Chapter 12 Tanner
Tanner
The swinging bench seat gave a metallic squeak when Avery sank onto the cushions.
It groaned louder at Tanner’s weight a few moments later as he settled beside her.
She spared him a brief sideways glance that held none of the easy joy of the past half hour and he had instant regrets about following her.
Fuck. Maybe she doesn’t want my company. Or any company.
“It was getting hot in there,” he said awkwardly and she hummed a vague agreement. “But I’ll leave you alone if you came out here for some peace.”
He went to push himself to his feet again, a flush already climbing the back of his neck, but Avery halted him with a slow shake of her head. “No, you can stay.”
Beneath his sneakers, a few scrubby tufts of grass blended into the dirt, and Tanner dug his heels in to start them rocking.
The sky was a blush of indigo, peppered with stars and offering an apologetic illusion of romance when there was none to be had here.
The rapport he’d built with Avery over breakfast felt suddenly intangible.
The simple embrace that had twisted all his nerve endings into a burning tangle, even the dancing of just a few minutes ago—it was as if they had involved two other people and he had no idea why.
Half of Avery’s face was in shadow, the other half curved with the hint of a distant smile. Tanner saw her eyes drop to where a scar ran in a half-moon across his kneecap.
“Reid threw a lamp at me.” He traced the raised line with a careless thumb. “I was supposed to catch it but he forgot to check I was looking.”
Avery gave a light snort. “And I used to wish for siblings.”
“Rookie mistake.”
She curled her fingers into the sleeves of her hoodie, fiddling with the cuffs. It was the same one she’d worn last night and clearly an old favorite, the lettering across the chest cracked and faded from repeated washing.
“I would never have wished my parents on a brother or sister, though. At least, not the fallout from their split.”
Tanner was surprised by the openness of her confession. Avery looked just as taken aback to have said it.
“Did you see it coming?” he asked hesitantly. “The breakup, I mean.”
Knowing just the surface of Avery didn’t feel like enough, and he itched to uncover the things that really mattered to her. But she took so long to answer that Tanner kicked himself for making another wrong move.
“Not really,” she said at last, lifting her chin to stare up at the sky, her head resting against the bench cushions.
“I knew there was something going on. I’d heard my dad on the phone in his office, late at night, when he thought he was alone.
The sound of his voice was way too intimate for a casual conversation.
” Letting out a hiss of air through her teeth, she shifted slightly, her eyebrows clamping into a frown.
“But it wasn’t the first time—he’d done it before.
I knew it. My mom knew it. It was still a shock when the thing with Ottoline Harris lasted and he decided to leave us. ”
Tanner stretched an arm along the backrest, his thumb only a puck’s width away from her neck, her hair tempting his fingers. “I wondered sometimes. At school, your smile was so bright when you were surrounded by your friends. But it faded when they weren’t watching.”
Avery’s one-shouldered shrug was self-mocking. “Appearances matter. And no one else ever spotted it, so you must have been the exception.”
He ached to touch her, wanted to ask more, but they were interrupted by a sudden wave of people spilling noisily from the clubhouse.
Bringing the portable speaker with her, Savannah lowered the volume to a comfortable background level as the others grabbed chairs or just flopped down on the ground.
With no regard for the lack of room, Bel squeezed herself next to Avery on the bench seat, wiggling her butt to steal all the space she could. “Shift over,” she directed and Avery was suddenly plastered to Tanner’s side by her friend’s hefty shove.
His skin sizzled everywhere they touched.
“Dammit, Bel—this is a two-seater! You’re not that tiny.” Embarrassment highlighted Avery’s cheeks as she unpeeled herself from Tanner’s arm and, even though he couldn’t stop his muscles clenching beneath her touch, he offered an easy grin to soothe her agitation.
“Nonsense. I’m a particle of dust.” Utterly unconcerned, Bel made herself comfortable.
“So, you two live together, right?” he asked huskily, just for something to say.
“We do at the moment,” said Avery, her body taut beside him, “but Drew keeps asking Bel to move in with him.”
“I’ll give in one day, but I like living with Ave.” Bel smothered a yawn. “She smells nicer—ER docs are all hand sanitizer and disinfectant. Plus, sometimes when he’s gaming, Drew eats dry tortellini straight out of the bag. I’m gonna need him to take a psych eval before I move in.”
Johnnie and Mia emerged from the clubhouse with a handful of items and two self-satisfied smirks.
“I’m going to feed him that damn whistle if he blows it at me when I’m all chilled out and sleepy,” Bel threatened darkly.
Clapping his hands, Johnnie called for silence. “We’ve added in the placings for the obstacle course and it’s time to announce the Bach Bash champions!”
“Surely we’re all winners?” Sam suggested lazily from over on Tanner’s right-hand side.
“Sounds like something a loser would say,” said Bel, leaning forward to flutter her eyelashes at him, and Tanner couldn’t hold back a grin.
Avery relaxed enough to snigger, too. “Remember, it’s the taking part that matters.”
“Oh, my sweet child.” Bel shook her head in mock sorrow, patting Avery’s thigh with tender sympathy. “How naive you are.”
“As it happens, after allocating points to the top three places in each couples game,” continued Johnnie, doing a solid job of ignoring all the heckling, “we have ourselves a three-way tie-break situation!”
“And that’s between Savannah and Griff, Bel and Drew, and Sam and Kash,” added Mia with a flourish.
“So, we literally are all winners,” Kash laughed, clinking beers with Sam.
“Not us, though.” Tanner leaned closer to Avery’s ear, his stomach clenching as her hair danced tantalizingly close to his lips. “Sorry we’re out of the running, Stretch. I should have checked how badly you wanted it before I talked you into playing hooky.”
Her shrug wrinkled the sleeve of his tee and heated his skin another few degrees. “The French toast was worth it.”
“But you said there’s a trophy.” Gemma pouted, her gaze wobbling from Johnnie to Mia and back again. “Someone has to win the trophy.”
Johnnie held it up—plastic, tacky, and all of four inches tall. “Which is why we are going to settle the Bach Bash Championship with a riddle.”
“What the fuck?” It seemed Bel wasn’t entirely on board.
Tanner felt Avery huff out a laugh and, when she lifted cornflower blue eyes that crinkled at the edges to his face, he couldn’t hold back a grin to match the curve of her lips. The tension between them drained away, fading into the night on the shared moment of humor.
“The first person to answer correctly will secure the win for their team,” said Mia. “So are you all ready?”
“Let ’er rip, ’tater chip!” Rubbing his hands together, Griff braced himself in eager anticipation.
“Here we go.” Johnnie readied them with an officious clearing of his throat. “Tell me something you can hold in your right hand but never in your left.”
“Urgh!” Bel’s growl of frustration rocked the bench seat, but Drew, sitting on the ground by her feet, jerked upright with a shit-eating grin.
“Leave it to me, babe—I’ve got you,” he said, holding a clenched fist aloft in preemptive victory. “The answer is your left elbow!”
Drowned out by Bel’s squeal, Johnnie’s confirmation was hardly heard and barely needed as Drew found himself knocked sideways by the five-feet-nothing of his feral lawyer girlfriend.
“My medical genius!” she crowed, peppering him with kisses as they rolled on the grass.
The pair were crowned Bach Bash champions but no one really cared other than Bel, who flaunted the trophy like it was the Stanley Cup. Sav, Griff, Sam, and Kash all agreed to share the runner-up prizes, passing the two bags of Reese’s Pieces and Peanut Butter Cups around the group.
In the sudden peace, a fresh log split and spat on the fire, sending a stray spark leaping through the air to land on Avery’s sleeve. Tanner, whipping his hand out to flick it away, wasn’t fast enough to stop the scalding ember burning through the material.
“Dammit—you love that hoodie!” Bel sat up and eyed the rounded scorch mark with sympathy.
“I guess it’s had its time now.” Picking at the burnt edges of the hole, Avery was pragmatic. “Nothing lasts forever.”
“Love, hope, and faith are eternal,” Savannah chipped in, snuggling closer to Griff on the other side of the firepit, and it was only because she was still so near that Tanner heard the tiny sound of disagreement that Avery made deep in her throat.
“And glitter,” said Gemma, out of the blue, her words slurring gently. “You can never get rid of that shit.”
Bel’s giggle was contagious. Soon Avery was laughing, too. And as Tanner’s grin spread over his face and the whole of his left side tingled with the pressure from Avery’s body, he sent up a prayer of thanks that he’d decided to come home for Savannah’s Bach Bash.
He wouldn’t have missed this for the world.