“Wyatt?” I said quietly, wondering if he’d dropped off to sleep.
“Hmmm?” he murmured.
“Did any of your wishes come true?”
A single furrow appeared between his brows. “Not the one that mattered.”
I was tempted to ask him what it was. I desperately wanted to know what actually mattered to Wyatt King. What heart’s desire still eluded him after all these years. But it felt like an invasion of privacy, and I’d done enough of that already by looking at that notebook. Alcohol had loosened his lips, and if I pressed he might tell me something he’d rather keep secret. I was here to take care of him, not take advantage of him. Just like he’d do for me if the roles were reversed—like he had done for me.
The top few buttons of his midnight blue shirt were undone, exposing the top of his chest and the small gold St. Christopher medallion he never took off. His mother had given it to him a few months before she died. I’d never seen him without it in all the years since.
I laid my hand over it, the tiny gold disk warm from his body heat. The furrow in his brow smoothed away, and he shifted to lay his hand over mine, trapping it above his heart.
I stayed with him, counting his heartbeats, until I was sure he’d fallen asleep.
4
Wyatt
When my phone started vibrating under my ass, I tried to roll over and fell off the couch.
Fuck.
I lay on the floor, cursing my poor decision-making skills as my ass continued to vibrate. My head felt like it had been run over by a tractor, my throat burned like I’d gargled acid, and my mouth was as parched as the Rio Grande Valley on the tail end of a hundred-year drought.
A montage of scenes from the night before played behind my puffy, closed eyelids. Dancing with Andie. Drinking. That Austin dickhead laying hands on Andie. Getting my ass whupped by the Austin dickhead and then chewed out by my uncle. Andie driving me home and taking care of me.
I paused at that point in the replay, trying to piece together exactly what we’d talked about. I remembered telling her how I’d changed her shirt and put her to bed the night she had too many birthday B-52s, which—fuck—I’d never meant to tell her about that. I also remembered something about sour gummies, and something about the night we’d fallen asleep watching the meteor shower.
Jesus, what else had I confessed to her? I had a tendency to run my mouth when I was drunk—which was a pretty good reason not to get drunk, but that whole poor decision-making thing always managed to bite me in the ass.
I hoped to hell I hadn’t told her how on the night we watched the meteor shower, when she’d fallen asleep next to me, I’d realized that of all the girls I knew, she was the only one I really liked. And how I’d stupidly wished that we’d get married one day, so she’d fall asleep next to me like that every night. Or how I’d woken up a few hours later with her face burrowed against my chest and a raging case of morning wood I wasn’t sure I’d managed to hide.
I’d better not have fucking told her any of that, or I’d need to start making arrangements to leave town under the cloak of darkness and change my name so I never had to face her again.
At least my ass had finally stopped vibrating. Experimentally, I tried opening my eyes. Both seemed to work, although the light shining in the windows ramped my headache up a few notches.
My ass started vibrating again. Goddammit.
What if it’s Andie?
I didn’t know if I was ready to talk to her yet, but curiosity drove me to dig my phone out of the back pocket of the jeans I’d fallen asleep in last night.
Fortunately, it was only my older brother, Tanner, one of the members of my family I least minded talking to. My dad had offspring by three different wives, so our family tree was a messy hodgepodge of half and step relations. All told, I had five half-brothers, two half-sisters, one adopted brother, and Tanner—the only littermate I shared both a mother and father with.
“Tell me you’re out of bed,” Tanner said when I answered the phone.
“I’m out of bed.” Technically, that was true. Lying on the floor in front of my couch counted as being out of bed.
“Good. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“Very funny.”
“Ha ha yeah. But seriously…”
“The thing with the photographer? The family photo at the shop followed by brunch at Dad’s? Don’t tell me you forgot.”
I pushed myself upright, wincing as my head throbbed in response to the change of altitude. “Forgetting would require knowing about it in the first place.”
“We talked about it last week.”
“Did we?” I rubbed my forehead, unable to dredge up any recollection of such a conversation. But then I had a habit of tuning out when Tanner started talking about family business. Especially if it involved me being expected to do something.
“You said I’d better come pick you up or you’d forget. There was also an email.”
Groaning like an eighty-year-old man, I pushed myself to my feet. The room tilted a little—or maybe I did—but I managed to stay upright. “I don’t check my email.”
“And a group text.”
“I have the family group text muted.”
“Jesus Christ, Wyatt.”
Moving carefully, I shuffled toward the bathroom. “I get enough texts without being bombarded by Nate’s boring company updates and Heather’s attempts to guilt us into volunteering for one of her whackadoo charities.”
“Well, we’re having a family photo taken this morning for some big PR thing Josie’s putting together, and I’ll be at your place in exactly three minutes to pick you up, so you better make yourself presentable.”
“Cool.” I stared at my black-and-blue face in the bathroom mirror. “Awesome.”
“Oh, great,” Tanner said when I let him into my apartment and he got a look at my face. “This is fucking perfect.”
True to his word, he’d showed up exactly three minutes later. I’d had just enough time to piss and brush my teeth before he’d knocked on my door.
“I’m fine, thanks for asking.” I left him standing in the doorway and went into the kitchen, hoping I still had a Monster Energy in the back of my fridge.
Shutting the front door behind him, he trailed after me. “What happened?”
Tragically, the only thing in my fridge was some leftover coleslaw of indeterminate age and a mostly empty bottle of orange juice. I grabbed the juice and elbowed the fridge shut. “Some tourist at the Palace made a grab for Andie Lockhart.”
Tanner whistled. “Did you kick his ass?”
I chugged the last of the OJ and wiped my mouth, grimacing at the way it interacted with the taste of toothpaste. “Not as much as he deserved, unfortunately.”
“You got your ass kicked, didn’t you?”
“Little bit, yeah.” Looking around the kitchen, I realized Andie had cleaned up my place. The counters were clear, the dishwasher had been run, and the recycling bin was full of empties. Shit. I’d let the place get into a real state recently, and I hadn’t intended for her to see it like that. She’d probably give me an earful about it later—on top of the earful I had coming about the drinking and the fighting.