Now is my chance.
I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Lune.
I’m lying, of course.
For the first time in a lifetime, or at least for the first time since Zoe was eighteen, we are both unattached at the same time.
You’re single. She’s single. Please, for the love of fuck, make me a sister-in-law.
I don’t tell her she’s wrong.
I don’t tell her I have no idea what she’s talking about this time.
Instead, I stare at the screen of my phone and remember everyone who has found someone in the last three years.
Hunter Hutchins, Springbrook Hills golden boy returning to town and marrying his sister’s nanny.
My sister and Tony being forced to admit they’ve always been it for each other when she had a stalker.
Tanner Coleman finally dropping that hand he held up all the time, keeping everyone at a distance, and letting in the most unlikely of people.
Fuck, even Dean got over all of his fuckin’ trauma, giving Cal a dad and knocking up Kate again.
And with each one, I hated to admit it, but my brain would go just a little haywire, a little unhinged.
That should have been us.
It should have been Zoe and me. We should have stopped fighting this shit by now, finally given in to it.
But it never lined up.
She always had a man, and when she didn’t, I was dating some woman I had found to fill up space, to take up time.
And the one time I offered to give it all to her, she told me to go home.
And now she’s single.
Goddammit.
“You off the clock?” a deep voice asks, interrupting my mental haze.
Joseph Thomas.
My dad’s best friend since high school.
My boss.
And Zoe’s father.
“Five more minutes, then yeah,” I say casually, as if I weren’t just daydreaming about his daughter, before tucking my phone back in my pocket. I can deal with that later.
It’s strange looking at your boss and knowing you’ve jacked off to the thought of fucking his daughter more times than you can count.
“You got plans?” he asks, his voice gruff.
And then I notice.
I’m not as in tune with reading body language as Tony is, but I notice this.
The look is nervous, like he’s about to say something uncomfortable.
Still, I answer his question.
“Nah. Just gonna hunker down, try and avoid the cold.”
Maybe he’s going to ask if I can pick a few extra shifts? I have the next three days off, but I’d be willing to cover for one of the guys if needed.
They all have lives, after all.
Wives and families to spend time with.
I just have a couch and a takeout menu that’s calling my name. There’s no real reason to be excited for a three-day weekend—these days, Tony is too busy fucking my sister to go out, and I refuse to date the admittedly dwindling pot of eligible women in town.
And not just because news always gets to the wrong ears in a small town, and there are a particular set of ears I don’t want to be listening.
“She’s free, you know,” he says, kicking his boot onto the linoleum.
“Who?” I ask, my blood freezing.
There’s no way.
“Don’t play stupid, Davidson. You gonna grow a pair and put a ring on my little girl’s finger?”
The breath stops in my lungs. I smile, laughing a hoarse, forced sound. I choke on it, coughing a bit before I rub the back of my neck and look at Joseph.
“I think you might need to go to the doctor, sir. Zoe? Zoe and me? A ring?” Another forced laugh, a lie, because I’ve thought about it.
I’ve thought about it a lot.
“Not sure if that’s how it worked when the dinosaurs roamed, but these days you need to actually date a woman before you put a ring on her finger.” He rolls his eyes at me, a look he would give Tony and me when he’d catch us drinking underage, telling us to sober up and get home before he had to rat us out to my dad.
To be fair, he always ratted me out to my dad, meaning Tony and I would catch a list of chores to do while hungover, but he did it quietly, so my mom never got wind and reamed me out.
Thomas is a good guy.
“That’s because when you were young, you were too busy being an idiot, spreading your seed or whatever the fuck. Wouldn’t have let you near her with a ten-foot fuckin’ pole five, six years ago. And anytime you had your head outta your ass, she was dating some loser she’d never settle down with.”
“I don’t think it’s fair to call her exes—”
“So, should I call one of them up? Ask them to take her away for a week, make her see reason?”
I don’t answer.
I don’t want him to call up one of her exes.
God, I’m fucked in the head, aren’t I?
“Look, she told Mary Ellen she’s got some kind of interview in a week. Big fancy thing, an office in the city. She’s back for now but told her mother if she gets the job, she’s leaving again, staying in New York. Not far, but too far for Mary Ellen to see her regularly. You’ll get it one day, but when you marry a good one, you don’t like watching her struggle. I don’t want my wife upset that her only child is too far to see every day.”
Silence fills the small space as I try to figure out what he’s saying.
Is he telling me . . .
“You’re off this week.”
“I’m off for three days,” I correct.
“You’re off for a week. You’ve got a week to change her mind.”
“Joe, I—”
His eyes go firm and soft in a strange confusion of emotions.
“You think I want to do this? Want to pawn my daughter off on some fuckin’ boy? No. But I know she’s been in love with you since she was a little girl, back when she still thought she was my princess, and I know sometime around when she was in college, you started lookin’ at her differently. Around then, she stopped being your little sister’s best friend. Why you two never tried to make it work, I’ll never know, but I’m telling you now, you need to make it work.”
Strangely, the breath stops entering my lungs.
I’m stuck where I’m standing, frozen in place.
My mind moves to a night over ten years ago, when I gave her that offer and she told me to go home.
“Are you telling me . . . You’re telling me to run off for a week to God knows where, take your daughter with me, somehow convince her to be with me, and . . . what? Ask her to marry me?”
“Your reputation precedes you, so yeah. And make the wedding snappy so Mary Ellen and your mother can plan some kind of shindig.”
A shindig.
Absolutely nothing in this universe makes sense right now.
But also, I’m not mad about this gift I’ve been given.
I can play with crazy.
I grew up with fucking insane.
“I’ve never even dated her, sir,” I repeat, giving him a, You know this sounds fucking insane, right? kind of face.
“Does that even matter?” he asks, and deep brown eyes look at me, reading my soul.
Joseph Thomas has always been able to look at you and read you, to know when you’re lying and what your true intentions are.