Page 14 of Full Moon Frenzy

Grayson gestured around him. Trapp winced at the volume of his brother’s voice, wondering if the sound carried out better than it traveled in.

“It’s not to impress the neighbors. It’s not to goad the assholes in the old neighborhood. I don’t care if the minotaur from the gym whispers about how much I spent or how much land had to be cleared. I don’t care if Xenna thinks I should have been happy buying some shitty little house in the flex developments and be forced to go to the pisswater public pool. Because the second that gate closes behind me, they don’t exist and I don’t have to smile for fucking anyone until I leave again. And you’re right, I was upset when Vanessa and I split. But I was upset about us. Not over the neighbor’s opinion. And tonight she’s going to come home, and we’re going to do our skincare and float in our pool and watch a video from the caterer, and I’m not going to spare a single fucking second wondering how I might be perceived by a stranger at the coffee shop. That’s all you think about. You’re so wrapped up in other people’s opinions that you can’t take a shit without wondering whether it’ll offend someone on the other side of town. You can’t spend your whole life walking on eggshells in this place, Trapp. What’s going to happen when one of them breaks? So are you upset that your girlfriend dumped you? Or because the cashier at the fucking grocery store might have an opinion about it that doesn’t involve you being the good guy?”

He never got a chance to answer. They were interrupted by the sound of a car door slamming on the other side of the gate, both of them going quiet.

Trapp swallowed thickly. This was another part of the new normal he hadn’t realized would be such a hard adaptation, not one he even liked admitting to himself.

Once, Grayson had been entirely dependable, and that included dependably single. Too career-minded, disinterested in monogamy, too unwilling to make time in his schedule for anything but his ambitions. All of that had been upended when Vanessa had started at the firm. Now he was getting married, and everything was going to change.

“I never thought the day would come that we’d lose him to a nine-to-five job and a psycho girlfriend,” Lowell had laughed weakly, that last time he’d come home for a visit.

They’d been at the Pickled Pig. Trapp had opened his mouth to tell Lowell he was wrong, but the words had stuck. He liked Vanessa. Despite his brother’s revision of the past, Trapp knew that in the few months Gray and Vanessa had split, he had been in shambles. She was good for him . . . but Lowell wasn’t entirely wrong. Grayson had gone from a nihilistic workaholic with a girlfriend in the city to someone entirely content to sequester himself in his suburban yard with his wife-to-be and little else beyond wedding planning.

“She’s not psycho,” Trapp had corrected eventually, but the underlying sentiment lingered.

As he listened to the sound of the back door sliding open, Vanessa crossing the first deck, he considered that perhaps his relationship with Julia might have repaired itself, had they lasted through the wedding.

Trapp knew that made him sound terrible, but that didn’t make it less true. A family like the Hemmings — large, close, even if their personalities oftentimes clashed — was a safety net, one his girlfriend hadn’t had here in Cambric Creek. If she’d stayed until after Grayson’s wedding, perhaps Trapp would have been more invested in their relationship. That makes you sound like a fucking monster. You deserved to be dumped.

His inner voice wasn’t wrong, but neither was his rationale. Grayson had been his person from the moment Trapp had been born, closer than the rest of their brothers ever had been, and his relationship with Julia hadn’t changed that . . . but now his person had a different person.

“Holy shit, I have been daydreaming about this since lunch,” Vanessa exclaimed, approaching the pool, passing both their chairs. She’d changed into tight shorts and a cropped t-shirt, crossing the deck to where the bar stood beneath a shaded pergola. “Do we want to try the black caviar? Or stick with that 24-karat gold snail mucin?”

Trapp watched in fascination as she opened a small tabletop refrigerator, carefully applying black jelly under-eye pads in response to Grayson’s answer, before moving to the other side of the deck, where a matching lounger rested half out of the pool. It was the strangest version of a his-and-hers pastime he’d ever witnessed. Pushing the pool lounger into the water fully, Vanessa dropped into it backward, sending the float to their side of the pool with a small bounce as she groaned.

“This is it. This is all I’ll ever need to be happy again.”

“I’m going to pull that up on the security footage and save it,” Grayson informed her, pushing to his feet from his chair beside Trapp’s, crossing to where his own pool lounger bobbed against the wall. “I don’t understand why they won’t let us work from home. We’d never have to get out. We need to pick what’s going on the grazing table so that it can be sent to the farm.”

Trapp watched a projection screen lower from the pergola, as Grayson splashed back into his float. If he didn’t leave now, he’d be stuck watching wedding catering videos, a reminder of his newly single status.

“Oh no, what’s wrong?!” Vanessa’s words were directed toward Trapp, her eyebrows raised as she took him in for the first time since her arrival. Apparently, he did, in fact, look like shit, it would seem.

“The human dumped him,” Grayson supplied, already chuckling.

“Oh no!” Vanessa’s eyebrows were at risk of disappearing into her hair as her head swung back to him. “What happened!?”

Here you go, trial run of your version. He already knew that regardless of what he said, Grayson would tell her a different story the moment he left, but that didn’t matter. Vanessa was about to become a Hemming, and if nothing else, she seemed to understand what that meant publicly. She, too, knew how to stick to the script.

“She was offered a job in the school district where her mother and sister live, out of state. Her mom fell last year and has had a rough time with the physical therapy . . .” He took a deep breath, schooling his features, affecting a sad smile, as if he were announcing the departure of a butterfly he’d hatched. Sad to see it go, but knowing it was an inevitability. “She’s making the best decision she can. I don’t blame her for it. But that doesn’t mean I’m willing to just leave the department, not when I have so much seniority.”

Grayson clapped, loud and slow, as Trapp’s smile slipped back into a scowl. Vanessa’s head moved back and forth between them, her brows in danger of moving off her face entirely.

“Bravo. That was a magnificent first take. You even managed to work in the seniority angle! I would really zero in on the mom bit, lay it on thick. She didn’t have a choice . . . but neither do you, if you and Vinlop are the only medics at the station who can respond to critical care situations. What are you supposed to do? Move to Potatoville and mow the lawn at the park on weekends? That would be an irresponsible use of your already wasted education. By the time you deliver that at the coffee shop, I have no doubt you’ll somehow manage to make it sound like breaking up was your idea.”

Vanessa scoffed, splashing Grayson as he laughed, shaking her head. “Don’t listen to him, Trapp. We both know he can’t help it — he’s terminally an asshole. Regardless of the reason, I’m really sorry to hear that. I liked Julia a lot.”

“Go clean yourself up so I can take you to dinner this week. I have an invite to that private supper club thing Dragnar is starting. Oh, I almost forgot with all your crying . . . Shay said they hired a new doctor for that clinic. Apparently she went to Mercy. He said he texted you while she was still interviewing to find out if you knew her, but you never responded.”

“Yeah, you know what? You are taking me to dinner. That’s the least you can fucking do. Steak. Lobster. Full whiskey flight. You already know my phone is busted. And a lot of people went to Mercy. I don’t know all of them. Do you know every sixty-two-year-old socialite on the Eastern seaboard just because you fucked one of them? No? That’s how stupid you sound.”

“Woooow,” Vanessa laughed. “You two are relentless.”

“Go home, work on it in front of the mirror a few times,” Grayson continued as if Trapp hadn’t spoken. “Get in front of it early enough, spread it around. Once Julia’s version of how terrible you are gets out, you’ll already have swayed public opinion. Who are they going to believe? A human? Express how your heart is still open to love, despite this temporary setback. I’m sure you’ll have it ready by the time you hit the station.”

Trapp had already turned his back on the pool, making his way to the side gate with his arms raised, flipping his brother off with both hands. A swift glance over his shoulder showed Vanessa carefully applying a second set of the eye patches to Grayson’s face, bobbing beside him in the water, a domestic tableau he felt too raw to witness.

“Shake it off. Get laid. Don’t pick any stupid fucking fights I’ll have to rescue you from. And don’t ever come to my pool smelling like a donkey’s asshole again,” Grayson called to his back, as Vaness laughed. “Sun blasted or not.”