Chapter Thirty-Six #2
She was crumpled like a discarded napkin, knees pulled tight to her chest, sobbing into her lap. Her red curls clung to her damp cheeks, and her shoulders shook with every breath she tried to hold in and failed.
My stomach dropped.
“Magnolia.” My voice caught as I moved fast, dropping to my knees beside her. “What happened? Who did this?”
I already knew. Hell, I’d known for weeks. But I needed her to say it out loud.
Her mouth opened, but no words came—only a broken whimper. She looked up at me, her eyes swollen and red.
“Lee’s leaving. After New Year’s Eve.”
I swallowed hard.
“And Dane…” She couldn’t even say it. She didn’t have to.
I pulled her into my arms, holding her like I used to when she was little and the world felt too big and cruel. My hands trembled as I stroked her hair, the scent of her floral shampoo nearly undoing me. She felt so small in that moment, far too small for all the weight she carried.
I hated him. I hated Dane Wilder with every bone in my body, and I hated that she’d been the last to see him for who he really was.
We stayed there for a while, my arms locked around her, the only sound was the soft clink of broken glass settling around us. I was already plotting the slowest, most painful way to make him disappear when she whispered, “You have to let it go.”
I didn’t answer.
“If you don’t…” she started, “I can’t lose the bar, Charlie. I can’t. It’s the last thing holding us to our family. It’s all we have left.” Her voice cracked on that last word.
I looked around the room—the garland sagging over the bar, the wreath made of bottle caps and ribbon, the old neon sign flickering behind the counter.
This wasn’t just a bar. It was Sunday afternoons, broken hearts, birthday shots, and stories passed down over whiskey and song.
It was everything we’d managed to hold together after everything we’d lost. It was the only real thing left.
And she was right. All we had left was each other. A couple of stubborn orphans with bruised-up hearts and a bar full of memories, trying to keep the pieces from falling apart. And somewhere along the way, we’d picked up a few more. Sutton. Jordan. Doyle, even. Lee. And now Tally.
A mismatched, chaotic, sometimes infuriating group of people who had somehow become ours. Not by blood. But by choice. By showing up. By loving each other, even when it got hard. And this place was where we called home.
I glanced down at Magnolia, still tucked against my chest. I had to be there for her. No matter what.
She was the one person in this world who had never walked away from me. And I couldn’t walk away from her—not now. Not ever.
Even if it meant letting go of the girl I’d finally let myself fall for. Even if it meant saying goodbye before I was ready.
Because being a brother—being her brother—would always come first.
Maybe some people were destined to end up with the wrong person, and others were meant to make sure they didn’t lose themselves in the process.
And for the first time in years, the weight of that truth settled in my chest. Not as a burden, but as a choice. One I’d make again and again.
No matter how much it broke me.
***
A few hours—and a few pints—later, Magnolia and I had the bar somewhat cleaned up as Christmas movies flickered on the TV above the shelves. Not exactly the Christmas either of us had hoped for, but we had each other. And for now, that felt like enough.
Sutton showed up first, ditching her early-morning private catering gig a few hours early. Her new situationship, as she’d officially deemed it, trailed in shortly after. Ryan was hot on her heels, clutching a sprig of mistletoe like it might double as a romantic weapon.
“That’s not gonna end well,” I muttered, nodding toward a half-drunk Ryan weaving through the tables like a toddler at a wedding.
“No,” Magnolia said, not even trying to sugarcoat it. She sat in her usual spot on the far side of the bar, by the takeout window, even though we wouldn’t see a single patron today. “It certainly is not. Speaking of doomed romance—here comes Jordan and Doyle. You think maybe—”
“She’s not coming,” I cut in, sharper than I intended. I shot her a look, and to her credit, she took the hint—for now. Magnolia Pruitt never dropped a subject in her whole damn life. I was buying myself five minutes, tops.
Jordan entered the bar with a hint of a smile, but Doyle looked like a kid getting dragged into church on Sunday—head low, shoulders tight, and about ten seconds from bolting.
I didn’t move. I wasn’t about to throw punches, but I wasn’t getting up to hug him, either.
“Merry Christmas, y’all.” Jordan nudged Doyle toward me until they stopped at the bar. “Doyle’s got something he wants to say,” he said, eyes flicking to Magnolia and Sutton. “In private.”
I led him to the back office and shut the door behind us.
Glass still glittered faintly in the corners of the room, though someone had half-heartedly tried to sweep it up.
A half-drunk bottle of whiskey slumped on Magnolia’s desk, surrounded by torn-up photos and crumpled bridal magazines.
The whole place looked like a heart had exploded, and no one had dared clean up the mess properly.
I dragged in a breath and let it out slowly. My sister had begged me not to kill Dane. Especially not on Christmas.
“Have a seat,” I said, taking the chair behind Magnolia’s desk. Doyle didn’t sit.
He stood by the edge of Magnolia’s desk, arms crossed over his chest. He looked more like a boy than a man—flushed, raw, and strung too tight. The version of Doyle I’d never met before but was all too familiar with now, thanks to all of Tally’s stories.
“I’m sorry I gave her the impression she should leave,” he finally said.
I didn’t respond.
“I just thought… maybe she’d be better off figuring things out in Newnan. I didn’t mean for her to disappear. I didn’t mean—” His voice cracked. “I was angry. And I was scared.”
“Of what?” My voice came out rough, scraping at the edge of the word.
He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “Of her. Of the way she drags me back into who I used to be. I couldn’t wait to see her again after California, but the closer it got, the more I dreaded it. I didn’t want to… regress.”
“Regress?” I barked out a laugh.
“Yes, Charlie. Regress.” His eyes flashed. “I’ve worked my ass off to be a different person. And she’s still—God, she’s still her. Wild, reckless, magnetic. And part of me envies the hell out of it.”
I pushed back my chair, the legs scraping against the floor.
“She’s always been the bright one,” he said, breathless now. “I was the good kid, the clean one—the one who followed the rules. But I always wanted to be her. And then I realized her kind of freedom made me anxious. Maybe it wasn’t anxiety at all. Maybe it was just… me stuck in her shadow.”
He dragged a hand through his hair, finally unspooling. “Even Dig—he was my best friend first. But she’s the one who got him. They speak the same language: fast, impulsive, half a joke, half a cry for help. And I hated that sometimes. That they were so in sync, while I was always two steps behind.”
In front of me was the man I’d known for years, the one who never let you see a wrinkle in his clothes or a hair out of place. That was his light. A light that was unique only to him. A good friend, a good husband, a successful business owner.
“I guess, as brothers, we can kind of see ourselves as inverted reflections of our sisters.” I leaned up against the bookshelf, steadying myself, the emotion of the day finally settling into my bones.
“We don’t all burn the same way, Doyle. Doesn’t mean you’re not bright, too. You just light up a different room.”
The silence stretched between us.
“Charlie,” Doyle said, finally. “She really loves you. I can tell. She’s never looked safer, or so at ease, around anyone like she looked when she was around you.”
I kept my eyes locked on the floor in front of me.
Doyle’s voice wavered. “You were the only one who believed in her. In her elopement business dreams, and in her photography. Even in her ability to really knock this motherhood thing out of the park. She told me last night, when I found her crying in the bathroom. She said, ‘Charlie looks at me like he sees who I could be… not who I’ve been.’ And I didn’t have a damn thing to say, because I knew she was right. ”
My hands balled into fists.
“Maybe,” I muttered, “She just needed someone to believe in her so completely, so deeply, that she finally dared to believe in herself.”
“And it should’ve been me,” Doyle whispered. “But goddamnit, I’m so glad it was you.”
I looked around the office—at the shattered things. The color that was draining out of my own sister’s life. The way I was doing nothing to stop it. The way I was watching her walk away from the things she loved, too.
“You should’ve invited her to brunch,” I said.
“So should you.”
He wasn’t wrong. And that made it worse.
“I’m sorry, Charlie,” he said after a long pause, his voice cracking again. “The hotheaded, hot mess side of me really took the reins. I guess I’m more like my sister than I thought.”
That made me smile—just a little.
Sutton knocked once and let herself in, eyeing the wreckage like a detective at a crime scene. Doyle took the cue to slip out, quietly excusing himself from the emotional fallout we’d dragged into the light.
I’d forgive him, of course. Not that day, or maybe not the next, but that’s what friends do. If someone trusts you enough to show you who they are at their lowest, that’s true bravery. And that’s not something to step over. That’s when you grab their hand and help pull them back up.
And I had a feeling Doyle would need that soon—when the weight of pushing his sister out the door finally settled in.
“Wow,” she said, stepping over a busted picture frame. “Didn’t think you’d actually knock Doyle around, but honestly, everything’s surprising me lately.”
I motioned to the scattered glass and mangled bridal magazines. “Wasn’t me. If I’d done it, he’d have a black eye on that unnaturally pretty face of his.”
We shared a dry laugh—exhausted, brittle at the edges.
“Fucking Dane,” she muttered, crouching to collect a chunk of torn cardstock that used to be part of a centerpiece design.
“Fucking Dane, indeed.”
She stood and leaned against the desk, her eyes flicking across my face, taking inventory of the damage there, too.
“You know,” she said carefully, “Magnolia’s not the only one who’s hurting.”
I didn’t respond.
Sutton folded her arms, letting the silence stretch a little. “Charlie, you’ve been the dependable one since we were kids. Steady as hell. Always fixing everyone else’s mess before you even look at your own.”
My eyes stung, but I didn’t blink.
She stepped a little closer. “But what do you need? Right now. Not your sister, not your friends—you.”
I shook my head. “Does it matter?”
“It does,” she said, quiet but firm. “We all just heard you give Doyle hell for not being there for Tally, and now Magnolia’s sitting at the bar, probably replaying whatever happened in here while listening to the world’s saddest Christmas album on repeat.
You wanna be everyone’s anchor, but eventually even anchors rust out. ”
She didn’t say it to hurt me. She said it because she meant it.
“And maybe… maybe Tally didn’t leave because she was running for once in her life,” Sutton added. “Maybe she left because she didn’t want to get in your way. Of being exactly who you’ve always been. The guy she knew you wouldn’t give up being. The guy who stays behind.”
My throat felt too tight to answer.
She leaned over the desk, careful to avoid the spray of glass peppering the desktop, and touched my arm lightly. “Your sister needs you right now. But so does someone else. And the question is… who do you need?”
Then, without waiting for a reply, she walked to the door, pausing with her hand on the frame. “Think about it, Charlie. Just don’t take too long. People, especially the people worth fighting for, won’t wait forever.”
When she left, the quiet was deafening.
I looked around the room—the broken glass, the deflated decorations, the chaos Magnolia had been trying to clean up alone.
And I thought, not for the first time that day, or the first time in my life:
My sister needs me.