“Should we be suspicious?” Theo asks us.
He and Grey have mostly been giggling nonstop since Emma unveiled the car and explained why she invited us over. The triplets got called in for their various levels of expertise with refurbishing and refinishing classic cars. And honestly, they’re giggling too.
“Carry on.” Zen makes a shooing motion. “You don’t need in on the girl gossip yet. Also, I vote for the doors being wings instead of attaching wings. Have you ever seen a bee wing up close? That’ll be epic on the doors when you open them.”
Grey giggles again.
Not even kidding, he’s giggling, and I’m so here for it.
“I’ll give you the door-wings, but there’s not a fucking chance I’m compromising on the antenna,” Theo says.
“Antennae,” Zen corrects. “Two. One on each side of the windshield.”
“But we have to make sure the top will close right,” Jack says.
“I have faith in you,” Lucky says.
Decker’s bent at the back of the car. “If you don’t put the stinger on, I’m tossing you off Marmot Cliff.”
Emma smiles over her ginger ale.
“Is this bringing you closure?” Laney asks her.
She nods. “There’s a lot of good that came out of my destination wedding. You and Theo. The kittens. Sabrina and Grey. The changes at Bean & Nugget. Zen moving here. Mimi moving here. You taking that DNA test.”
I swing around to gawk at Laney. “You took it?”
“Yesterday,” she confirms.
“How do you feel?”
“Relieved, actually. I know it could be hard on my mom if it comes back and says my dad’s their father, but the triplets deserve to know the truth. So no matter what it says, no regrets. It’s not lose-lose, you know? Mr. Super Vengeance Man over there would probably say the truth is always win-win.”
She’s right. Grey likes the truth. “It’s Super Bee Man now, please. I have the cape on order.”
“Oh, I have a mock-up,” Laney says. “Forgot to tell you. Remind me when we go inside to grab my phone.”
“Fantastic.”
“Do your parents know you’re doing the test?” Emma asks Laney.
Laney shakes her head. “Telling them is a decision for another day. The triplets don’t want their dad to know either right now. They’ll decide what they want to do if we find out they’re right.”
Their dad being my uncle, the man who raised them.
“No matter what, you’ll all handle it great,” Zen says. “It’s the Tooth. That’s what you do.”
They’re not wrong.
Grey’s siblings descended on the town not long after we got back from California, claiming to be worried about Mimi’s mental and physical health if Grey was moving her to such a cold and nasty place and finding her a boyfriend, and the Tooth totally Toothed them.
And because they’re all a touch horrible, they were so uncomfortable with the kindness that they left within thirty-six hours after barely seeing Grey, Zen, or Mimi at all.
He has a new number now.
And he owns the company that bought out his lab.
And he bought an empty lot not far from Theo’s place where he intends to build a better lab for research on bees at elevation.
And the cherry on top—I didn’t have to threaten Theo or any of the triplets to convince them to be friends with Grey. He just fits here. Especially now that he’s found the best way to get peace with what Chandler did to him in college.
“What’s good for you?” I ask Emma.
“This, definitely.” She gestures with her glass to the car and the men still giggling over their plans to fix it up and paint it like a bee. Emma offered it flat-out to Grey—I know he hurt you and I hope this can give you some peace on that front—and Grey’s insisting it’ll be a communal car for all of us to share and use whenever we want.
So that the bee-mobile is driven around town more often.
Increasing the chances that Chandler will see it.
“Five strapping men in your garage?” Zen asks. “Emma. I had no idea you wanted to star in a why choose romance novel.”
She laughs. “No, you goober. Watching them be happy. That’s good for me.”
“And the revenge part?” Laney asks.
“Let’s call it closure.” Em sips her ginger ale again. “Chandler and I hadn’t slept together since like October. He said the wedding was stressing him out, but the truth is, he didn’t want to marry me. He just wanted everyone else to think he was awesome. It’s been hard to face, but also good, you know?”