Chapter 6
OWEN
The air is different here. Fresh and clean, with a bite that only exists in the mountains.
The rolling hills of my grandmother’s property reach out before me.
If I turn slightly to the right, vines dominate my vision, crisscrossing over the slopes.
French American hybrids my grandmother and Uncle Dennis have spent five decades cultivating instead of the traditional European species.
A quick swivel to the left, and the slopes are covered instead with young Christmas trees, still a few years out from harvesting. The brainchild of Aunt Debra.
I’m on the back porch of the main house, Uncle Doug’s passion project, which acts as an inn, restaurant, and consignment shop of locally sourced keepsakes.
On one of the slopes in the distance, a ten-minute scenic walk from the main house, are the event spaces, perfect for the dozens of weddings hosted each year by Aunt Dawn, including the ballroom from my latest dream.
My mind conjures a flash of red, the broad smile on Thea’s face as she backs up against the building, and I force my gaze to the wood planks of the porch floor to get rid of the image.
I love the summer mornings here, when the chill has everyone reaching for a blanket and a warm cup of coffee.
The sun has just crested the mountains, casting a glow over the vines.
Within a few hours, it’ll force everyone to shed their layers and bask in the heat, but for now, it’s just me and the sunrise.
A lone deer wanders through the vines, nibbling on a grape. I wonder how it made it past the fence, knowing Uncle Dennis will have a conniption when he spots it, but it’s nice to share the quiet of the morning with another creature.
“You’re looking damned pensive for a man on vacation,” Nana says.
She places a coffee mug on the thick railing in front of me, and I lift it to my lips as I turn to face her.
“Can we call a wedding with my extended family a vacation? Because y’all are exhausting. I think I’m going to need a vacation from this vacation.”
“You’re looking for a slap upside your head, aren’t you, boy?” she asks, hands anchored to her hips as she glares. It holds up for a solid five seconds before she chuckles and wraps her arms around me. “I’ve missed you, peanut.”
She’s small, only coming up to my shoulder, but her hug still surrounds me, letting me sink into her affection like a warm bath. “Missed you, too, Nana.”
“Thinking through the logistics of your move up here?” she asks, gazing out over her kingdom, and I fight back my scoff.
My grandmother, a natural powerhouse of a woman, has never been denied anything a day in her life. She came from money. Serious money. The type of money that makes life completely accessible.
But when Nana’s father died unexpectedly, he left the entire family fortune to his only child, who used it to run off from the pressures of “high society,” as she calls it, and buy this land. She built a beautiful life here and has been trying to bring me into the fold as long as I can remember.
In my head, I let myself indulge. Just for a minute. What would it be like to stay here? My eyes flit over the peaks, soaking in the beauty before me. The only place I’ve ever felt at peace.
Childhood summers spent here, running through the vines with no responsibilities.
Staying out until sunset, knowing that one of the adults would deal with dinner instead of me having to sort it out.
The fresh mountain air filling my lungs instead of the stale hospital scent or construction dust that dominated the rest of the year.
The only time in my life where I experienced freedom, when I wasn’t being pulled in a million directions at once.
But it’s a dream. Home is my reality. Hayes Electric is my responsibility. No, my gift. It’s an honor to maintain the legacy.
“Next year, Nana,” I say, throwing my arm over her shoulder, and she doesn’t fight off her own scoff at the response I’ve given her since she started asking me at eighteen.
We turn back to the mountains, leaning against the railing and drinking our coffees. There’s comfort in the silence. I don’t know how much time passes, but eventually our drinks are gone and the sun is high in the sky.
Our peace is interrupted when Harrison flies out onto the porch. “There you are. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
Nana jumps in. “Is that how you greet your grandmother? Without so much as a ‘how are you’?”
Harrison puts on his most charming smile—the one that’s gotten him out of plenty of trouble over the years—and wraps her up in a bear hug. “Good morning, Nana! You’re looking particularly beautiful this morning. How are you?”
She laughs as she pushes her way out of his arms. “You’re full of shit, and I love you for it. I’ll leave you to it. I should deal with that damn deer.”
The moment she’s gone, Harrison spins to me. “Where were you last night?”
Crap. He must have come by my room while I was talking with Thea. “Just wandering around the property.”
Harrison’s eyes narrow. “So you weren’t avoiding talking to me about the Thea situation and how perfect it is?”
I groan, dropping my head into my hands. “Not you, too.”
“Yes, me, too! A month ago, I told you I wanted to set you up with Addy’s sister, and now we find out she’s the woman you’ve never gotten over. It’s fate, man.”
“It’s not fate, and I’m not going to win her back.”
“Not with that attitude, you aren’t,” he says, shaking his head in mock judgment.
Harrison’s default setting is positivity, so certain that things will work out in his favor, which makes sense when I’ve always been there to cover for him.
It was okay when he got caught drinking in high school because I talked the cop into letting him off.
Everything was fine when he left his internship in the middle of the semester because he had a job lined up with me after college.
It’s worked out each time he moved to a different department of the company because I was there shifting responsibilities around to cover him.
I scrub my hands down my face. “How could you not have known it was Thea? This is your soon-to-be sister-in-law.”
He shrugs, unbothered by my despair. “She calls her Tia.”
“You never saw a picture?” He shrugs. “You’re telling me that Addy doesn’t have a single picture of her sister in her apartment?”
Harrison’s usually cheerful face hardens. “Addy doesn’t have photos up in her apartment. She’s got a thing about settling into a place, which I think is fair after everything they went through in their childhood. We’re working on it.”
It feels like I should apologize, but I don’t understand what I’m apologizing for, and I can’t ask for more information about their past without revealing that I never actually dated Thea. I should know it all.
I want to know it all.
Harrison shakes off the cloud, smiling that broad, dimpled smile. “Which is why I plan on spending the rest of my life filling that woman’s walls with more good memories than she knows what to do with.”
A part of me is still on the fence about this marriage, but when Harrison talks about Addy with complete devotion woven into every word, I can’t help but get pulled into the magic.
I clap him on the shoulder. “What happened to my wild little brother who loved keg stands and late-night parties?”
“He’s been thoroughly and completely tamed, and he’s grateful for it.”
“I’m happy for you,” I say, and find I mean it. No hesitations. “But about Thea, don’t pull anything. I’ll talk to her if I think she’s open to it.”
Harrison lifts his hands in submission as the doors swing open behind him. He spins with an eagerness that would have embarrassed him pre-Addy, and his face lights up. Two long steps, and he’s sweeping her up in his arms.
“Missed you,” he murmurs, kissing her neck in a move that feels way too intimate for it to happen in front of their siblings.
Addy’s laughter echoes around us. “It’s been an hour!”
“You’re right. Let’s never do it again.”
Thea’s a step behind, having to dodge Addy’s flying feet. She looks beautiful, with her curls piled on top of her head in a messy bun. We share a quick smile before I look away, afraid of what Addy and Harrison will read between us.
Harrison looks at me over Addy’s head. “You ready to go?”
I swallow the groan climbing my throat. I forgot Harrison said he was planning something for just the four of us so we could all get to know each other. I’d been worried it was all a big matchmaking scheme. Now, I’m even more worried.
“Just need to pop upstairs and grab my wallet,” I say.
“Don’t forget a bathing suit,” Harrison calls at my back.
I pause with my hand on the door, looking at the group over my shoulder. “Harrison. No.”
A sense of dread floods my body when Harrison wiggles his eyebrows. “Yes.”
Is there anything more uncomfortable than being stuck in a car with a group of people and not knowing how to behave? Are Thea and I friends? Keeping a respectful, cautious distance? Should I pretend like we never dated? That certainly would be the easiest option.
At least I have a bit of distance from her.
Harrison’s up front in the passenger seat while the girls hang in the back.
The ride so far has been full of Harrison’s chatter, telling Thea all about his history with Addy.
The first time they met (“She was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen”).
When he knew he loved her (“Ages before she loved me”).
His proposal story (“I was so nervous”).
Addy’s usual forced smile has relaxed into something more natural.
She still lets Harrison take the lead like she did at the welcome party, but she jumps in now and then with a comment or correction instead of standing to the side like a garden statue, pretty, but with none of the engaging energy of the plants around her.
For the first time, I wonder if she’s more.
Maybe a flower herself that can’t bloom in the shade of others.
I’ve always loved basking in the glow of Harrison’s enthusiasm, and from the glimpses I’ve gotten of Thea, she feels the same.
Her shoulders are relaxed, her eyes bright, and every time he makes a joke, she throws her head back, her laughter bouncing around the car like it’s coming through the very best sound system.
“Tell me about yourself,” Harrison says to her, turning all the way around in his seat to face them.
“Um, well … I was a server at Cibare. This small Italian restaurant near downtown,” she says, stumbling over her words in a self-conscious way that doesn’t feel like Thea at all.
My mind snags on the past tense, a knot filling my throat. “Was?”
She loved her job. At Camila’s wedding, she told my family about helping one of her favorite regulars plan a massive surprise fiftieth anniversary party for his wife, complete with all their out-of-town grandkids.
She practically glowed. I could have listened to her tell stories about Cibare all night.
Thea meets my eyes in the rearview, shrugging. She doesn’t want to talk about it in front of Harrison, but the idea of saying nothing feels wrong. I mouth I’m sorry, and she nods, blinking rapidly.
“I love that place!” Harrison’s face lights up, oblivious to the tension in Thea’s shoulders. “We went there all the time. It was our family’s special occasion restaurant. We haven’t been there since my senior year of college. Owen, why haven’t we…”
He puts two and two together. His senior year was three years ago, when Thea and I “broke up.”
A heavy awkwardness settles in the car. I want to turn this around, but my mind starts spiraling.
This is going to be the most agonizing day, the most agonizing week.
Everyone’s going to find out we faked our relationship, and Harrison’s wedding will be ruined.
I’ll spend the rest of my life dealing with the fallout with Mom.
Like Thea can sense my panic, she leans forward, squeezing my shoulder and grounding me. “Pickup truck selling produce out of the bed.”
I swivel my head to spot what she’s talking about, and sure enough, there’s a truck on the side of the road with a small sign advertising their produce.
I click my tongue. “Not weird enough. You can find that all over Florida, too.”
“True,” she says. “But are those pickups also selling animal feed?”
We’re past it now, but I look over my shoulder as if I can see through the sign like Superman. “I didn’t see that.”
“Not my fault if you don’t look close enough.”
I catch her eye in the rearview mirror; she has a teasing smile on her lips and a challenging glint in her eye. “Fine, I’ll accept it, but barely.”
She rolls her lips together. “You know, this has turned into a very one-sided game. Why don’t you contribute if you’re going to be so judgy?”
My lips tilt up of their own accord. Even when she’s being bratty, she’s captivating. “I apologize for focusing on the road. I’ll prioritize the game over our safety in the future.”
She scrunches her nose, and a laugh bursts out of me. As the sound fades, the silence sets in. I glance to the side to see Harrison staring at me with glee, and I realize in our attempt to stop one type of awkwardness, we’ve just created another.
I flick on my blinker, breaking the moment. “We’re here.”
“Where exactly is here?” Addy asks, eyeing the woods around us.
Harrison’s face twists in a devious smile. “Sliding Rock.”