Chapter 3: Charlie

NOVA LEAVES ME standing in front of a Douglas fir with a semi and a whole lot to think about. I have to drag both hands over my face and do some deep breathing exercises to make it out from behind that tree without embarrassing myself.

Not that it helps much. My brain feels like it’s full of wool and whatever perfume Nova was wearing.

I stroll my way over to Luka and Stella’s table and try not to look like I’m having an existential crisis. It was a bold move, telling her she needs to ask me again. But I stand by it. I’m not going to take Nova Porter home and hope for the best. This town is too important to me. I’m not going to risk my place in it because I decided to think with my downstairs brain.

By the time I make it to the table, Stella is smirking at me.

“What?”

She flicks me in the shoulder. “You know what.”

I cast a quick glance at Beckett at the other side of the table, but he’s busy with his wife in his lap, his chin on her shoulder and both of his arms wrapped around her waist. They’re probably talking about pet adoption or the best soil for planting carrots.

Not that I have anything to be worried about. Nova and I were just dancing. It doesn’t matter that she’s one of my best friend’s sisters. His youngest sister. His favorite sister. The one he is still kind of scarily protective over.

The one who asked me to take her home for a night of no-strings sex.

I force my gaze back to Stella. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I grab the bottle of champagne sitting in the middle of the table and take three long pulls. It’s too sweet and the bubbles almost give me a heart attack, but it’s a good distraction from what I really want to do. Which is scan the fields for Nova.

You know how we got here.

I need a cold shower and a stiff drink. Another cold shower after that.

I blow out a deep breath and ignore the faintly amused look on my sister’s face. What I need is a distraction and I have the perfect one. I reach into my back pocket and pull out a carefully folded envelope. “For you.”

She stares at it, face twisted in confusion. “What is it?”

“An envelope.”

She rolls her eyes.

“A wedding present,” I laugh.

She gives me a look. “You’ve given me a wedding present. You’ve given me like…six wedding presents.”

She lightly touches the small sapphires in her ears, one of the gifts I gave her before I walked her down the aisle. I did sort of go overboard, but I couldn’t help myself. Stella is my only sister—a sister I didn’t even know I had until well into adulthood. I grew up a lonely kid bursting with energy and no one to share it with. I asked my mother for a sibling relentlessly until I was old enough to realize what that wounded look in her eyes meant and I stopped asking.

And then, one day in my twenties, Stella appeared on our doorstep with a bunch of letters in her hand and the same exact eyes as me.

Turns out our dad was less than loyal to my mom. The first in a very long line of transgressions.

Thankfully Stella was receptive to the idea of a relationship, and we became fast friends. I like to think we’re both trying to make up for the missed years between us. She’s the sister I always wanted. Part of the family I never thought I’d have.

Six presents for her wedding doesn’t feel like enough, frankly. I want her to know how much it means to me to spend this day with her. To have a place on her Christmas tree farm and in the community she’s made for herself.

Luka appears behind her with a dopey-ass grin on his face and rests his chin on top of her head. He curls both arms around her shoulders and rocks them back and forth while simultaneously thrusting his left hand in my face. He wiggles his fingers, the glint of his new shiny gold ring reflecting in the lights overhead.

“Charlie,” he singsongs. “Do you know what this means?”

Stella pulls his arm back around her, their wedding bands clicking when she threads their fingers together.

I grin. “I think it means you two are married.”

“Yeah, we’re married.” His entire face lights up with the word, a grin tugging at his mouth. Either he’s been hitting the homemade moonshine that Gus snuck in, or he’s drunk on love. Luka is exactly the type of man I would have chosen for my sister, if I’d had any sort of say in that decision. Luke presses a kiss to the tip of Stella’s ear. “It also means you’re my brother now. Officially.”

My throat tightens. Maybe I’m an idiot, but the thought never crossed my mind in all the lead-up to today. I’ve been entirely focused on Stella, on being exactly what she needed.

“Oh my god,” I breathe out. Stella’s eyes grow wide with faint panic as my arms fall limply at my sides. A ragged exhale bursts out of me. I sound like a balloon that’s slowly losing air. A submarine going under. “Oh my god,” I say again.

Stella touches my arm. “Are you okay? Are you going to pass ou—oomph.”

She can’t talk when she’s squished between me and Luka, my arms wrapped around his shoulders. Stella got a husband, but I got a brother. A brother.

Luka pats me on the back, his laugh low. Stella wheezes somewhere in between us.

“This is the best,” I mumble into his jacket. “I take back what I said when you told me you weren’t moving back to the city.”

I called him a defector. Some other rude shit too. When he lived in New York, we’d have lunch together twice a week at a deli halfway between our offices. Luka was one of the few people in the city I actually enjoyed hanging out with. I’ve been sitting at that stupid counter by myself for the last couple of years like a sad sack.

“Yeah, well.” He leans back and claps me on the shoulder. Stella sucks in air and tries to untangle some of her hair that’s stuck in my suspender strap. “Maybe we can convince you to come down here more often.”

Like I need an excuse to spend more time in Inglewild. I like how I feel when I’m here. I like who I get to be. I already visit every other weekend, content to force everyone to deal with me on a regular basis. I’m pretty sure that’s why Stella built that guesthouse at the edge of the property line. She said it was for an Airbnb, but I know it’s for me.

“Thank you, that reminds me.” I hold up the envelope again and wave it between us. “Your wedding present.”

Luka’s face twists in confusion. “Didn’t you get us like six wedding presents?”

Stella tips her head back. “Thank you.”

I ignore them and force the envelope in Stella’s hands. I might have gotten them six wedding presents, but this is the one I’m most excited about. This is the one I’ve been plotting and planning over the last couple of months.

Stella tears open the envelope and peers at the piece of paper in her hand. “Are these plane tickets?” She brings the paper to her nose. “For tomorrow?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“To Italy?”

“Yes, that is what the ticket says.”

She drops the paper with a frown. Behind her, Luka mirrors it. It is…not the reaction I was expecting.

“I can’t go to Italy tomorrow.”

“Why not?”

She gestures around her at the farm. She’s making a point, but I’m distracted by Gus from the firehouse standing on a table, whipping his shirt over his head to a Backstreet Boys song. Mabel, his girlfriend, is sitting at one of the seats below him like absolutely nothing is amiss, calmly sipping a mug of cider. I guess she’s used to that sort of behavior from him.

Stella snaps in my face. “Because it’s September and I have to oversee the farm. It’s pumpkin season.”

“Ah, yes.” I roll my lips against my smile and shove my hands in my pockets. “Whatever will the pumpkins do without you?”

Her frown deepens. She looks like an angry cupcake in her pretty pink dress. I can’t take her seriously at all. “Charlie.”

I lower my chin and give her the same look she’s giving me. “Stella. You really weren’t planning for a honeymoon?”

“We were planning on Annapolis for the weekend,” Luka offers, taking the ticket out of Stella’s hand and studying it. “Why is the return date on these tickets a month from now?”

Stella gasps like I’ve just pulled a raccoon out of my pants and plopped it on top of her head. “A month? Charlie!”

“What?” I laugh.

“We can’t go to Italy for a month! That’s practically the start of the Christmas season! How much is this costing you?” She rips the ticket out of Luka’s hand and tosses it at me, pressing it into my chest. “Take it back. We do not accept.”

Luka straightens behind her, trying to grab the ticket. But she’s like an angry little spider monkey, trying to shove it down the front of my shirt. “Hold on a second, La La.”

“Yeah, La La. Listen to your husband,” I tell her. When her glare intensifies, I hold up both of my hands. “Don’t worry about how much it costs. Don’t worry about the farm. We have a plan.”

Her eyes narrow. “Who is we?”

“Beckett, Layla, and I talked.”

She crosses her arms. “So, there was collusion?”

“In the name of your honeymoon? Yes. Yes, there was collusion.” I make no move to take the ticket that she is dangling limply between us. Thank god it’s just a printout and the tickets are digital. That thing looks like it’s been to hell and back. “Layla packed both of your bags, and they’re waiting in the living room of your house. There’s a car coming to pick you up at the end of the night to take you to a hotel by the airport. Your flight leaves in the morning and everything has been taken care of. You just need to go where you’re told.”

Stella shakes her head back and forth, dark hair flying around her shoulders. “It’s too much.”

“It’s really not.”

I make a boatload of money. This is a drop in a very large bucket.

“It is. It’s way too much.” Her eyes fill with tears. “Charlie, I can never pay you back for any of this.”

I grab both of her hands with mine, plane tickets crumpled between us. “I don’t want you to pay me back. It’s a gift, Stella. You don’t repay those.” My throat tightens again and I have to clear it. My voice drops and I rub my thumbs over her knuckles. “Do you remember that day you came to the house? All those years ago?”

Her mom had just died and she wanted to know her birth father. So she looked him up and found our address, brought all the letters her mother wrote over the years but never sent. She didn’t know about me, didn’t know about my mom, and didn’t know our dad was a giant disappointment with a track record of horrendous decision-making.

“When you were walking out the door, you told me, ‘We can be family, if you want.’ Well, this is what family does. I know we’re both on a bit of a learning curve, but I have around twenty birthdays and Easter holidays and Christmases to make up for. Just…bundle it up together, okay? Let me do this for you.”

She sniffles. “You don’t give presents for Easter.”

“There are baskets, I’m told.”

“Easter baskets don’t have plane tickets in them.”

“Stella.”

She grips me harder. “You don’t have anything to make up for,” she whispers.

I shrug. She deserves to have a family member who’s not a disappointment. I want to be that for her. “Agree to disagree.”

“Charlie.”

“Stella, just say yes.” I exaggerate a head nod, my eyes wide. “Come on. It’s easy. Just say, ‘Yes, Charlie. I will go on this very nice vacation that I deserve with my husband.’ ”

She looks at Luka over her shoulder. He wipes a streak of eyeliner off her cheek. They have a silent conversation and then her body curves into his. She turns back to me with a wobbly smile. “Okay.”

“Let’s hear it.”

She blows out a noisy breath. “Yes, Charlie. I will go on this very nice vacation with my husband.”

“Ah.” Luka grins behind her. “I love that word.”

“What? Vacation?”

“No.” His smile melts into something satisfied. “Husband.”

She smiles at him, and I get that feeling I usually get when I spend too much time in their orbit. Like I’m intruding on something private. Like they’ve completely forgotten I’m two feet away from them. I avert my eyes to the dance floor. Gus is now trying to scale one of the trees. I can’t imagine that will end well.

Silver catches the corner of my eye and I see Nova, her back to me. I trace the strong column of her spine, the tease of dimples at the small of her back. The swell of her ass beneath the silver of her dress and the curve of her legs. She sways back and forth absentmindedly to the music, another strand of hair spinning loose from her bun and falling between her shoulder blades.

“I still have a question though.”

I jerk my eyes away from Nova. I guess Stella has emerged from her impromptu make-out session with her husband.

“What’s that?”

“Who is going to run the farm while I’m gone?” Her forehead scrunches up until she has that narrow line between her brows. The same one I get when I stare at my computer screen too long. “There’s the pumpkin patch and the bonfire and hayrides start up soon and—”

“Relax. Everything will be fine, okay? It will be taken care of.”

“How? Who is going to take over for me while I’m out of town for the month?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” I slip my thumbs under my suspender straps and pull them away from my chest. I’m about to enter my farmer era. Cowboy Charlie, unlocked. “I am.”

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