Page 146 of The Bartender Special

Their conversation hadn’t lingered much past that. She’d left the clearing to go meet Marcus. Jack had stayed behind and thought about Benny.

Now, Jack wasn’t staying behind anymore.

No, he was locked in on Benny.

He continued on with his full chest.

“Realizing I’d been hiding too made me feel weak and pointless and…unworthy of someone like Benny,” he said to Callum. “Someone who talks so much he runs out of breath sometimes, someone who does favors for favors for other annoying favors. Someone who helps you put on glitter and paints your kid’s bedroom and says the thing you’re thinking but are too chicken shit to admit.”

Jack held up the paintbrush.

“I should have said this to him, but he’s not here and you, you’re his favorite person, so, I guess telling you now is the first step but—” Jack took a deep breath. He let it out quick, a new urgency in his chest.

“But I think Benny makes me want to think about things, he makes me want to care, and I let my hurt hurt him when I should have just told him how lucky I am that he got drunk in my bar and told me he loved Marcus Robertson.”

Callum didn’t look surprised at the admission that had—and hadn’t—caught Jack by surprise.

He did, however, look at the paintbrush.

He didn’t ask about it though.

“So, you believe him now?” Callum asked. “You believe he doesn’t have feelings for Marcus?”

Jack was quick with a nod.

“I might be grumpy, I might be an ass, but I believe in Benny. Even when I’m too stubborn to show it.”

Silence pushed between them.

Callum’s eyes narrowed.

For a moment, Jack thought he was about to be turned away. Or thoroughly chewed out.

Yet, Callum stepped back into the house. Instead of slamming the door in Jack’s face, he motioned him to come inside.

“Then let's figure out a plan worthy of winning back my little brother.”

Jack felt his grin before it sounded in his enthusiastic response.

“Hell yeah.”

He might have followed his heart to Benny’s childhood home without a plan but, right then and there, an idea popped into his head.

He hated it.

Benny would love it.

At least, he hoped.

Just because he’d finally understood his own feelings didn’t mean Benny’s hadn’t changed.

Either way, Jack was about to find out.

TWENTY-FIVE

Mary and Rebecca Saunders had three hundred wedding guests. It was one of the largest parties Benny had seen at the Jane Thomas Estate, droves of well-dressed people pouring through from the main hall where the ceremony had been held and into the grand room where the reception had taken place.

It had been a nice wedding.