Chapter Twenty-Four
Wedding may your life together be full of love, laughter, and most importantly, commitment. I love both of you.”
Reaching around Milo, I tuck the sailboat in my palm and help him clap his hands together. Complicated emotions lodge in my throat when Dad hugs Ember tightly, then Graham. His and Graham’s embrace is longer, and when Dad whispers something to him, Graham tosses his head back in unrestrained laughter.
Raw longing hits me square in the center of my chest.
It tangles with a healthy awareness of my father. His thick salt-and-pepper hair, his steady hand on Ember’s shoulder, his easy smile as he pauses on the way back to our table to shake John Byrant’s hand.
My dad is alive , he’s truly and wholly living.
Cheyenne’s dad is not. Tripp’s still alive, and I hope to God he can pull through the coma and recover. But Cheyenne doesn’t have him like I have my dad, regardless of how little I know or trust him.
Milo doesn’t have his dad, either , a tiny, unwelcome voice whispers in my head.
Awareness of this burns in my chest all through the first dances. Ember and Graham slow dance against a tangerine sky to Hey Girl, stealing kisses and murmuring words and laughing. John and Ember sway gently to I Loved Her First , father and daughter smiling through tears. Graham holds Hazel close during I’ll Stand by You , just like he would’ve done with our mother had she been here.
I should be able to shake it, this ache in my chest, if only for tonight. But as the DJ opens the dance floor and Mr. C comes across the speakers for the Cha Cha Slide , I can’t. Indi and Milo pull me onto the dance floor between Cheyenne and Jolene, and I try to rival my brothers’ dance moves, but I’m off.
Cheyenne knows it.
She dances with everything she’s got, that silky dress highlighting every last curve of her body. Laughter softens her mouth when Jordan spins her around, and she lifts her hair from her neck at the chorus of the second song. I want to trace my fingertip across the tan line on the middle of her back, and follow it up with soft kisses.
I want to line our arms up and draw the infinity sign from my freckles to hers.
I want my life to make sense again.
Three songs later, everyone is breathing hard as we go back to our table. Milo’s tie is tucked in Cheyenne’s palm, and my dress shirt is partly untucked. Milo tugs on my pinkie insistently, darting a nervous glance around and bouncing slightly.
“I gotta go potty,” he says.
“I’ll—”
“I’ll take him,” Indi interrupts Cheyenne. “You two go dance to this slow song.”
The look that passes between Cheyenne and Indi should set off warning bells, but I’m excellent at ignoring those. You don’t get to this level of my career without a healthy dose of ignorance.
My real career, that is. If it’s even still considered that.
Do I still want it to be my career?
I shake away the thought and hold a hand out to Cheyenne. “May I have this dance, m ’lady?”
Cheyenne presses a hand to her heart. “I thought you’d never ask!”
Tension unknots itself in my abdomen, and I wink as Cheyenne slips her palm into mine. Watching her interact with Milo throughout the ceremony and during dinner, I’d have never guessed she hadn’t even known him for only two months. But I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been waiting to get her alone. To let my hand find that curve in her waist, to inhale lavender and vanilla on her warm skin, to talk to her.
To tell her about last night.
“Milo mentioned something interesting earlier.” Cheyenne wraps her arms around my neck, fingers toying with my curls, hips aligned with mine. “Something you didn’t tell me. Any idea what I’m talking about?”
I have a very good idea, which is why I say, “He wasn’t supposed to tell you that I give all my broccoli to the dog.”
“We don’t have a dog.”
“Exactly, Cheyenne,” I say, but I didn’t miss the we in her statement. “Figure that one out.”
She missteps, the sole of her heel pressing into my dress shoe. “Colton.”
“Who gave out my name?” I make a show of looking around, and when I accidentally lock eyes with Jordan, he frowns at me. I cross my eyes dorkily, Jordan rolls his, and I shift my attention back to Cheyenne. “Can you point them out for me? It’s imperative that no one knows this high profile celeb is here tonight.”
This time, she very intentionally steps on my foot. I yelp in exaggerated pain. Cheyenne pinches my neck and hisses my name through clenched teeth. The couple next to us frowns and shuffles away. I bite back a smile and lower my mouth until it’s near Cheyenne’s ear.
“Relax your jaw, sweetheart,” I murmur, pressing my thumb to her jawline. “It’s unhealthy to clench your teeth so hard.”
It probably shouldn’t thrill me so much, the way her body shudders closer to mine from my touch, but I’m only a man. A very human, very red-blooded man who is very thrilled by it. In fact, if we weren’t surrounded by so many onlookers, I’d see how she reacts to other touches.
My mouth on hers, for one.
Cheyenne straightens when I resettle my hand on her waist, and I know the moment is broken. “Colton. Milo told me what he told you last night.”
I look away. Dad and Hazel dance on the other side of the floor, his hands secure at her lower back and her own arms wrapped around his neck, her head resting under his stubbled chin. The way they hold each other, the way they sway mindlessly, is so familiar. So comfortable, so compatible.
I want nothing more than to be that for Cheyenne.
She turns my face to hers. “Collie. You can talk to me, remember?” She taps my left chest. “Tell me how it made you feel.”
“When he said he wished I was his daddy?”
She nods patiently.
If we weren’t at my little brother’s wedding—the first wedding in my family—I’d take this conversation somewhere else. Where sweat wouldn’t gather between my shirt collar and neck, where we could be truly alone. But we are where we are. I blow out a breath and my hand unintentionally tightens on her hip.
“It made me feel inadequate,” I admit quietly. “I mean, I know that he loves Lucky Charms and sailboats. But what about when he actually misses our mother, and I have to tell him she’s gone? I’m old enough to be his father, but I’m actually his half-brother, Cheyenne. What about when his birthday rolls around, and I don’t know his favorite cake flavor without asking him? Even if I wanted to stay, even if I wanted to…” Make him permanently mine. I can’t say that, so I shake my head, frustrated. “But when he said that, my automatic first thought was me too. I could never treat him the way Vincent Pierre treated him. But that doesn’t make sense, because how do I know I wouldn’t?”
Cheyenne senses I have more to say, because she stays quiet. She absently brushes a fly from my shoulder and rubs a finger lightly up and down the side of my neck. Any other time, the gesture would derail my thoughts completely.
Right now, I focus on the groove between her eyebrows. It’s easier than looking directly in those sensitive blue irises of hers. This woman has seen me at my worst, repeatedly, and yet here she stands in my arms.
“I felt needed,” I say hoarsely. Uncomfortable as it was, Milo’s limbs pressed into mine in that too-small bed, it had been abundantly clear. “Not for my career, not for my money, not even for my family name—whether good or bad. I felt needed for the solitary purpose of being needed . Like… I don’t know.” I pause, wishing the twinkling bulbs overhead could give me the right words. “Like I really matter to him. That scares the crap out of me, Cheyenne, because I’d expect him to feel that way about Indi. She’s been there his whole life. But me?”
Cheyenne is quiet, but I don’t think it has to do with what I just said.
“Fini?” I squeeze her hip. “Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” she says quickly. Too quickly. “It’s just…”
“Cheyenne, if you tell me I have toilet paper sticking out of my—”
“Milo told me Indi was in a coma.”
The words are quiet, intended only for my ears. But based on how I rear back, you’d have thought she said it through a megaphone. That she’d broadcast the words over a live radio station or shouted them from the rooftop of the Empire State Building.
Maybe she should have. Then I wouldn’t be the only one on this dance floor trying to process them.
“ What?” It’s all that can make it through my pulsing thoughts.
Ones like Indi was in a coma? and Did I know this? and Indi was in a coma ? Funny how simultaneously blank and crowded your mind feels after hearing something life-altering like that.
Cheyenne steadies me with a gentle hand on my chest. “I don’t know more than you do, Colt. Milo and I were talking about last night when he asked if I had a daddy. I was trying to figure out how to explain a coma to a four-year-old when…he already knew.”
“Because Indi was in one,” I say lamely.
“Because Indi was in one,” she confirms. Then, after a beat, adds, “According to Milo.”
Read: according to a four-year-old who could easily have misunderstood a “food coma” joke as the real thing. That doesn’t ease the tension knotting itself right back up in my gut.
“I’ll talk to her,” I say.
Right now , I add silently. I look over Cheyenne’s head to find my sister. She passed Milo off to Hazel and is dancing stiffly with Grayson Adair. He’s saying something to her, and she’s pointedly ignoring him.
The warning bells are now impossible to ignore.
“Colton, wait.” Cheyenne holds me still, her hands on my biceps and her gaze unwavering. “Not tonight. I—”
“Yes, tonight,” I say, sharper than intended. “If she was—”
“Let me talk to her, Colton,” Cheyenne pleads gently. “Tonight is not the time, but I think it’ll be easier if she doesn’t think you’re going to take what she has to say straight to your brothers or dad.”
Celine Dion fades into Billy Joel, and my emotions spiral. “Cheyenne, this isn’t just some little scratch my sister got on her knee when she was four. You realize that, right? If Indi was truly in…” I shake my head. I can’t finish the thought. “I need to talk to her.”
“I know,” she says softly. “But can you just trust me? Please?”
Instantly, my flight-or-fight instinct dies.
Bodies push us closer as more couples edge onto the packed dance floor, but all I hear is her plea.
Trust me.
Trust me.
Trust me.
Trust doesn’t come naturally to me. Not after my mother bouncing in and out of my life and my father prioritizing work over my brothers and me. Jordan’s right—I did choose a sport where my fate only depended on eight seconds. I don’t want the possibility of losing to be drawn out.
But right now, looking into the deep blue eyes of my best friend, I dig deep for that Running Scared box inside, and I do it. I relabel it. I try scared.
I lean down, my voice a low rumble near her ear that lifts goosebumps on her skin. “I will always trust you, Fini.”