Chapter Thirty-Four
CHARLIE
“You got laid. Holy shit. You got laid," Lee whispered conspiratorially the next morning as we helped Magnolia set up for Christmas Eve brunch.
I was exhausted—half from staying up all night finishing the piece for Magnolia, the other half from not sleeping at all once I moved back into my studio.
It wasn’t her fault, or, hell, maybe it was.
But I couldn’t shut my brain off. I kept replaying that night, over and over.
Her soft, beautiful face. The way she looked at me when I touched her, the sounds I knew I’d be able to drag out of her, given the chance.
The way she whispered my name in the dark like a prayer.
Now, Lee was grinning at me with the smug satisfaction of a man who knew.
I cleared my throat. “What makes you think that?”
He tilted his head, amused. “Because you, my friend, are smiling at absolutely nothing.”
I tried to wipe the grin off my face, busying my hands with napkins screen printed with holly and, for some reason, a Santa-hat-wearing Pickle the cat.
But I couldn’t help it. The smile kept creeping back, slow and uninvited, planted there by some unseen hand the moment she walked into my life—and it bloomed the way only she could make happen, changing me so irrevocably that I knew I’d never be the same.
Lee didn’t press as he kept working beside me, quieter than usual. And when I met his eyes again, I saw it. That faraway, aching look I’d come to recognize.
He was leaving right after the New Year.
A secret I’d only been trusted with, and the grief was already taking root as it had over ten years ago.
The familiar ache of knowing he wouldn’t be around day after day was starting to overshadow the warmth I’d been feeling all morning.
We’d only just gotten him back, and now he was slipping away under the guise of what he considered doing the right thing.
He’d walk away, again, to let my sister have the life he believed she had chosen. One that didn’t include him.
“You don’t have to go, you know,” I said, smoothing a wrinkled napkin too many times. “Just because she didn’t pick you doesn’t mean there’s not a life here worth staying for. A family.”
Lee exhaled, laying down a gold-rimmed charger with more care than necessary.
“I’ve thought about that. But it’s not just that I love your sister, Charlie.
I need her. She’s part of my story. Has been since I was a kid.
And if I can’t have that story here with her, I don’t want to pretend I’m living some other version of it. ”
I swallowed hard. “What about the rest of us?”
He smiled, but there was no joy behind it. “Y’all figured it out without me the first time. Look at this place. You’ve made a family. Built a real life. All I’ve done is come in and light a match.”
“Ha. You sound like Tally.”
That got him. He glanced up, scanning the room, then turned back toward me. “Speaking of, is she coming today?”
I shook my head, watching Doyle and Jordan laugh with Magnolia in the corner, throwing the occasional sideways glance at Lee. “I told her about it,” I admitted. “Mentioned the brunch. But I never actually… invited her. I figured Doyle might, and when he didn’t—”
Lee gave me a look that bordered on exasperation. Then he clapped a hand on my back. “You know you could’ve just flat-out asked her yourself, right? She’s your girl, Charlie. She should be sitting here. Next to you.”
My girl.
The words lodged in my chest, heavy as hell. And he was right. She should’ve been here. I’d pictured it more times than I wanted to admit—her curled hair, flushed cheeks, rolling her eyes at Sutton, stealing bites off my plate like she owned the place. Like she belonged here.
But that was the problem, wasn’t it? I wanted it too much.
“She should be here,” I muttered, mostly to myself, flinging another napkin onto the table with a little too much force.
Lee tilted his head. “Then why isn’t she?”
I didn’t answer right away. I kept dutifully folding, pressing the corners together like I could smooth the tightness in my chest right along with the linen.
“Fuck, I screwed up,” I said finally, low enough he had to lean in to hear. “I told her about brunch. I just… never actually said, ‘Come with me.’ And now it feels like she probably thinks I didn’t want her here.”
Lee didn’t say a word. He gave me space to find it on my own—the thing I’d been circling around for weeks.
With him, the words always came easy, everything spilling out before I had time to second-guess it.
But with Tally, it wasn’t that simple. The hesitation ran deeper, rooted somewhere I couldn’t talk my way past, proof that some things get harder to share when the person in front of you matters too damn much.
“I’ve spent months telling myself not to fall for her.
And then last night—“ I shook my head. “Everything changed. Now it’s all I can think about. But Tally… she’s had enough people pull her in too fast and then vanish just as quickly.
She’s always been the one who feels first, feels harder—and it’s burned her every time.
This time, it’s me. I’m the one who’s fallen first. And if I push too much, it won’t matter how much I mean it—she’ll feel cornered, and I’ll lose her before we’ve even started. ”
“I know she’s not the type to stay in one place too long,” Lee said quietly, “but she doesn’t strike me as the type to run from the truth.”
“No, not the truth,” I agreed. “But she might run from pressure. From someone trying to write her next chapter before she’s ready.”
I glanced toward Magnolia, laughing with Doyle and Jordan, unaware that a part of me had just come undone. “If I’m not careful, I’ll let my heart get ahead of my common sense. And then she’ll go, and I’ll still be here—picking up the pieces of what could’ve been.”
“How would you know if you don’t give it a chance?” Lee asked, watching me closely.
“It’s not just her I want, Lee. It’s the life she’s building.
Her and the baby. I don’t want to be some story she tells over a cocktail with Dig one day—I want to write the whole damn book with her.
But what if she doesn’t want that with me?
What if every step is complicated because I’m not the baby’s father?
Because I have to figure out how to love and protect someone I didn’t help create, without overstepping, without screwing it up before it even begins? ”
Lee nodded, placing the last fork with the kind of precision only a Wilder could manage. Nothing out of place, every detail perfect.
“You should text her,” he said finally, stepping back to survey the table.
I glanced toward Magnolia, laughing with Doyle and Jordan, her engagement ring catching the light. On the surface, everything looked perfect—like Tally had seemed at first. But I knew better. I’d seen how fast things could go sideways, how easily a polished smile could hide the cracks.
“You don’t think it’s too late?”
Lee’s gaze lifted from me to my sister. “It’s never too late.”
I pulled out my phone. Typed. Deleted. Typed again, deleted again. Finally, I hit send on quick note, hoping it read like an invitation instead of a plea.
CHARLIE: The only thing missing from brunch is a beautiful woman who doesn’t know how to bake but sure does know how to kiss. You should come, but leave the baked goods at home.
See? Honest. Not needy.
The undeniable truth settled in, louder than any craving or instinct—I wanted her. Needed her.
My gaze slid back to my sister, showing off floral designs to Jordan and Doyle, smiling as she did, though a trace of hesitation lingered beneath it. She was already getting tangled up in all the somethings—borrowed, blue, and new—and I was still trying to hold onto the pieces of her I had left.
Could I do both? Could I keep my sister safe and still give in to what I wanted for myself?
What if protecting Magnolia meant keeping my heart on a leash?
***
Magnolia was in the kitchen, balancing a bottle of white between her thighs and propping her phone up against the sugar jar, FaceTiming with Sutton as she stirred the garlic butter for the mashed potatoes.
I was supposed to be queuing up Meet Me in St. Louis, like I did every year, but my thumb hovered over the remote, frozen.
Because I wasn’t really here, not the way I usually was.
The apartment above O’Malley’s was cozy in the way my sister always managed since I’d moved out.
Candlelight flickered from her windowsills.
There was a pie cooling on the stove and the whole place smelled like nutmeg and browned butter and the faint pine from the tree Lee dragged in two weeks ago, the one he’d insisted on decorating with all the ornaments we made in elementary school, glitter peeling off them like dead skin, and the ones our Momma had had painted before she’d passed.
Every inch of the place radiated warmth. Tradition. Home.
And yet, I kept thinking about the girl who wasn’t here.
What she was doing. If she’d eaten. If she was warm enough.
If she’d been lying in bed all afternoon, staring at the ceiling, wondering why she wasn’t included.
Or if she’d put on a brave face and distracted herself by making a mess in the kitchen, eating olives straight out of the jar with her fingers, irritating the perfect cadence of her brother’s world by simply existing.
She hadn’t texted me back. No surprise there. Still, the thought of sitting through that brunch without storming out, tossing her over my shoulder, and dragging her to O’Malley’s—claiming her, claiming us in front of everyone—was eating me alive.
Maybe she needed space. Perhaps she was in a knock-down, drag-out fight with Doyle. Maybe she knew I was with my sister, and that this might be the last time we’d carry out this decades-old tradition together.
“Charlie,” Magnolia called, glancing over her shoulder with a smile. “You’re up. Hit play. We’ve only got until the timer goes off.”