Chapter 16 Beau
Beau
The grill was hot, the beer was cold, and for once, everyone I cared about was in the same damn place.
I’d never say it out loud—not to Silas, not to Rhett, sure as hell not to Whit—but this?
This right here was what I’d always wanted.
Not the party part, necessarily, but the settled part.
The together part. Silas with one arm around June while she laughed at something Miss Birdie Calhoun said.
Rhett already in dad mode, flipping hot dogs with a spatula like it was his God-given calling.
Even Holden had shown up, stiff as ever, standing in the corner like he wasn’t sure how to human anymore.
Shane was talking his ear off, which was either a mercy or a threat, depending on how you looked at it.
And me? I was doing what I always did. Watching. Fixing things before they broke. Making sure the cooler stayed full, the propane didn’t run out, that Delilah didn’t actually murder Whit before the night was over.
It was supposed to be a housewarming party—maybe a low-key church mixer, if you asked June. But once Mabel found out they’d gotten courthouse married without telling a soul, she brought a stack of paper bells and a banner that said Just Hitched! and then it was all over.
Miss Loretta made deviled eggs; Miss Francine brought a gift that we were all fairly certain was a sex toy, given the conspicuous way it was wrapped; Birdie brought an entire key lime pie and a bottle of bourbon she claimed was “for the punch,” but we all knew better.
Even Ivy, the barista from down at Sweet Briar, showed up—dragging her older brother Ash with her, visiting from up in D.C.
I took all of it in, inhaled it, breathed it out. The house echoed with laughter, voices, joy. Hazel was with the sitter, Willow was dancing with Jasmine Evers to the record playing from the corner…
…and Noelle was talking with June—her eyes wide, face animated as all hell, fully engaged.
She wasn’t shy anymore, not with my family. She was comfortable.
She was at home.
I’d seen her do the whole outsider thing before—watching from the edges, arms crossed, mouth tight, like she was waiting for a trap to spring.
The first time she met my brothers, she’d barely let her shoulders drop.
Kept checking her phone like it might buzz with a reason to leave. She hadn’t trusted any of it yet.
But now?
Now she was in the middle of it. Laughing with June like they’d known each other for years, waving off something Silas said with the kind of confidence that only came from knowing you were welcome. That you weren’t going anywhere.
June leaned in, said something low in her ear, and Noelle threw her head back laughing. Full, uninhibited. The kind of laugh that took up space. The kind that said: I’m safe here.
“Looks good on her,” Rhett said from beside me, flipping a burger without looking.
I didn’t have to ask what he meant.
“Yeah,” I said. “It really does.”
He nodded and handed me a bun. I slid a burger patty onto it, grabbed a paper plate with one hand and a beer with the other, and made my way toward Shane and Holden, who were now chatting with Ivy and Ash.
Holden was very seriously describing his last stint in Guatemala to Ivy, who only half-listened, and Shane rolled his eyes toward me when I came close.
“Bored already?” I asked under my breath.
Shane sighed. “I’m afraid your only available brother has his head so far up his own ass that he couldn’t possibly be interested in someone else’s.”
Holden didn’t even hear him.
I laughed. “Hey…Whit’s available.”
Shane’s eyes found Whit, who was leaning against the kitchen counter, listening to Delilah tell him a story like he’d never heard anything more interesting.
“No, he’s not.”
Shane took a sip of his drink, surveying the whole crew—my family, our friends, all the folks in town who had loved us and supported us and seen us through curses and angels and demons.
Then he cleared his throat. “I talked to Willow and June,” he said. “Timeline seems to be pretty quick with your family.”
I frowned. “Meaning…?”
“When you fall, you fall hard. You propose fast. You don’t blink.”
I gulped down my beer, palms suddenly sweaty. “Are you the one I gotta ask for permission?”
He cocked his head at me, squinting. “How much do you know about Noelle?”
“Not a lot,” I admitted. “Just what she’s shared—and my impression is that a lot of it is public.”
Shane nodded. “Right…okay. Well—yeah, I would be the one you ask for permission, mostly because she doesn’t have any family left.
Raised by her grandma, who died…brother died, of course, that’s public.
And I’ve never seen her stay with someone for more than a few months; she burns fast and burns out. ”
That made my stomach churn, condensation on the beer bottle sliding over my knuckles and making me afraid I’d drop it. No…I hadn’t thought about that.
I hadn’t considered, in all the times Noelle asked me if I was some kind of player, that maybe she was the one who would get bored. Would she lose interest now that we were official?
If I told her I loved her?
If I married her…would she disappear on me one day?
“Hey,” Shane was saying, snapping his fingers in my face. “You still with me?”
No, I was fucking spiraling. I plastered a smile on my face, nodding. “Yeah…yeah, I gotcha.”
“I don’t feel like you’re understanding me.”
I shrugged one shoulder, trying desperately to play casual. “I get it, she’s not one for serious—”
“—which is why I think you’re it,” Shane finished for me.
I blinked. “What?”
Shane didn’t smile. Just lifted his cup and took another slow drink, eyes scanning the yard.
Then, deadpan: “She snores in your bed.”
That threw me. “What?”
“She snores,” he repeated. “Like, full-on body-rattling, pillow-vibrating snoring. You’ve heard it, right? I certainly have from out on the couch.”
I blinked, trying to shift gears. “Yeah, I mean—yeah. She does. Sometimes.”
“She doesn’t do that unless she’s out cold,” Shane said. “And she doesn’t sleep like that unless she feels safe.”
He let that land. I still wasn’t quite getting it.
“She’s been crashing at your place every night,” he added. “You know how long it’s been since she slept that deep? Since she let herself?”
I thought about the way she curled against me at night. The way her body relaxed, heavy and warm, her hand always finding mine under the sheets. That first night she’d stayed over, she’d told me she didn’t relax like that, but I’d written it off as flattery.
“I didn’t know it meant anything,” I said.
“It means everything,” Shane said, his voice softer now. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. The sex, the flirting, the jokes—that’s all normal. That’s baseline Noelle. But sleep? Vulnerability? Letting someone see her like that?”
He shook his head. “She’s in deep, man. Probably deeper than she knows what to do with. So if she’s weird about it…don’t push. Just stay steady.”
I looked back over toward the porch, where Noelle was now perched on the railing with June, both of them sipping from matching tumblers and watching the crowd. She caught me looking again and winked. Just a quick flick of her lashes and a crooked grin.
God, I loved her.
Shane clapped me on the back. “Just thought you should know what you’re dealing with.”
“Yeah,” I said, quiet. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. Just, y’know…” He gestured vaguely toward the sky. “Keep the planets aligned or whatever. I like her happy.”
“Me too.”
We stood there a minute more, and I let the moment settle. Then I nodded toward the grill. “You want a hot dog?”
Shane cocked an eyebrow. “Is that a euphemism?”
“Thought you weren’t interested.”
He shook his head. “I would never step into my best friend’s territory. I think she’s planted her flag, buddy.”
And damn it…she had.
Now I just had to figure out how to tell her without scaring her away.