Chapter Five #2
I blinked up at the exposed beams overhead, willing the room to quit its carnival spin. My limbs were useless jelly, my stomach staging a full-blown mutiny, and the best I could manage was staying flat and not making things worse.
“Magnolia’s on her way,” Sutton said, dropping her phone beside me.
The studio door squealed open a moment later, like it was bracing for impact.
A woman strode in—tall, striking, with a sharp red bob that looked like it hadn’t seen a brush in days but still managed to fall into place like it had a stylist on retainer.
Jeans, scuffed boots, a faded tee with some band logo I was definitely not cool enough to recognize.
No heels, no frills—the kind of quiet confidence that says I’ve seen worse and dealt with it before breakfast.
She hadn’t finished shutting the door before her eyes locked on the artist’s buddy.
“You’ve got to be kidding me, Lee,” she said. “I thought you went home.”
Lee straightened from his stool, lifting a hand in mock salute. “Nice to see you too, Magnolia. You’re glowing.”
“I’m sweating,” she deadpanned. “And if I’d known you were part of whatever this is, I’d have taken a longer route.”
“Don’t lie. You missed me,” he said, grinning.
Magnolia crossed her arms. “I missed having peace and quiet in my city. That’s what I missed.”
“Still feisty as ever,” he said under his breath, then turned to the blonde next to him. “Did you miss me?”
Sutton didn’t look up from my wallet she had resumed rifling through. “I didn’t miss watching this exact conversation play out every single day of my life.”
Magnolia took one look at the room—at me sprawled on the worktable, at Nancy sniffing what I hoped was a rag pile, at the artist whose table I had apparently commandeered with my entire body, now pacing like he wanted to burn the whole building down—and sighed like someone who’d walked into a party she had very much not RSVP’d for.
“Jesus,” she muttered, folding her arms across her chest. “We were trying to have one normal wine tasting, and now we’re one poodle and a public crisis deep. Another Tuesday in the ongoing saga of our deeply cursed family group chat.”
“She’s Doyle’s sister. Or, cousin. Or! Could be his mom? Doyle has great genes, I can tell,” Sutton said again. “Also, she yakked all over the sculpture the Black Widow commissioned.”
Magnolia tilted her head, staring at me with open curiosity. “Well. She doesn’t look dead. That’s promising.”
“You can only be a Black Widow if you kill your husband,” Lee muttered, eyes cutting toward Magnolia. “Black Widows don’t rack up failed marriages to men they shouldn’t have dated in the first place, even if they are loaded.”
She ignored him completely, aside from a resigned sigh, and glanced over her shoulder. “Charlie, you want to explain why there’s a half-conscious woman on your worktable? Or are we collecting strays now?”
Charlie. So that was Not-a-Cop’s name. He didn’t say much, but his posture eased once he was close.
“She passed out,” he said, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. “She… folded. I didn’t know what else to do.”
Magnolia raised a brow. “Well, dragging her onto your work table like some kind of DIY Florence Nightingale situation isn’t exactly the standard protocol.”
“Didn’t see anyone else volunteering to do anything different,” Charlie muttered. The bite was there, but only on the surface.
“I didn’t mean to—I wasn’t trying to cause trouble,” I croaked, pushing myself upright.
It clicked then, and the revelation did nothing to slow down my pounding pulse.
These were my brother’s friends, weren’t they?
“I didn’t know who you were. Any of you.
Except Lee. I mean—” I looked over at him, blinking a few times as my brain caught up with everything else.
“I recognize you. From your music. I loved Walk Away Slow.”
The tension in the room bubbled, and no one looked directly at anyone else.
Lee, to his credit, grinned like I’d handed him a piece of birthday cake. “Well, thanks, darlin’. That one’s a favorite of mine, too.”
Magnolia muttered under her breath, too low for me to catch.
Charlie stared down at the floorboards like they’d suddenly become fascinating.
And Sutton? She tipped back against the worktable, arms crossed, her expression parked somewhere between unimpressed and mildly entertained—like she’d seen this show before and was curious how bad the ending would get.
“Okay, real question,” she said, her voice clipped. “Are you drunk? Are you high on drugs?”
“Sutton,” Lee said, shooting her a warning glance. “Jesus.”
She blinked, all wide-eyed innocence. “What? We were all thinking it. She was breaking into the shop, and now she can barely lift her head. I’m the one rude enough to say it out loud. Also, where are her shoes?”
Charlie sighed and tightened his jaw, fingers drumming against the edge of the table, the picture of someone trying to talk himself down.
“I’m not drunk. Or high,” I said, quieter than I meant to. My pride bristled, even if she was entirely wrong about me. “It’s just heat exhaustion. Or dehydration. Or pregnancy. Take your pick.”
Sutton’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, good. An overachiever.”
“So why were you breaking into the shop?” Charlie asked, hovering over me.
“I just… I wanted to see what was so special about my brother’s friends that he wouldn’t let me meet them.”
Lee gave a low whistle, dragging a hand down his face. “Well. Tonight’s really going for gold.”
Magnolia snorted. “Y’all leave for ten minutes and come and adopt a human disaster. Impressive, even for you.”
“You want to get off the table?” she asked, nodding toward a nearby stool. “Or lie down again, if your dramatic flair hasn’t quite run its course.”
I managed a faint smile, grateful for the hint of kindness tucked beneath the sarcasm. “I think I’ll stay put, if that’s okay. Kind of afraid to test gravity again.”
As if summoned by sheer awkward energy, the studio door creaked open again—and this time, Doyle and Jordan came rushing in, talking over each other.
“Oh my god, Tally—”
“Sorry, we came as soon as—”
“—we thought you were just being—”
“—melodramatic,” Jordan finished helpfully, then winced. “But obviously this is… more than that.”
Doyle dropped to a crouch beside me, worry etched across his annoyingly symmetrical face. “Jesus, Tals. You good?”
“Not exactly the quiet entrance you had in mind for me,” I muttered, pressing my fingers to my temple. “Really killing it on the new-girl-in-town front.”
I looked up at Doyle, guilt threading through the nausea still curling in my stomach. He was here. He’d shown up. He was saying all the right things, doing the concerned brother routine like a pro. But I could see it. That look that said you promised you wouldn’t screw this up.
Charlie stood stiffly to the side, arms crossed. “She also passed out in the middle of the studio. Kind of a whole… production.”
“Thank you, Not-a-Cop,” I muttered under my breath.
Jordan straightened and scanned the room. “Wait—where’s Dane?”
A collective groan went around the room like a wave at a particularly tragic sporting event. Magnolia didn’t turn around as she muttered, “He sniffed the drama and decided it was bad for his image.”
Sutton gave an exaggerated eye roll. “Big surprise.”
But I caught the way Magnolia’s gaze cut to Lee, who didn’t say a word. He met her eyes like they’d said it all a long time ago. The smirk faded, replaced by an intimate softness I don’t think I was supposed to witness.
“Dane’s not really the ‘ride or die’ type,” Lee said eventually, voice casual but not unkind, eyes still locked on the redhead standing before him.
“He’s Magnolia’s boyfriend, by the way. He’s also my golden-child older brother.
Which basically makes him an expert at being in two places at once—everywhere but here, with his girl, like he should be. ”
Magnolia’s lips twitched, but she didn’t say anything. Charlie shifted his weight, restless beside her, clearly itching to step in but not sure if it was his place. The mood in the room curdled, thick enough that even my brother flinched.
Doyle patted my leg twice, a little too forcefully. “Anyway! You’re awake, and that’s what matters. Let’s head upstairs, get you settled, and let the rest of these people salvage their evening. What do you say?”
There was a tightness in his tone I recognized immediately, the sound of him trying to be the responsible one, the one in control.
But it felt different. Not like when we were younger, when the world felt like it might fall apart unless we held it together ourselves.
This felt more practiced, like someone performing concern at the exact pitch they thought people needed to hear.
He sounded like our mother. Controlled and measured with enough warmth to disguise the edge beneath it. A shiver crawled down my spine, thorny and unwelcome.
I glanced at Jordan, who gave me a warm, apologetic smile and set a bottle of water on the table beside me. “Sorry again. We thought you were being dramatic.”
“I mean,” I said, wryly, “you weren’t entirely wrong.”
Jordan grinned and offered Nancy Reagan a pat. “Well, if she’s okay, that’s what really matters.”
Nancy promptly licked his fingers like he was the one who’d personally delivered her from darkness.
Doyle turned to Jordan, already reaching for my bag, ready to get me out of there and sweep all of this under the rug. “Can you take her upstairs? I’ll stay and help Charlie clean this up.”
His voice was soft—polite, even. The version of Doyle that people trusted. The version that sounded calm and dependable. But I caught the edge in it. The urgency. The quiet strain. But it wasn’t care. It was containment.
“I’m fine,” I murmured, but no one heard me.
Charlie’s voice cut through the space, low but firm. “Shouldn’t she go to the hospital?”
I glanced up. He was watching Doyle—not me—with a subtle frown, trying to make sense of what was happening, almost like he’d seen this kind of deflection before.
Doyle’s head snapped up, a too-bright smile already in place. “That’s a great idea,” he said quickly, throwing an arm around Jordan’s shoulders. “Jordan can take her. Just to be safe.”
And that was that. I was being passed off like a hot potato nobody wanted to hold too long.
“I’ll go, too,” Lee chimed in, casual but already moving toward the door. “It never hurts to have backup. Or snacks. I’m great with a vending machine.”
Doyle didn’t acknowledge him. He was too busy grabbing a handful of napkins and making a show of helping Charlie wipe up a puddle of water I’d knocked over near the worktable. Crisis diverted—damage managed.
No one would ever suspect that Doyle had been cleaning up messes of mine, just like this, our whole lives.
I opened my mouth to protest, then shut it again. My head throbbed, my stomach rolled, and every cell in my body begged for a shower and some kind of dignity reboot. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to have a medical professional, and not a group of half-wine drunk millennials, give me a once-over.
Charlie met my eyes briefly, and for the first time all night, there wasn’t irritation behind his expression. A quiet concern lingered there instead. But he didn’t say anything more.
And Doyle? Doyle wouldn’t look at me.