“Can I get your keys?” Dallas asked.
Emery gestured at the dresser. “They’re right there. Thanks for doing that.”
“No problem.”
He scooped them up as Aiyana said, “Really, though, don’t put yourself under too much pressure.”
“I won’t,” she lied, and forced what she hoped was a reassuring smile.
Aiyana squeezed her hand as she got up.
“You look beautiful, by the way,” Emery told her. “Your hair turned out great.”
“Thanks. Cora came over first thing this morning and curled it. She did my makeup, too.”
Cora and Aiyana seemed especially close. “She did a wonderful job.”
Dallas lingered after his mother left. “Are you really going to try to come to the wedding?”
She nodded.
Their eyes met and held, and she felt the longing she’d been trying to avoid tugging on her once again. She couldn’t seem to squelch it no matter what she did, which just went to prove she’d let things go too far even though she’d known she shouldn’t.
“You don’t have to,” he said.
“I want to.” She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but he didn’t seem happy. “Is there something else?”
“Yes. Will you give me Ethan’s phone number?”
“No.”
“I’m just going to talk to him.”
“No,” she repeated, unequivocally.
“Dallas?” Aiyana called up. “Will you come lift this big punch bowl into the back of my car? It’s ridiculously heavy and somehow it didn’t make it over to the ranch yesterday.”
He shoved away from the doorframe. “Coming,” he called down. He cast Emery a final, miserable glance and left without another word.
She thought that was the end of it, but about twenty minutes later, she received a text from him: I miss you.
She stared at those words. That was what he’d wanted to say when he was in her room. He just didn’t know how, and she understood why. He couldn’t say anything to follow it up, not what she most wanted to hear, anyway. It was as simple as it sounded, and she’d be stupid to construe it as meaning more.
It’ll pass, she wrote—and prayed what she was feeling would pass, too.
The entire town turned out for the wedding. Dallas had expected it to be a big event, but he was still surprised by the number of guests who flowed onto the ranch like an engorged river. It was a testament to the number of lives Aiyana and Cal had touched.
Dallas smiled as he watched his mother greet each guest as though he or she were the most important person to have arrived and chuckled at the thought that she probably did the same thing with her sons—made each one feel as though he were her favorite.
She had a way with people and loved being around them. He, on the other hand, preferred to be out on the rock face alone, the sun beating down on his back, the sweat dripping into his eyes. He tried to remember the fact that he would soon be back in his element, no longer under the obligation he felt, for Aiyana’s sake, to be more social. Because he could never match her genuine enthusiasm. He didn’t feel comfortable in large crowds; all he wanted to do was retreat.
He stepped into the shadows so he could have a cold beer without having to smile or chitchat. He was gathering his reserves for the actual ceremony and the reception afterward, which he already knew would seem interminable, when Seth walked up. “Hiding out?” he asked drily.
Dallas loosened his collar. He rarely wore a tie, let alone a tux. “Basically.”
Seth grabbed a glass of champagne off the tray of a passing waiter. “Great. I’ll hide out with you.”
“I think almost every one of us would rather face a firing squad than host a wedding,” Dallas mused.
Seth’s eyes roved over the crowd as he responded. “Of course. Take a look at the kind of children she adopted.”
He was referring to the fact that they were all broken in some way, and since it was true, Dallas couldn’t argue. Leave it to Seth to turn such an unflinching eye on reality. Dallas preferred to avoid such harsh truths. But Seth was an artist. He couldn’t seem to ignore the things that made life so difficult. On the contrary, he noticed every damn nuance. “She looks happy,” Dallas commented, watching Aiyana on Cal’s arm as they made their way through the crowd.
“She is happy. And no one deserves it more.”
“What about you?” Dallas asked.
Seth had been about to take a drink but held his glass in midair as he cocked one eyebrow. “What about you?” he asked, turning the question on him without answering.
“Well, I haven’t settled into conjugal bliss like Eli or Gavin, but I just signed on with Xtreme Climbing Apparel, so I’m finally making some real money from climbing. And I’m managing—day to day.”
“Managing day to day,” he repeated. “That sounds reasonable. I’ll say the same.”
Dallas straightened as soon as he saw Emery walk in. She’d made it. She’d come even though she had the perfect excuse to stay home. He couldn’t help admiring her for it. She looked beautiful, too, in a satiny black dress that fell to her ankles paired with a white blazer. She also wore a scarf to cover the bruising on her neck.
Following his gaze, Seth nudged him. “What’s going on between you and our mother’s pretty guest?”
“Nothing,” he replied. “Why do you ask?”
His brother started to laugh. “Apparently, ‘nothing’ doesn’t mean the same thing to you that it does to me.”
“I like her,” Dallas admitted.
“So do Liam and Bentley, but they can manage to look away.”
“I explained it last night. Her ex-boyfriend is giving her a hard time,” he said, his nose in his glass, since he was about to take a drink. “And I feel a little protective of her, that’s all.”
“You were beside yourself when she didn’t come home last night, and
