Chapter 12
Emmaline
Sasspatch Society Group Text
Delilah:
All right, my darlings, Gibson boy number one has finally done it—dragged our girl straight to the altar without so much as a whisper of sequins. We are not letting this stand.
Glory:
Correct. A courthouse kiss is cute, but where are the chandeliers? The flower walls? The DRAMA?
Mo’nique:
Mm-hmm. Baby deserves a reception, not just a casserole after the fact. I’ve already got ideas for a menu. Comfort food chic. Mac and cheese bites with champagne.
Bea:
And cake! Don’t you even think about skipping cake. I still have my stand mixer from ’84, and I am not afraid to use it.
Delilah:
Bea, sweetheart, last time you used that mixer we had powdered sugar in our wigs for a month. Leave the baking to Emmaline or Mo.
Glory:
Which means we focus on aesthetics.
Bea:
Y’all, if we don’t give Bodie a sequined turkey centerpiece, are we even trying?
Delilah:
Sequined turkeys are tacky. Sequined PEACOCKS, darling. Very symbolic. Renewal! Majesty!
Glory:
Sequined anything and Bodie’s gonna fake a power outage to shut us down.
Mo’nique:
Which is why we tell him nothing. Hide it under the auspices of a town-wide event.
Bea:
Ooooh, yes. Classic Sasspatch maneuver: Ask forgiveness, not permission.
Delilah:
Exactly. Now. Black-tie? Or Southern Gothic Glamour??
Glory:
Why not both? Lace, velvet, and pearls. That man won’t know what hit him.
Mo’nique:
He already doesn’t.
Bea:
Amen.
For all that Bodie and I had talked of the details of our…
arrangement, we hadn’t talked about what happened tonight.
He’d made it clear he wasn’t expecting anything to happen between us, which had been a comfort.
At least until that kiss. I couldn’t deny that it had been looping through my brain in the hours since, damning me with the knowledge that I found my husband incredibly attractive.
It wasn’t a shock. He was an objectively handsome man, with thick brown hair, those striking blue eyes, and that solid, muscular build that made him seem stable as the mountain itself.
But I’d spent so many years angry with him, I’d somehow been able to block that out.
When we’d been avoiding each other, his attractiveness had been entirely immaterial.
There were handsome assholes the world over.
But I knew deep down that his appeal wasn’t physical.
Not really. It was that big heart and his unwavering desire to help.
Something else I’d actively worked to block out over the past ten years.
But I couldn’t deny it now that he’d done the unthinkable to help me.
Marrying me. Making me—at least for a little while—a part of his family.
A family who, by rights, had every reason to despise me simply because I was a Maddox.
But it had become increasingly obvious over the course of dinner that the Gibsons didn’t operate in any way like my own family.
My mother or aunt would’ve said it was easy not to, when you were the winner in everything and you’d made your fortune on the backs of others.
That was the lore of the feud passed down for a hundred and fifty years, ever since the Gibsons swept in and closed the deal for the railroad depot on a parcel of their land instead of the one my ancestors had been negotiating.
Generations of Maddoxes after that swore the Gibsons had stolen our future, attributing all their prosperity to dirty dealings rather than what I suspected was the actual truth—the Gibsons were simply savvy businesspeople, and the Maddoxes… well, generally weren’t.
Not that I’d ever voice such an opinion within earshot of my own relations.
Tonight had made clear that wasn’t the only way our families differed.
I’d spent my whole life bracing myself at family dinners.
Every plate of food came with a side of sharp remarks, passive-aggressive digs, the kind of subtle barbs that left you bleeding.
Tonight had been the opposite. Chaotic, yes.
Loud, certainly. But warm. Uncalculated.
It wasn’t that the Gibsons didn’t ask questions—they did—but the questions weren’t knives. They were doors. Openings. Invitations.
It left me off balance, unsure of what to do with myself or how I fit into this new reality.
Bodie pulled his truck to a stop in front of my grandmother’s house.
The worn sprawl of it was faded and a little sad.
But I didn’t really see the desperate need for a fresh coat of paint we hadn’t been able to afford.
I saw the planters full of flowers scattered around the porch and yard.
The ones I’d filled exactly as Gran would have, because she loved flowers, and I’d wanted them to be waiting when she came home.
Except she’d never see them. And after this weekend, I wouldn’t either.
The thought made me ache. The years I’d spent with her were some of the few bright spots in my life, and I didn’t know how to let that go.
Bodie opened the driver’s side door, and the cab light illuminated his face, casting sharp shadows across the angles of his jaw and cheekbones. The soft glow made his eyes look almost silver in the darkness. “You okay?”
I didn’t have it in me to put on a brave face right now.
The careful mask I’d worn through dinner, through the dance of introductions and half-truth explanations, had finally cracked.
My shoulders sagged with the weight of the day—the courthouse, the rings that pressed foreign against the skin of my finger, the way his family had welcomed me with an ease that left me reeling and more than a little uncertain. “Not really.”
He reached one big hand over the center console and squeezed mine, his callused fingers warm and steadying against my cold skin.
The contact sent an unexpected jolt through me, a reminder of how little physical comfort I’d had in my life, how unused I was to someone offering it so freely. “C’mon. Let’s get inside.”
I blinked as he slid out of the truck with that easy grace that seemed to come naturally to all the Gibson men, springing Rubble—whom we’d stopped to pick up from Colter’s house on the way over—from the backseat before grabbing a worn canvas duffel bag I hadn’t noticed him loading earlier.
“What are you doing?” The question came out sharper than I’d intended, but the sight of that bag sent a spike of something like panic through my chest.
“Bringing in my stuff for the night.” He said it matter-of-factly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“You’re staying here?” Why had this not occurred to me? Of course he would stay. We were supposed to be newlyweds, after all. The thought made my stomach flutter with a mixture of anxiety and something else I didn’t want to name.
“It’s expected. I’ll take the guest room or the sofa. Whatever.” His tone was carefully neutral, but I caught the way his eyes searched my face, gauging my reaction.
Too numb to argue, and too tired to think through all the implications, I followed him up the cracked concrete walkway to the front door.
The porch light flickered as I fumbled with my keys, casting unsteady shadows across the peeling paint of the door frame.
Everything about this place suddenly seemed shabby and inadequate next to the well-kept neatness of the Gibson family seat.
Rubble danced in ahead of us both, her nails tapping a staccato rhythm on the scarred hardwoods as she wagged her way through an enthusiastic sniffing exploration of the immediate vicinity.
Her tail knocked against a small side table, sending a stack of mail sliding to the floor—bills, mostly, that I’d been putting off opening.
Only a single lamp interrupted the dark.
The one I always left burning by the window so the house wouldn’t feel so empty when I came home.
I set my keys in the ceramic dish by the door—one Gran had made in a pottery class years ago—half-expecting the silence I’d grown used to in all the months since the flood.
The quiet that had become my constant companion, broken only by the settling of old wood and the distant hum of the refrigerator.
But with Bodie at my side, even the silence wasn’t the same.
He seemed to take up all the space without trying, his broad shoulders and quiet presence something else I didn’t know how to handle.
The air felt different with him here—charged somehow, like the moment before a storm when everything holds its breath.
“I should probably start packing.” It was the last thing I wanted to do, but though I didn’t have all that much stuff, if I was moving in two days, I needed to get going. The thought of sorting through Grandma’s things, of deciding what to keep and what to let go, made my chest tight.
“Not tonight.” His gentle voice was steady as stone, carrying that same unshakeable certainty I’d noticed at the courthouse. “You’ll have help with that. No sense wearing yourself out when it doesn’t have to be just you.”
Just you.
Those words made something sting behind my eyes.
Because it had always been just me. At least since Wesley went to prison, leaving me to navigate everything alone.
And now? The image of Bodie’s brothers calling dibs on trucks to help me, his grandmother pressing rolls into my hands, his father’s steadying nod when he looked at the rings—it all pressed in, overwhelming in its unfamiliar kindness.
I didn’t know how to accept all that. And really, it wasn’t about me.
It was about Bodie. Because he’d claimed me as his. At least, for now.