Page 56 of Restored By You

A part of me wants to say yes, to throw caution to the wind and give in to all the enormous, terrifying things underneath the question he’s not quite letting himself ask.

Instead, I reach down and lace my fingers through his, and squeeze. “Maybe,” I whisper. It’s not a yes. But it’s not a no.

And Rhett—god, Rhett, who’s given me every spare moment he has and every scrap I’m willing to give him—grins down at me like I’ve handed him the whole world. “Maybe,” he echoes, and lifts our joined hands to press a kiss to my knuckles.

We make our way back toward his family and Tyler. The Montgomerys have migrated to the hay bales outside the bakery, a sprawl of costumes and candy for the perfect photo-op. Butch has surrendered his football helmet to Gage, who’s wearing it sideways over his whole face. Cassidy and Maci are comparing the babies’ candy hauls “for research,” Maci insists, unwrapping a mini Snickers. Clayton’s got a cluster of neighborhood kids gathered around, telling a story that ends with him lunging and roaring while they scatter, shrieking with delight. Even Beau’s cracked a rare smile at Levi’s now deflated T-rex suit he can’t seem to find his way out of.

And there, in the middle of it, is my stepbrother. Tyler’s got Parker and two other kids gathered around him, mask flipped up, gesturing with a full-size candy bar as he explains the correct strategy for maximizing candy yield per block. The kids hang on every word.

“See, you gotta hit the houses first, ‘cause they run out, but the shops restock. So, houses, shops, then you circle back—”

“Circle back,” Parker breathes, awestruck.

I stop walking for a second just to watch him. Two months ago, this kid wouldn’t take his earbuds out for a full conversation. Now he’s running a candy scam for a pack of six-year-olds.

“There they are!” Julie spots us, waving us into the fold with a Betty Crocker oven mitt.

She presses a cup into my hands before I can decline it and I sink onto a hay bale between Cassidy and Callie, cider warming my hands. The whole loud, beautiful clan of them around us, and I think—not for the first time—that I have never in my life been anywhere that felt like this. Warm, welcoming. A home.

“So.” Julie claps her oven-mitted hands together. “Here’s my thinking.”

“Ma,” Rhett warns.

“I’m having all the grandbabies out to the house tonight,” she barrels on, ignoring him entirely. “Butch and Duke are dropping the little ones, and I’ve got the projector set up in the den and enough popcorn to feed an army. We’re doing a scary movie marathon.” She makes air quotes with the oven mitts over scary. “Hocus Pocus and Halloweentown. And,” Julie continues, turning her attention on Tyler, who’s wandered back over. “I was hoping Tyler might want to join us.”

Tyler blinks. “You want me to…sleep over? At your house?”

“Only if you’d like to, honey.” Julie’s tone is easy, offhand, like it’s nothing.

When it may just be everything.

I watch the pink climb his neck, his eyes darting to me for permission. “Can I?” he asks, and there’s something so young and hopeful in it that I have to swallow hard before I answer.

“Of course, you can,” I say. “Text me before you crash. And be good.”

Parker cheers as the whole pack of them thunder off with Julie toward Clayton’s truck. Julie gathers her brood with the practiced efficiency of a woman who’s been herding this many kiddos for forty years.

And then it’s just me and Rhett and an entire night with no one to answer to but each other. Rhett’s hand slides around my waist. His mouth finds my ear. “So,” he growls low. “Whatever will we do with ourselves?”

I turn in his arms, loop mine around his neck, and smile up at my favorite, old-school handyman under the streetlights. “I have a few ideas,” I say. “But you’ll need to show me off and buy me a drink first.”

His grin is wicked, his gaze sliding down my body. “Done,” he says, and kisses me right there in the middle of the street.

A whoop cuts through the fog machine haze.

“Ugh. Get a room,” Levi hollers, and I break away from Rhett laughing to find the whole pack of them reassembled—minus the kids, who’ve been safely sent off with their grandparents.

“You’re one to talk,” Cassidy calls. “And hey, where did you steal that candy bar from?”

Every head turns to Levi, who freezes mid-bite, a full-size Butterfinger halfway to his mouth. “Parker gave it to me,” he says around it.

“Tavern Nine!” Duke announces, one arm slung around Maci. “First round’s on Butch.”

Butch, still in his football pads, doesn’t even look up from his hands roaming his wife’s cheerleader-clad body. The whole group dissolves, and Cassidy’s already tugging Butch toward the bar. Callie loops her arm through mine with a squeal, Beau and Hulk trailing us. Rhett laces his fingers through my free hand, and the ridiculous, costumed lot of us spill down Main Street toward Tavern Nine like a group of friends. Or…family.

And for one night, it feels like maybe we are.

Twenty.