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Chapter One
Charlie
“You ready?” Jennifer asks when she walks into the walk-in closet as I pull on my white T-shirt. I smile at her standing there in jeans and a white T-shirt, matching me.
“I’m ready,” I reply, grabbing my baseball hat and putting it on my head. “I was waiting for you.” The small smile I had on my face widens as she closes the distance to me and puts one hand on my stomach, while the other hand grabs the hat off my head.
“I like it when you don’t wear this ratty thing.” She waves the hat in her hand, looking up at me, her golden-brown eyes warm like whiskey. “I like to run my fingers through your hair.” She drops the hat from her hand and proceeds to do exactly that through the top of my wettish hair.
“You win.” I lower to kiss her, wrapping an arm around her waist, then bending her back to kiss her lips. “You always win.” I pull her closer, burying my face in her neck and smelling her.
“Not always.” She smirks at me and she’s about to give me another kiss when we both hear the honking from outside. “Shall we finish this when we get home?” she asks with a twinkle in her eye as she leans forward to kiss my neck before I let her go. She turns in my arms, my hand reaching for hers as we walk out of the closet and head to the front door, going through the house. Picture frames of us are scattered throughout every single part of the house, something she did when she moved in a month ago. Even though I’ve been begging her to move in with me as soon as I moved here. Even though she would be here five days out of seven, she never gave in until she was ready.
She’s almost to the front door and about to unlock it when the doorbell rings twice, and she pulls it open. “Hey, can I use the bathroom?” Autumn practically barges in, hopping from one foot to the next.
“Go ahead,” Jennifer says, and Autumn comes down the hallway. When she spots me, her blue eyes light up.
“Hey.” She quickly comes over to kiss me on my cheek. “Got to use the bathroom,” she mumbles, then turns and rushes toward the bathroom.
“I’m going to go wait in the truck!” Jennifer yells, grabbing her green jacket and slipping it on. “You’ll close up?”
“Will do.” I nod at her, going to the back door and making sure it’s locked before walking over and checking the window above the kitchen sink that she likes to keep open so she can hear the birds.
I’m walking to the front door when I hear honking again. “He’s in a great mood today,” Autumn mumbles sarcastically behind me, making me laugh because Waylon is almost always in a great mood. “Tonight is going to be fun,” she says over her shoulder as she walks out of the house. I follow her, closing the door behind me.
“Took you long enough,” Waylon snaps when Autumn opens the passenger door and then looks over at me. I look around her to see he’s got his baseball hat on backward, his blondish hair sticking out from the back of the hat.
“You sit up front.” She tries to hide that she’s pissed off at him and his words, but she fails miserably as she walks over to the back door and opens it, sliding in and slamming the door, not giving me an option.
“Hey,” I greet, getting into the truck and looking over to see the four of them are squished in the back. “How’s everyone doing?” I ask Brock, who is sitting with his girlfriend Everleigh’s ass practically in his lap, his arms wrapped around her to keep her safe. I barely have my seat belt on before Waylon drives off, making Brock shake his head. “Good times,” I say, looking at Jennifer and winking at her. She scrunches up her nose at me and then smiles before turning to Everleigh and saying hello, and the two of them start chatting. Autumn is looking out of the window and not talking to them.
We head over to Waylon’s family hunting cabin, some fifteen minutes away, on the outskirts of town. The log cabin is painted red, with a wraparound porch and four rocking chairs on it. Waylon and I became friends two years ago when I came into town and went to the town hall to apply for permits to start building my barn here. My family and I bought property with a barn on it, but I wanted to expand it. Waylon’s family has been around this town, dating back to the 1920s, when his great-grandfather started a construction company and went into lumber trading or something like that. Now, they just do construction. If a building goes up in town, it’s always with the Cartwright family building it. They were the ones who did all the renovations to the barn.
We walk to the side of the house where eight big logs lie in an octagon shape around a firepit. We are here almost every single weekend just to sit and shoot the shit, or even during the week, we go out and eat and then just come here and chill. Sometimes we even bring the food with us.
The sun is slowly going down when Waylon comes back with some wood and starts the fire while I sit on a log. “Here,” Brock offers, handing me a beer he took out from the cooler that he just carried over from the back of Waylon’s pickup.
“Thanks.” Holding my beer, I clink it with his. The heat from the fire comes to me as I look over and see Jennifer, Autumn, and Everleigh sitting on a log across from me, laughing at something one of them said. The three of them have been best friends since kindergarten. I met Jennifer through Waylon, who brought her to the barn one day. The next day, I called her up, and we’d been together for the past year. I watch Brock walk over to the girls with the cooler in his hand, and the three of them open up their own beers as Everleigh tells them a story.
“I’m wiped,” Brock states when he comes back and sits next to me, stretching out his legs in front of him. He just graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture and is starting his three-year internship with the Cartwright Company. Plus, he works on the weekend and sometimes at night at his family mechanic shop. I take a pull of my beer as Waylon comes over to sit next to me, holding a water bottle. “No beer?” Brock asks him, and he shakes his head.
“Nah,” he says, “I’m driving.” He takes a big gulp of his water. “Plus, I have to help my father tomorrow at the house.” He shakes his head. “Like he couldn’t get someone else to help him or my brother. He’s been on my ass these past couple of weeks.” We both chuckle at him as he goes on to talk about how his father has been on his case. Something that I can understand since he dropped out of college to help work at the construction company, but then bailed the first week of working. He opted to work in the office except he practically never shows up, and when you talk to him, he’s usually on the golf course. He finishes the bottle of water, then crushes it before going to his truck to get another one.
The crackling from the fire fills the night air as we all talk about little things here and there, the girls on their side of the fire laughing away and giggling. I catch Jennifer watching me a couple of times and I wink at her each time, giving her a little grin. I want to leave and go back to our place and just be together when Waylon gets up and goes to his truck. I watch him walking there, wondering what he’s doing. He opens the driver’s side door and turns the pickup on, blasting the radio loudly. The sound of a country song now replaces the sound of the fire branches snapping. He holds one hand up in the air as he sways his hips. “Autumn, get your ass over here and dance with me.” He grabs another bottle of water from the truck. I shake my head and laugh as Jennifer gets up and comes over to me, sitting on the ground between my legs. I put my beer bottle down next to the three other empty bottles I’ve drunk since we got here, before wrapping my arms around her chest. “Having fun, baby?” I ask her when she looks up at me, smiling.
“More fun than them.” She motions with her chin toward the truck where Waylon and Autumn are having what looks like a heated argument. He’s trying to get her to dance, but she’s whipping off his arm and fighting his advances. “I don’t know what she’s doing with him. She deserves so much better than him.” Waylon pffts in Autumn’s face before she shakes her head. He grabs her wrist when she’s about to walk away from him, yanking her to him, jerking her shoulder, and then hugging her. “I mean, it’s not a night out unless they are fighting,” Jennifer says when she stands up and holds out her hand for me. “Dance with me?”
“Anytime.” I grab her hand, getting up. “Anywhere.” I wrap an arm around her waist as I sway her to the song playing on the radio. I bury my face in her neck, smelling the berry scent from her shampoo. “Forever.” I rub my nose against hers. “Have I told you lately that I love you?” I ask her softly as she grips the back of my neck in both hands.
“You might have mentioned it a time or two,” she replies, and she’s about to kiss me when Waylon starts.
“We should get the fuck out of here,” he urges, his voice almost in a scream as he tries to be louder than the music, “hit up the bar in town and see what’s going on there.”
“We shouldn’t do that,” Autumn quickly says to him, and he looks at her, and it’s a look of a glare and a sneer.
“No one asked you, Autumn,” he retorts, shaking his head, turning toward the four of us. “Who is with me?” He looks at the four of us. “Should we take off or what?”
I put my arm around Jennifer’s shoulders when she wraps her arms loosely around my waist. “We can’t leave until the fire is out.” I motion with my head toward the fire that is still going strong.
