Chapter Six
TALLY
Icould barely feel my legs by the time we left the hospital.
My body hummed with that hollow ache that comes after you’ve hit a wall so hard, it knocks the breath clean out of you.
My hands still smelled faintly of antiseptic.
My mouth was dry. I’d nodded along while the doctor listed off everything I’d been neglecting—hydration, rest, food that didn’t come in a wrapper—and each word landed like a stone. She hadn’t scolded. She didn’t have to.
Because I already knew.
This wasn’t exhaustion. It was consequence. Every skipped meal, every “I’m fine,” every tomorrow I’d promised myself had stacked up until the weight finally toppled.
By the time we reached the penthouse, the pressure in my chest had turned sharp, wrapping tight around my ribs. Not nausea. Not heat. Guilt. Shame. Fear. All of it pressing in at once.
The elevator doors slid open, and there they were—Doyle and Dig, parked at the kitchen table like they’d been waiting all night.
Empty plates. Half-drained cocktails. Doyle’s head snapped up, his chair scraping back before I even crossed the threshold.
He didn’t come to me. His focus locked on Jordan, who hovered behind me, shoulders heavy with whatever truth had followed us home.
Dig, on the other hand, sprang from his seat like it was a trampoline. “Oh my God, you look like warmed-over hell,” he whispered, arms wrapping tightly around me as he squeezed. “I mean that with love. You’re still prettier than ninety percent of this city.”
I clung to him like a lifeline, grateful for the warmth, for the familiarity. For someone who didn’t make me feel like a burden.
Behind me, I caught snippets of Doyle and Jordan’s low, tense conversation.
Words like “rest,” “plan,” and “tomorrow” floated into the air, clipped and quiet.
They were always like this—two halves of one unit, locked in their own orbit.
It hit me all over again, like it always did.
When it came down to it, Doyle had chosen his future, and I hadn’t been part of it.
Not really.
“You wanna go for a walk?” Dig asked, his voice soft as he tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. “The two of us? After you clean your raggedy-ass self up first, of course.”
“Off a short pier? Yes.” I sighed, twisting a damp curl around my finger until it tugged. “I wish he’d let me explain. I almost get the sense he’s more angry with me than worried.”
Through the glass doors, Doyle and Jordan had migrated to the lanai, whisper-shouting like it was an Olympic sport. I caught a flurry of Doyle’s hand gestures—sharp, frantic, blaming. Jordan answered with slower movements, deliberate and tired from hours spent bedside at the hospital.
No wonder I always wanted to bolt. The drama didn’t start with me—it stuck to me better than it stuck to anyone else.
“This is usually the part where we’d get drunk,” Dig said lightly, nudging me. “But you’re, like, aggressively not fun anymore. Something about creating life?”
There he was—my favorite person.
I stood, reaching for his arm and pulling him to his feet. “I can’t sit here and watch him spiral. I already feel like shit. And he’s really out there flailing, looking like a better Botoxed version of Momma.”
Dig raised his brows. “Tell me how you really feel.”
I let out a long breath. “Sorry. I’m just… tired. And I need to get my shit together. For me. For the baby. Not only because Doyle’s cleaning up after me again. And this time I can’t book some European photoshoot and forget that my family even exists.”
Dig looped his arm through mine as we headed toward the guestroom and the long, scorching shower I had been dreaming of for hours. “He’s still a control freak in linen pants. Some things never change. Try to remember that.”
“Fucker,” I muttered.
“Now that’s the girl I dragged out of Brooklyn.”
***
Arm in arm, Dig and I wandered aimlessly through Savannah’s crooked cobblestone streets, the kind that made it impossible to walk in a straight line, like the city was gently nudging you to slow down and take notice.
Gas lamps flickered to life above us as dusk stretched long over the moss-draped oaks, and everything—the light, the air, the way the magnolias clung sweetly to the breeze—felt a little too beautiful for how deeply unsettled I was.
We passed weathered brick buildings that leaned into each other like old friends, patios strung with fairy lights spilling warmth onto the sidewalks.
Bars hummed with laughter and clinking glasses.
Somewhere above, a woman’s voice carried on a balcony; somewhere else, a saxophone moaned down a side street, as if it had a story it couldn’t keep to itself.
Dig and I had an unofficial bar taxonomy.
In New York, when we scraped together enough money from our dead-end jobs to feel flush, we wanted noise and neon—places where you could dance on sticky tables and drink an electric-blue cocktail without anyone judging you for it.
On our rare confident days—when we remembered we were funny and smart and maybe even a little magnetic—we went for velvet booths and dirty martinis in sleek downtown places with real menus and tiny, expensive appetizers.
But tonight wasn’t for swagger or celebration. It wasn’t for glossy surfaces or dancing on tables.
Tonight was for four walls, low lights, and maybe a bartender old enough not to ask questions.
“I want something haunted,” I muttered. “Like… emotionally. Spiritually. Maybe even literally.”
Dig squeezed my arm. “This is Savannah, baby. Everything’s haunted.”
We turned a corner into one of the quieter squares, where ivy curled around cast-iron fences and Spanish moss dangled like the city’s own lazy sigh. The hush of it all pressed into me, gentle but insistent.
The more we walked, the more I didn’t hate the feeling.
“This place looks promising,” Dig said, eyeing the weathered sign swinging gently above us. “I can already feel the kind of charm that guarantees we’ll be the hottest bitches in the room. Mostly because the average age of the competition is… retirement-adjacent.”
I smirked. “Sixty is the new forty. Grey is the new bombshell.”
He gasped, clutching his imaginary pearls. “And I am the new Ethel Merman.”
I snorted, grabbing the warped mahogany handle. “You wish, babe.”
The door stuck like it was clinging to its final shred of dignity. I gave it a tug, then another, before it finally gave in with a sticky groan and a sad, warped jingle of the overhead bell.
We stepped inside, blinking against the dimness and taking in the smell of lemon oil, old stories, and a little bit of beer that never fully left the floorboards.
The bar stretched long along the right wall, polished to a low shine under golden sconces that looked like they’d been installed before electricity was a given.
A scattering of small square tables filled the rest of the space, their mismatched chairs huddled close like old friends sharing secrets.
Toward the front, a short, squat stage waited beneath a dusty spotlight—currently dark, but clearly well-loved.
Dig leaned in. “Okay… she’s giving haunted dive bar realness. I like her.”
And to my own surprise, I did too.
A television angled awkwardly toward the bar played a grainy episode of some kind of dating competition.
Lots of tanned people shouting over champagne flutes and forced intimacy.
Beneath it, rows of half-drained liquor bottles gleamed under a dusty strip of LED lighting, casting a low amber glow across the worn mahogany.
No bartender in sight.
“Maybe they’re closed,” Dig whispered, inching closer to me like the air had suddenly turned hostile and a ghost was going to come hurtling toward us with a drink menu in one hand and a machete in the other.
The silence closed in around us, thick and expectant. The air buzzed with that same itchy unease that came from stepping into a place that didn’t quite expect you. Like maybe we were intruding. Or worse, like the place was holding its breath, waiting to decide what kind of people we were.
“Can I help y’all?”
The voice cut through the quiet as a tall redhead stepped out from the back, letting the door swing shut behind her.
She looked tired—like someone who’d been holding up too many things for too many people for too long—but when she spotted us hovering near the bar, her posture straightened, eyes brightening enough to pass for enthusiasm.
Then her gaze landed on me.
“Well, hell,” she drawled, blinking like she wasn’t sure I was real. “You’re the girl who passed out in my brother’s studio last night.”
Dig nudged me with his elbow. “Wow. You really know how to make an entrance.”
Magnolia’s brows lifted as she moved behind the bar, slipping into motion with the ease of someone who’d done this dance a thousand times. She grabbed a rag and started polishing a glass that didn’t need polishing, but clearly gave her something to do with her hands.
“We’re not technically open yet,” she said, “but if y’all promise not to faint, or worse, I’ll happily make you a drink.”
There was a bright smile on her face, but a thread of wariness behind it mixed with a kind of hopeful desperation I recognized all too well. Maybe she needed us to sit down more than we needed the drink.
“I’ll have… actually, I don’t know. I’ve never been so stumped before,” Dig said, eyes darting between the menu and the rows of liquor behind the bar like he was selecting a wedding cake.
“You like bourbon?” Magnolia asked, southern twang twinkling through the room, already reaching for a bottle. “I make a pretty decent drink with peach liqueur. It’s like sippin’ on Savannah.”
Dig lit up, practically bouncing on his stool. “Sold.”
Magnolia turned to me next, one brow lifting. “And for the lady? I’m guessing something less boozy, on account of your... situation?”
She cut a quick glance toward Dig, like she wasn’t sure if he was in on the secret.