Chapter 21
Tate: What? No morning after check in?
Tate: That actually works great for me. Olivia and I will be pretty busy.
Will: WALKER.
Tate: It will give you some time to process how lucky you are to have me in the family.
Will: SHUT UP.
Tate: Relax. I would never take advantage of her like that. Any news on your end? Any leads from her work?
Will: Nothing yet. You?
Tate: No. But I’m expecting something any day.
It turned out that being married to Tate Walker and living in his family home didn’t feel much different from before—except for our sleeping arrangements.
Once they’d collected all their evidence, the police had returned my previous bedroom to me.
But thankfully, Tate moved me into his room permanently, with him taking the single mattress on the floor, the annulment line in full effect.
The sign taped to our bedroom door, no doubt from his brothers, read: Newlywed Suite.
Knock LOUDLY three times before entering.
It was alarming how normal it felt now to be immersed in the Walker home.
How lovely it felt to belong somewhere. To be part of a family unit that was bustling and warm and chaotic.
Watching Tom and Ann work together, running their household with smiles and breakfast and homemade bread made me ache for something I wished I had. Something I wished I could have.
But I was a temporary resident here. And trying to remember that fact was proving to be the most challenging thing of all.
I called my boss the day after our wedding. To say she was surprised was an understatement. But overall, she just seemed happy to have the potential issue sorted. She congratulated me and urged me to make sure I still got my work done. Talking to Will was another story.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Will said on the phone the next morning at the Inn. Tate was in the shower, and I was tired of silencing his phone calls.
“Does anybody?” I retorted, lying back on our bed. Our bed.
“You didn’t have to marry him. We could have figured something out.”
“You could have found a way to keep me with him and keep my job?” I pressed.
Will faltered, like I knew he would. “We could have figured something out.”
“Okay, figure it out then.”
“Liv, don’t act like this.”
“Then don’t act like you could have thought of a different solution. One where everything could stay just like it was.”
“It didn’t stay just like it was though,” he said quietly. “You just complicated everything.”
I swallowed, fiddling with a string on the quilt. “Tate’s doing us both a huge favor. We’ll worry about everything else later.”
He sighed. “I just hate that it came to this.”
“Don’t be,” I said quietly, hearing the water shut off in the bathroom.
“Is he keeping things professional?” Will asked. “I’ll kill him if he’s not.”
I thought of the way Tate rolled me away from him last night. I wouldn’t call his behavior professional, exactly, but it was annoyingly honorable at the very least. But I would take that to my grave.
“Yes. He’s very professional.”
“I don’t believe that for one second.”
Despite myself, I laughed and hung up the phone.
Two days after our wedding, we were sitting at the table for breakfast. The smell of coffee filled the air.
Everyone’s plates were filled with some variation of scrambled eggs, bacon, and slices from a fresh loaf of cinnamon-apple bread Ann had just taken out of the oven.
Jaxon was with Landrie somewhere, at a last-minute fitting for something, and Tom, Tate, and Luke were each looking over a section of the newspaper.
The stress of hay season was now behind the Walkers.
The straw maze was up and running, and it was fun seeing the family enjoy a slower morning.
There were still chores to do, and this afternoon would be full of wedding rehearsals we’d all be attending to prepare for Jaxon’s official wedding day tomorrow.
But this morning, the family lingered for a bit, and I loved it.
I was halfway through my breakfast when Luke challenged me to a card game of speed.
With Jaxon busy with last-minute wedding things, it had become Luke’s and my thing lately, and I loved it.
I never had a younger brother, and Luke—everything annoying and fun—fit the bill perfectly.
It was a two-person game, both of us rushing to get rid of our cards first. We had started the game with overconfident teasing but had soon settled into a quiet, war-like determination to win.
I had two cards left; Luke had five. We flipped over more cards, both of us waiting for our chance to pounce with cat-like precision.
“Do you need me to change that bandage again?” Ann’s soft voice reached my ears. From the corner of my eye, I saw her rest a hand on the table and lean toward Tate.
Luke flipped a card over and immediately got rid of three.
“Gettin' scared now, little girl?” he taunted, grinning up at me.
“Hardly.” I feigned disinterest and tried to concentrate on the game, not the man beside me.
It was impossible.
Next to me, Tate’s arm brushed lightly against mine. Maybe it was that, or maybe it was the low rumble of his voice saying, “Yeah, probably,” that caused my focus to slip once again.
We turned another card, and before I could register anything, Luke slapped his cards down on the table.
“I win, sucker!”
“Best out of three,” I demanded. “I got distracted.”
“Distracted? How?”
When I didn’t have a good answer, his eyes flicked toward Tate.
“We’ll be back in a minute,” Ann murmured as she grabbed a bandage from a cupboard.
I thought Luke would demand another game, but instead, he watched Tate, who stood and stretched.
“What are you doing?” Luke asked.
“Changing Tate’s bandage,” Ann said, coming out of the pantry holding some alcohol swabs.
I took a sip of my orange juice, somehow still completely naive to the devious nature that was Luke Walker.
“Why are you doing it?” Luke asked his mom before pointing at me, a devilish grin across his face. “Isn’t she his wife?”
I blinked. All the blood slowly drained from my face.
Tom snickered from behind his newspaper.
To my horror, Ann began to smile. She pursed her lips and looked at me in her sweet way, but this time with a bit of rascal in her gray eyes that looked a lot like her son’s at that moment.
That same bit of rascal that had her bypassing my plethora of sweatpants and packing me shorts for my wedding night.
“That’s true,” she said, biting her lip and looking at Tate.
I followed her gaze, only to discover him shaking his head and a smile playing on his lips. Maybe a hint of color on his cheeks if I looked closely, but the handsome oaf just folded his arms across his chest and looked at me, his eyebrows raised, almost like a challenge.
Which wasn’t a good sign.
I breathed out a laugh, determined to play this off. I tried to shuffle the cards, but my hands decided to stop working and instead sent the stack flying in all directions.
“I would love nothing more than to…get in there and take care of that…but I need to beat Luke really quick. You two go ahead.”
I made a big show of gathering the cards I’d just sent flying, but it was no use. Luke’s chair scraped against the floor as he jumped up from the table.
“No, no, no.” He grinned at me and motioned toward Tate. “I humbly forfeit. You better go take care of your man.”
And so, amid stifled laughter and teasing glances, I took the offering of bandages and antiseptic and followed Tate out of the kitchen.
He led us to our bedroom—his bedroom, the room I was staying in platonically—and shut the door.
After a moment of weighted silence, I decided that it was probably best to be proactive here.
“Alright. How upper hamstring are we talking here?” I asked, my hands on my hips.
“It’s…the north end of upper.”
“So…the butt?”
“I wouldn’t say that. It’s the north end of the upper, upper hamstring,” he supplied rather cheerfully as he watched me squirm.
I smiled tightly instead. I set the bandages on the bed and ripped open an alcohol wipe.
“I didn’t know your mom had been changing your bandages all this time,” I said, wishing I knew so I could have prepared myself for this possibility one day.
“Did you want the job earlier? You could have said something.”
I held up the alcohol pad hopefully. “Does this sting?”
He grinned. “A little. So be gentle back there.”
And then we just stared at each other.
“So…how does this usually work?” I ventured.
He smiled. “I’ve got boxers on underneath my jeans. Turn around, and I’ll take my jeans off.”
I turned around immediately, trying not to overthink the sound of the zipper and the heavy thud his jeans made when they hit the floor.
“Are you blushing right now?” he asked, a smile in his voice.
“Shut up.”
If my cheeks weren't already on fire, his soft chuckle would have done the job.
“Are you decent?” I asked.
“Rarely,” came his flirtatious reply.
“Tate,” I hissed, not sure how much longer I could handle this without spontaneously combusting.
He was enjoying himself. “I’m decent.”
I turned around, all business. “Now…where is it?”
He stood by the bed, in his t-shirt and boxer shorts, looking rumpled and manly, and I steeled myself to keep it together.
“If you just peel down the top left corner of my boxers, you should be able to clean it and put a Band-aid on without getting too much of an eyeful,” he said.
“The top left side. That’s the butt, you punk. Directly on the butt.”
“Huh,” he said, an impish expression on his face as he turned around, his back to me. “I always thought it was more the hamstring.”
Praying for strength, I reached toward the waistband of his boxers.
“On the left side, right?” I asked, completely stalling.
“It’s actually closer to the center.”
My fingers had just grazed his waist before my hands jerked away, flinging themselves up to my cheeks. “What?! Stop. I can’t do this.”
“I’m just teasing, Rawlins.”