38

Sloane

By the next Saturday, I almost feel human again.

Davis has been in and out of town, with me when he’s here, texting when he’s not.

With his real phone number. The one that goes straight to his real phone. Not whatever backup system he has in place for less important people.

And yes, that’s what he called them.

My grandmother posted bail and flew home to Iowa. I agreed to not press charges provided she never set foot in Shipwreck again, which was truly letting her off light, but she’s old.

Old, and in cahoots with Patrick.

Davis was right about that. Grandma was his secret accomplice, feeding him information about me and egging him on.

Once Aiden moved away, she was lonely and scared about who’d take care of her as she aged. Naturally, I was the only person in consideration, since I “owed” her. But she realized I wouldn’t return on my own when I was still as excited as ever about Shipwreck after the museum opened.

Apparently she thought I’d get bored when the project was done, completely give up on the life I’d built here, and go running back to Two Twigs.

When I didn’t, she decided it was time for a more active tactic and got in touch with her favorite of my ex-boyfriends. She thought Patrick could do no wrong. Not only was he the first boyfriend I ever brought home after moving away, but he went to church on Christmas and made enough money to support me if we had four or five kids. He’d recently discovered his own history with Thorny Rock and Walter Bombeck and the treasure, and the two of them realized they could both benefit from Patrick getting close to me again.

Grandma was stupid enough to believe Patrick when he promised he’d bring me home to Two Twigs, but also thrilled with the idea that Patrick could ruin Shipwreck for me if he found proof that Thorny Rock and Walter Bombeck had switched identities when they came inland.

Patrick was weirdly susceptible to my grandmother’s guilt and manipulation.

Except Patrick was slower than Grandma had anticipated he’d be—likely because he wanted to find the treasure first as both a way to destroy Shipwreck for himself, since he’d never been welcomed back since the wedding where I dumped him, but also as a warped kind of grand gesture to win me back—so Grandma sent Nigel to do what Patrick was taking too long to do.

Nigel wasn’t her first choice of men to marry me and drag me back to Two Twigs—she didn’t like that I’d be poor if I married a preacher—but she was willing to settle for me settling for Nigel, and also hoping having competition would make Patrick focus back on the plan to win me back.

Nigel posted bail and flew home to Iowa last weekend too. Same deal—no charges provided he never sets foot in Shipwreck again—though I made sure the Two Twigs paper posted a notice that he’d been arrested for breaking into a woman’s home.

Do I feel bad that he’s likely lost his job?

No.

Pretty sure he sucked at it if the way he treated me was any indication of how he interacts with other people at large.

Patrick has not posted bail and will not be posting bail.

I asked Davis if Levi Wilson had something to do with that, and got a very honest I haven’t asked him because I don’t need to know . But Davis did say it’s likely. Levi wasn’t happy when he heard what Patrick did to his lead security person.

I like Levi.

He and Ingrid stayed with me at Beck’s house one night this past week when I didn’t want to stay at home and Beck and Sarah had returned to the city and Davis was handling something with selling his house in Corieville, closer to the Virginia-North Carolina border where he’s lived for most of the past ten years.

And he was already selling the house before me since he quit his job to move into a trailer while he looked for the treasure.

So everyone has assured me.

And every time they say it, they can’t quite help the wince in their faces or voices.

Which means they’ve all also added it’s best when Davis has a mission .

And I think I get it now, so I’ve nodded every time.

He could go back to work at the reactor, but he says that part of his life is over. So he’s looking at college classes.

I stayed at Pop and Nana’s house one night too.

Not Monday night.

No risking Tuesday shower sex day.

But I stayed with them Wednesday night, and Pop and I had a long talk about how I won’t be spilling the beans, but he owes it to his grandchildren to tell them what he knows so they can make the most informed decision about what to release to the public.

The rest of the nights, I was either at Davis’s camper with him, or at Beck and Sarah’s pool house with Davis, or staying at Grady and Annika’s house with Davis because I fell asleep on their couch and no one wanted to move me.

Tillie Jean brought me lunch one afternoon and told me she’d heard nothing in my bedroom the night Grandma tried to kidnap me, and that even the threat of having to watch her own grandparents having sex in the shower on a Tuesday wasn’t enough to drag out of her what she didn’t hear.

Davis’s secret is safe with her. She doesn’t know the details, and the details matter.

I worked all week.

Every single patient old enough to talk and comprehend the words asked if I was dating the lost Bro Code guy . If they weren’t old enough to talk and comprehend the words, their parents asked for them.

And I told every last one of them that yes, he’d taken me to dinner a time or two, and yes, we were seeing where a real relationship should go.

No one in town believed we were actually engaged, but they all were willing to keep up the ruse because they knew I had to have a good reason for it.

And because it was fun.

I’ve never loved my adopted hometown more.

But I let Tillie Jean and Annika drag me away from it on Saturday.

“Girls’ night,” Tillie Jean said very sternly to Davis when he asked yesterday if he could come too.

He rolled his eyes.

She rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue back. “We’re being normal ,” she told him. “Normal is girls’ nights for amazing concerts in the city every once in a while.”

And now the three of us are sitting inside Mink Arena, waiting for Aspen to take the stage, a full week after I was supposed to fake-marry Davis after the craziest week of my life before that.

“Why can’t concerts start earlier?” I mutter to Annika while Tillie Jean’s taking pictures of the stage after the opening act.

“Oh my god, right?” she says on a yawn.

Tillie Jean taps my leg. “You guys. Wake up. Waverly says this is the best show on the planet, and she didn’t get us front-row seats for us to yawn through it.”

“Couldn’t Waverly have gotten the time moved up?” Annika says. “Seriously, some of us are pregnant and have toddlers.”

“Yeah, and you don’t see me yawning about it, do you?”

We both stare at her.

And then no one’s tired.

We’re all shrieking and hugging and hugging and shrieking while Tillie Jean grins so broadly that my cheeks hurt for her.

More babies.

More babies in Shipwreck.

More honorary nieces or nephews or niblings.

Someone behind us asks if we want a picture.

We don’t tell them we hang out with tonight’s performers on the regular because one, I’ve only hung out with Aspen for barely an hour total, and two, enough people in Copper Valley already recognize Tillie Jean because of Cooper nearly single-handedly taking the Fireballs from the worst team in baseball to the very best.

And no one sent extra security for us tonight.

It’s unsettling, which I’m trying to ignore.

I don’t need security.

Yes, I’m dating the missing Bro Code guy , but no one harasses him in Shipwreck.

Or Copper Valley, apparently.

He just does his thing with that straight face he’s perfected, and people leave him alone.

But he’s not straight-faced with me anymore.

Or secretive.

I even know how he knew the codes to the museum every day, and no, I’m not telling.

That’s his secret.

As is, apparently, where he lives in Copper Valley. He told me he’d be in the city and that I could stay at his place if I didn’t want to go all the way back to Shipwreck after the show tonight, but he very specifically did not extend that invitation to Tillie Jean and Annika.

If I do want to go home, he’ll meet me in Shipwreck, and we’ll crash at Beck’s pool house again.

One of these days, I’ll want to sleep in my own house again.

I’m working up to it.

But right now, we’re still squealing over Tillie Jean’s news and the lights are going down in the arena.

I glance at the structure holding lights up over the stage, and my heart squeezes for the young man Davis was when the band called it quits.

I’ve seen all of his former bandmates except for Cash since he spilled his heart out early Saturday morning, and all three of them looked at me like I was different.

Like they know I know what happened in Denver.

And that they know I know how monumental it is that I know.

Vanessa stopped by to check on me Sunday afternoon, and while Davis was pulling Peggy out of the cat food bag in the laundry room, she told me the reason he never dated was because he didn’t want to trust anyone with all of his secrets.

So this just dating thing?

Yeah.

It’s serious.

And it has me grinning the goofiest grin of my life as the stage lights come up, illuminating Aspen on the walkway out into the crowd as she immediately belts out a high note in her latest hit.

“We love you, Aspen,” Tillie Jean yells.

There’s zero chance she heard us—she has those thingies in her ears that I saw videos about on social media that help her stay on beat and protect her hearing at the same time—but she looks down at us and winks before strolling down the rest of the walkway in her opening number.

Annika and Tillie Jean and I sing along to every song, dancing and having the time of our lives, with Annika taking regular pee breaks and Tillie Jean sighing and saying that’ll be her again soon enough.

And then it’s time for the surprise guest of the night.

It’s not actually a surprise though.

It’s always Cash.

He finished all of the promo stuff he had to do for his last movies this past year, and he’s been on the road with Aspen when he hasn’t been working movie premieres.

Davis told me Cash had been missing the road, so when he and Aspen hooked up, it was natural for him to leave Hollywood behind and go with her.

Except that’s not Cash being pushed up out of the stage in the center of the walkway.

I gasp.

Annika grabs my hand.

Tillie Jean grabs my other hand.

And Levi Wilson rises out from beneath the stage in white jeans and a tight blue T-shirt while the crowd absolutely loses their shit.

I twist and turn, looking around. Is Ingrid here? Did she know Levi would be performing?

He hasn’t performed in public since finishing his last tour shortly after they started dating.

Surely she’s here somewhere?—

“ Sloane ,” Tillie Jean shrieks.

I turn back to the stage, and once again, I’m gasping.

Beck Ryder’s rising from below the stage on a separate platform.

Oh my god. Sarah.

Sarah has to be here too.

She—

I quit twisting to look, because the roar of the crowd tells me something else is going on.

And the sudden buzz in my ears and uptick of my pulse and the quake in my knees tell me what’s coming.

It doesn’t matter that the third man rising onto the stage is Tripp Wilson.

Or that Cash is running out from the back of the stage, mic in hand, saying, “Hold up, hold up, this is my number,” with the biggest shit-eating grin to ever eat shit and grin.

We’re eye level with the stage. Like I have a straight-on view of Aspen’s calves.

And even though I can’t see it, I know what’s happening.

Another trapdoor is opening.

Another head is coming into sight.

The crowd is screaming so loudly that I can’t hear myself think.

And— oh my god .

“Oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god.”

I don’t know if that’s me or Tillie Jean or Annika as a fifth head of brown hair lifts high enough that we can see it.

Davis.

On a stage .

With the rest of the Bro Code guys .

Without his manbun.

Without the beanie he’s been wearing outside the house.

Showing off a crisp new short haircut.

Aspen taps her mic. “Is this thing on? My stage is malfunctioning. Is my microphone working right?”

“Levi shoved me off my platform,” Cash says. “I was about to come up, and then he?—”

He cuts himself off as a single drum beats out a rhythm.

Levi grins at Tripp.

Tripp pulls a mic out of his back pocket, looks at it, and shrugs.

Beck pulls a mic out of his back pocket too.

Cash takes Beck’s mic and pushes him back on the stage so he’s behind the Wilson brothers. “Not you. You can’t sing for shit. Just be pretty and dance.”

And Davis?—

Davis looks straight at me, winks, and lifts a microphone to his lips as the first strains of “America’s Sweetheart,” the quintessential Bro Code song that made them stars, come from the band.

Davis sings lead.

He always sang lead, so he’s singing lead tonight, and his voice?—

“ Yes, baby, sing it! ” Tillie Jean yells.

Oh my god, I forgot how much I love his voice.

Rich and smooth and perfect. I read an article once where one of the other guys said Davis had the voice of an angel, and oh my god , he does.

He does, and he’s singing.

Right there.

Right on the stage in front of me.

Not hiding. Not even hiding his shorter hair.

And the dancing—all five of them—all of them are hitting every step.

“Did you know?” Annika yells at me.

I shake my head.

And I stand there with my eyes getting hot while the five men who were never supposed to play together again move around the stage, in sync and on key, performing the song that took them to the level of superstars when I was a teenager.

When Davis was too. He’s a little older than me, but he was a teenager too.

The only one of the group who finished high school on the road instead of walking the stage.

They play the extended version while the crowd roars and Tillie Jean and Annika dance beside me, but me?—

I’m sixteen again.

With the most massive parasocial crush of crushes on a guy who doesn’t know I exist.

Except he does know I exist.

He spent last night with his body wrapped around mine and his hand resting on my cat while we slept.

Woke me with soft kisses and a gotta go, I have an appointment in the city, have fun tonight, entirely too early.

So this was his appointment.

Getting ready to perform with his best friends like they used to.

We were supposed to buy the Fireballs. Be together again .

He’s getting his together again .

My eyes blur, but I blink back the happy tears and stand there, hands clasped, bouncing on my feet while I watch my boyfriend shake his ass and sing his heart out.

I love him.

I do.

I.

Love.

Him.

That’s what I’m thinking as the last beat hits, closing out the song.

That I love him and I will love him forever and there was never a way that my life would go that I couldn’t love him.

Cash hands the microphone back to Beck.

Levi and Tripp and Davis all grin at each other, and then Levi—the one guy who went solo after the band broke up—lifts his mic first. “Well. That was fun. You bring a good crowd, Aspen. Look at this.”

The crowd roars again.

“Take it off,” Tillie Jean yells.

All five of the men and Aspen look at her.

So do the security team lining the stage beyond a rope that we’re behind.

She whistles and repeats herself. “Take it all off!”

“Who let Cooper’s sister in?” Tripp asks. “Can we get security?”

“Hey, no security, I like Cooper,” Beck says. “You guys like Cooper? You know, Cooper Rock? Baseball player? About my height? Big ego? Hot bat? Crazy gymnastics at second base?”

Tillie Jean mock gags while the crowd goes positively nuts.

Tripp snickers.

Davis snickers.

Cash snickers.

“Yeah, that guy,” Beck says. “Pretty cool wife too. I hear you guys know her.”

The crowd roars.

“You’re not saying some baseball player has the better wife, are you?” Levi says to Beck.

“What? No way. My wife is the best. She runs this science blog called Must Love Bees, and it’s epic.”

“Also, she lives with you,” Cash says. “That earns her points for…something.”

“She doesn’t just live with me, man. She’s having our third baby.”

Annika screams.

Tillie Jean screams.

The entire arena screams.

My eyes burn hotter.

More babies. More babies in Shipwreck.

“Don’t tell my in-laws I told you,” Beck adds. “They don’t know yet.”

“Already got three kids,” Levi says. “Way to keep up. You know what’s as awesome as a science blog? A bookstore. It can get any science you want in book form. And that’s what my wife does. She runs a bookstore. Has romance novels too. Y’all like romance novels?”

I am where I belong, because once again, the crowd loses its mind.

“If we’re comparing,” Tripp says, “might I point out that my wife runs the most successful baseball team in the world and manages baseball players with big egos.”

He doesn’t have to say which baseball team.

This is a hometown crowd.

They know.

And the Fireballs might not have brought home top honors this year, but they did each of the two years before.

“And speaking of, did you all hear our favorite newlywed player is staying on for one more year to bring us home another championship?” he adds.

“Gag me,” Tillie Jean yells.

“Is that really Cooper’s sister?” someone behind us says.

“Yes, but she bites,” Annika replies.

“Oh, wow, it is. That’s Tillie Jean. Tillie Jean. TJ! Did you bring the goat?”

“Can we get back to bragging on our significant others?” Cash says up on stage. “Because you all wouldn’t be here tonight if my girlfriend hadn’t let you crash her show. Can we hear it for Aspen?”

Oh, yes.

This crowd is here for Aspen.

We love her.

I’ll be hoarse before tonight is over.

And it’ll be worth it.

But the buzzing is starting in my ears again, because all four of his bandmates are now looking at Davis.

“Welp, that’s what we’ve been up to,” Beck says.

“How about another song?” Levi adds.

“A good one this time,” Cash says. “Without the manbun stealing all of the vocals.”

“Is he really the manbun anymore though?” Levi says. “I don’t see a manbun.”

“Neither do I,” Tripp adds.

“It’s there metaphysically,” Beck says.

“Metaphorically?” Tripp corrects.

Beck grins at him. “You and your big words. Maybe we should take a poll from the crowd.”

“Can the manbun speak?” Davis says, which is so wrong, since clearly, he doesn’t have his manbun anymore.

I suspect it’ll come back.

Eventually.

The other four look at each other and shrug.

Like they have an option of telling him no.

I’m wearing hearing protection and the roar of the crowd in this building is making my ears hurt.

This crowd wants to hear what Davis has been up to.

He shakes his head, a performer’s smile on his lips.

Every time he tries to talk, they drown him out.

It’s beautiful.

And glorious.

And I swear I can feel his heart beating every bit as fast as mine is.

In terror?

Enjoyment?

Both?

It takes all four of the other guys and Aspen shushing the crowd before Davis can finally speak.

And when he does?—

Oh, my heart.

My heart faints dead away and my eyes get hot and my cheeks get wet and there’s a lump in my throat that won’t stop.

He slides me another look. “How about some credit to the woman who inspired our reunion tonight by being brave enough to tell me how disappointed she was that she never got to see us play fifteen years ago?”

Tillie Jean sways into me. “I think I just swooned to death, and I’m a happily married woman,” she says.

“Oh my god, he reunited the band for you ,” Annika shrieks on my other side.

“That’s a good place to give some credit,” Levi says.

“If we’re being honest here, that’s pretty much the only thing that could’ve pulled me away from dinner,” Beck agrees. “We were having cheeseburgers tonight. You know how good cheeseburgers are?”

“I can’t top that,” Tripp says. “I only perform in private for my wife these days. Not in front of forty thousand people after spending fifteen years being a hermit.”

“Babe, can we have one more song?” Cash says to Aspen. “Since we got the manbun—ah, I mean, Davis out here, we should make the most of this.”

“My stage is your stage, but only if you make it a good one,” she replies.

The drummer hits a beat, and my breath catches.

I know this song.

I know this song inside and out.

“When You See Me.”

I haven’t heard it in years—not since I used to listen to Bro Code albums on repeat once I left Two Twigs—but this song—this was my secret favorite.

The song about the boy and the girl and the secrets and the truth and how he sees her, and she sees him, and they know.

They know they’re real.

They know they’re right.

They know it’s love.

Even if their parents don’t approve and they have to hide, they know it’s love.

It’s a slower song. The guys spread out on the stage, singing to the crowd from five places.

Except Davis.

Davis makes his way to me.

Drops to his knees while he sings.

Then squats back and swings his legs forward, sitting on the edge of the stage as close as he can get to me.

I inch closer to the security line.

They let me through.

And the man of my dreams—the man who saved me countless times, the man who’s made sure I feel safe every second of every day for the past week, the man who’s made love to me and spoiled my cat and opened up to my friends and who strives so hard every day to do the right thing for all of the right reasons, and sometimes even more than the right reasons—he holds eye contact while he sings the song of my heart to me.

In the middle of forty thousand people.

With his best friends singing with him.

I’m crying and I’m laughing and when he flips his microphone to one of the security guards before sliding off the stage and wrapping me in his arms and kissing me soundly, right there while the entire arena watches, I know.

I know he’s the one.

He’s my reward for every bad relationship. He’s my family to make up for the family I was born to. He’s my everything.

I pull out of the kiss and wrap my arms around him and hover my lips to his ear, his fresh haircut tickling my nose. “Are we going slow enough if I tell you I love you?”

He shudders, then squeezes me tightly. “A guy doesn’t face that stage for a woman he doesn’t love back.”

We don’t stay for the rest of Aspen’s show.

Davis assures me she’ll forgive us.

Considering all the ways he shows me he loves me once we get to his secret apartment just a few blocks away—I don’t think I’d care if she didn’t.

Who needs a pop star’s forgiveness when I have my favorite retired boy bander’s complete love and adoration?

Especially when he’s so thorough in showing his love and adoration?

And not just with orgasms.

But with making me coffee. Telling me the stories about all of his tattoos. Keeping my favorite Kangapoo shampoo in his shower in this secret apartment that no one else in his circle knows about.

Answering me honestly even when it’s hard.

Not being mad when I answer him honestly even when it’s hard.

All of the little things that are healing the wounds I still have on my soul.

The things that show me he’s a good man with a good heart who will never be perfect, but who is absolutely perfect to me.

“You looked incredible on that stage,” I whisper to him late, late that night as we snuggle in bed together.

He presses a kiss to my temple. “Felt good too. More than I thought it would.”

“Will you ever do it again?”

“Only if you asked me to.”

I hug him tighter. “I would’ve loved you even if you hadn’t.”

His fingers comb through my hair, and he kisses my forehead again. “And that’s exactly why I did it.”

I kiss his chest.

“I did something else this week,” he murmurs.

“What’s that?”

“I convinced a certain baseball player with a big ego to sell me one of his cabins.”

I lift my head and stare at Davis in the dark.

And then it clicks.

And I laugh. And laugh. And I laugh some more.

He chuckles, and it’s the best sound in the world.

“Yeah,” he says, his voice husky. “That cabin.”

“The one where he found his half of the treasure.”

“Wouldn’t have asked for any other.”

I giggle again. “How much did it take to convince him?”

“One look from his wife and one promise from me to donate some resources to his favorite charity.”

“Resources?”

“To be determined if it’s time or money or both.”

“You’d do it anyway.”

“Yep. He’s a terrible negotiator.” He shifts in the bed and slides a hand down my naked hip. “You can stay there any night you want to. For as long as you need. Starting immediately.”

Dammit.

My eyes are getting hot again.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

“It will always be my absolute pleasure to keep you safe and happy and loved.”

I am.

I’m safe. I’m happy. I’m loved.

And he is too.

I might not be able to buy him a house. I might not be able to find him another treasure.

But I will find every way I can to show him how much he’s loved too.