Theo’s phone audibly dings, and Laney and I look at him.
It dings again as he’s pulling it out of his pocket.
My heart takes flight and hovers in my throat.
Laney leans closer to him, peeking as he glances at the readout.
“Are his texts that fascinating?” Jack asks.
“It could be Emma, dumbass,” Decker mutters.
“But she’s on her honeymoon through the end of the week, isn’t she?”
“Her runaway-moon.”
“Oh, look at you, finding your writer words.”
“Off, Jitterbug,” Theo says, lifting up from the chair and shoving his phone in his pocket.
Everything inside me freezes like I’ve been dipped in dry ice at the expression on his face. My pulse rockets and makes my fingers and toes tingle. “Emma?” I ask.
He ignores both me and my dog, who’s pushing against him like he can shove Theo back into the chair and climb back into his lap.
“Bring my crutches?” Laney says.
He kisses her on the head. “Yep. Who do you want to take you home?”
“I’ve got her,” I say.
“Sabrina’s got me,” she agrees.
Theo eyes me.
I toss my hands up. “I’m not going to drop her and break her other leg. Go.”
“What just happened?” Jack says to Decker while Jitter slinks around the table to settle his head in my lap and whine.
“Emma’s coming home?” Decker guesses.
Theo doesn’t answer.
He doesn’t have to.
There are very, very few reasons he’d leave Laney alone in public and dependent on anyone else to get a ride home.
If there was something wrong with his dad, he’d say so.
The fact that he’s saying nothing means it’s Emma and she asked him not to.
And the fact that Theo wants Laney to get another ride home means that Emma doesn’t just want a phone call with her big brother. It nearly certainly means he’s headed to Denver to get her from the airport.
Theo kisses Laney once more, then salutes the rest of us and heads for the door without filling in any blanks that I’m not filling in for myself.
“Do not read anything into this,” Laney orders me.
“She doesn’t want to see us?” I whisper.
“Do not read anything into this.”
Translation: I saw the text, she doesn’t want to see us, and we need to give her space to fill in the answers whenever she’s ready.
While Laney was the one who let it slip to Emma that Theo had taken the fall for Chandler with jail time a decade ago, she didn’t know until basically the minute she relayed the information to Emma shortly before the wedding was supposed to happen.
I, meanwhile, was the one who’s known it for practically a decade.
“Theo should’ve told her since Chandler didn’t,” Laney says softly, like she’s reading my mind, which she probably is. We’ve known each other for a long, long time. “And he’ll be the first person to tell you so.”
“Gotta agree,” Decker says.
“Thirded,” Jack chimes in. “And fourthing for Lucky. He’d be on Team Theo Fucked Up Second Most After Chandler. And all of us say that as dudes who love the guy. But mostly, I think we need to remember that Chandler can be a charming asshole when he wants to be, and Emma wouldn’t have believed any of us.”
I hear them. I hear their words. But—“It’s hard for my heart to agree when she’s hurting and I could’ve prevented it.”
“You’re a font of information about our community, but you aren’t psychic,” Laney says. “Cut yourself some slack. And have faith in her. We’ve been through too much for this to break us apart.”
“Have we?”
All Emma’s wanted since she was little was to get married and have a massive family.
And now, after waiting for Chandler to walk down the aisle with her for seven years, she’s alone.
No husband. No kids. No white picket fence with the dog in the yard and the cat inside.
It’s not my dream, but it was hers. If I’d told her, would she have found a different dream man and be living her dream life now?
“Stop it,” Laney says. “Let’s get back to solving the problems we can solve and waiting until we know if everything else even is a problem, okay?”
Jitter whines and puts a paw on my knee.
I bump my forehead with his. Cute massive dog.
“Okay,” I agree, even though my heart isn’t in it. “Solvable problems first. What else does anyone have on Greyson Cartwright?”