Tucker rubbed his forehead as I sank back on the bench and leveled a dangerous look at my brother.
Grady nodded. "That good, huh? Excellent. Well, I've got some decaf going, if anyone wants to join me for a cup on the porch. I'll be out here for quite some time, gazing at the stars."
He started walking away, whistling as he did, and Tucker exhaled with a gust.
"We really need to stop hanging out here."
The look on his face, pained and uncomfortable and frustrated, was probably a mirror image of my own. "Well, since I'm going to smother them with a pillow in their sleep, we should be good tomorrow night."
He smiled, leaning over for a sweet kiss that was the complete opposite of what my brother just interrupted. "Oh no, Pretty Girl. Tomorrow night, you're coming home with me."
"Yeah?"
"I have really, really big locks," he whispered against my lips.
Chapter 45 Tucker
My mom wiping tears was the first sign something was very, very wrong when I walked into the office the next morning.
The second was the crash that came from my father's office, followed by a, "Those dirty roman bastards!"
I sighed. Whatever it was, Julius and Caesar were at the heart of it.
"Momma, are you okay?" I set a hand on her back when she blew into a tissue. "What happened?"
She sniffled, waving a hand in front of her face. "Goodness, I must look a fright."
Even with the tears, her makeup was almost flawless, save a single smudge of mascara under one eye, which she homed in on like a bloodhound, even without looking in a mirror. With the edge of a tissue, she wiped it away until all traces of the emotional outburst were gone.
"You look beautiful," I told her. "What happened?"
"J.T. pulled his retainer and switched over to J and C. Just got calls from two other people saying they might do the same."
"Shit," I muttered.
Click, click, click went a few more rocks onto the pile.
"I tried to call you last night to warn you, but it went straight to voicemail. I didn’t want to tell you in a message."
There was nothing in her tone that should have made me feel as guilty as I did. "I, uh, I was in Knoxville last night with a friend."
It felt gross and slimy to say it, to shrink what I was feeling for Grace into that word, but there was absolutely no way that I could admit that I was out on a date with someone who'd all but knocked the heart out of my chest. That was what got us into this mess in the first place.
She nodded, gave another pitiful sniff.
"When did J.T. come in and talk to Dad?"
"Yesterday, right before we closed up. Must've been two minutes before we normally lock the door."
Yesterday, I'd kept the last hour of my day clear so I could go back to my place, shower and shave before picking up Grace. Around the time J.T. came in and took his selfish anger out on my completely innocent parents, I was probably trimming my beard and thinking about how excited I was to spend uninterrupted time with Grace.
Uninterrupted, perfect time. That date could've lasted three times as long and it wouldn't have been enough.
I felt drugged when I thought about her. Thought about her brain and the beautiful way she saw the world, the way she sat and listened to me, like every word I spoke was important to her. The way she kissed me, with no inhibitions, no masking how much she wanted me, and the way she pulled the same response out of me. I almost embarrassed myself last night, messing my jeans like a high school boy who'd never felt a girl's ass. The only thing that stopped me was her brother, who I used to like very much.
My mom looked up at me and opened her mouth to say something when my phone buzzed in my pocket.
I pulled it out and grimaced when I saw Magnolia's name.
"It's Maggie," I told her, then pinched the bridge of my nose. "I should probably get this."
"Ask her why her father is a giant horse’s ass," she called as I walked to my office.
"Will do. Though she might not even know what he did." I gave her an encouraging smile and shut the door behind me. "Hey," I answered.
"How are you?" she asked, voice small and penitent. She knew. She knew all right.
I sank into the chair behind my desk. "Well, I just got into work and my dad is trying to destroy his office since we just lost half our monthly income."
Magnolia sighed. "I didn't ask him to do this, I hope you know that."
"I do. You're not vindictive." But her father was, and she damn well knew it.
"He's not vindictive," she argued. Loyal to a fault. Her entire family was. "My daddy loves me. And he doesn't like seeing me hurt."
"Maggie, come on."
"Don't call me that." Now her voice had a bite I hadn't heard since before I ended things. "You may not agree with the way he does things, but I've never had anyone want to protect me as much as he does."
"You don't need protecting, Magnolia," I said wearily. "You're twice as smart as he gives you credit for. You run his office better than he ever could, and if you walked out tomorrow, it would all go to shit. And he knows it."
"That's not true."
"Fine. Don't admit it then, but I know you know it too."
She sighed. "Sometimes … sometimes I think about leaving. Doing something else. But I think he'd lose his mind."
I leaned back in my chair and let her words filter in, past what I knew of her for the last seven years. It was the first time I'd ever heard her say something like that. And I couldn't help but feel sad at the thought that Maggie and I had more in common than we ever realized.
"Then
