her over to the authorities?”
“It’s not quite that simple,” Sterling says. “She has leverage.” He scans Grant first, then me. “Information she’s threatened to release. We can’t just turn her over without first understanding the consequences.”
“Grant’s working on that,” Roman says. “He’s meeting with an FBI contact tomorrow. Until then, we keep Clover safe and wait.”
“I hate waiting,” Clover mutters.
“I know.” I pull her closer, and she leans into my side while everyone nods their heads in agreement.
Family.
That’s what we are now.
It’s not me protecting a target. It’s not only my cousins backing me up.
It’s an entire community, an entire town, deciding that one of their own is worth fighting for.
And for some reason, they’ve adopted my cousins and me into the fold.
It’s a gift, really. One I won’t take for granted. One I’ll fight to protect.
Because Clover, and our future, is worth all that…and more.