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Sally. My Sally.
😭
Anyone else hugged me this way, it’d be awkward. With Sally, it’s just what I need. I open the floodgates and let out the sob I’ve been holding for…Christ, feels like forever.
😭💔😭💔
I laugh again, my heart swelling to fill my chest. At home, I make everybody else laugh. Nice change of pace to be the one laughing.
“Please? C’mon, Sally. My parents just died.” “See?” She scoffs, even as she puts the truck in drive. “Shameful.”
“I do miss you,” I blurt. “All the fucking time, Sally. I worry you’ll forget about me. I’m happy you’re living your dream—don’t get me wrong. But life…it’s suddenly all so different, you know? My parents died. And right now, with you, is the first time I feel like I might not die too.”
“You’re like sunshine, you know? Sounds cheesy, but it’s true. I always feel so much better when you’re around.” Her swallow is audible. “I’ll be your sunshine anytime, Wyatt.”
My entire being rebels at the thought of letting this girl go. Every single one of my cells screams at me to keep her here, to make her mine. That’s when I know I’m in love with her.
But in my heart of hearts, I know that somehow, over the course of an hour, maybe less, I’ve fallen in love with my best friend. Or maybe I’ve been in love with her all along, and the realization is only hitting me now.
Really, Wyatt got this sunshine thing all wrong. He’s the one who’s the sun. The rest of us just float in his orbit, waiting our turn to bask in his warmth and attention.
“Yes, that. Exactly. It’s been a long day. I mean, we’ve all had long days, am I right? Because days here are long. And hard. Not that there’s anything wrong with long and hard things. I just—oh. Oh wow, that…came out wrong. I was just trying to say that, sometimes, I enjoy things because they’re long and also hard—”
Sally omfg. This whole interaction was so awkward 💀😅
I glance at the tattoo of a sunrise on my left forearm. Sally’s remarked on it in passing, but she doesn’t know I got it for her. She also doesn’t know about the other tattoo I got for her, the one on my leg. That one, more than the sunrise, is a dead giveaway of how obsessed I am with my best friend.
MY FAV MICROTROPE 😭
She’s teasing me, and I fucking love it. When am I gonna stop feeling like a lovesick asshole?
And Ava was there to fill us in on Pepper’s bloodline, making us all laugh when she shared Mrs. Wallace named the horse Pepper because she liked to read spicy books.
😂😍
“Gossip is the Devil’s radio,” Sawyer replies. Duke grins. “But nature’s telephone.”
But a leader? A boss? I don’t know if I can take myself that seriously. No one else does.
Awh 🙁
But there’s still this ache in me, this longing for more. I know that’s ultimately because I’m too chickenshit to let people in—to let them truly know me. Being the Wyatt Rivers is a mask I wear. The guy who’s the life of the party, the one who gambles and fucks and jokes—it’s a caricature I created, a way to keep people at arm’s length.
💔
I pass him the cup and he takes it, rotating it in his enormous mitt of a hand so that his lips hit the same spot mine did. He didn’t do it on purpose. But a quiet yet potent rip of electricity courses through my skin nonetheless.
Yes he did 😂
“I have a favor to ask.” I reach for the thermos and refill the cup, grateful for the excuse to not look at Wyatt. “Answer’s yes.” “Let me ask it first.” “Answer’s still yes.”
I wait for him to rib me for smoking. Instead, he does what brothers do and goes right for the jugular. “You’re not sick. You’re in love with Sally.”
“Move toward the light, brother. That’s all I’m sayin’.”
“Where the fuck did you get a suit?” I blurt, taking the flowers and cradling them against my chest.
😂😂😂
But it ain’t my place to make that choice for her, is it? Choose me. Goddamn, Sunshine, I’m dying for you to choose me.
In true Duke fashion, he ribbed me nonstop today about my fake date with my best friend, but tonight, he’s too distracted by Wheeler to pay Sally and me much mind.
Duke and Wheeler book when?
My thoughts whirl—tell her he’ll come back, say she’s just upping the stakes, ask her to marry you—but I can’t make myself say the words.
😂
“Don’t make me say it. You know, Sunshine. You know I wanna be your guy.”
Is he asking me to hook up with him instead of Beck? Surely, that’s what Wyatt means when he says he wants to be my guy. He wants to be the person I go to whenever I have—ahem—needs.
Sally. Don't pmo...
I am so fucking obsessed with you it’s not even funny.
That don’t matter though, does it? We’re not hooking up. I’m never putting my hands on her again.
Suuuure...
An awkward beat of silence stretches between us, and I scramble to think of something to say. Do I play it safe, make small talk? Pretend like it never happened? Or do I jump in with both feet and tell my best friend I’ve been in love with her for over a decade? Ask her to stay at my place tonight and every night after that, please and thank you?
“Ella ride with Uncle Wy?” The little girl reaches out for Wyatt. “Ella loves him.” “Uncle Wy looks like he’s busy trying to get someone else to ride him.” Sawyer clears his throat. “I mean, ride with him.”
💀😂
“Wyatt, did you get a slutty little thigh tattoo to commemorate—”
Slutty little thigh tattoo 😂😂😂😍😍😍
Glancing over her shoulder, I see her stethoscope on the ground by her feet. I bend down to grab it and, straightening, I hold open the ear tubes before gently placing the silicon tips into Sally’s ears. I settle the metal bell on the center of my chest. “Not quiet at all, actually,” I say, grabbing her hand and placing it over the bell. Sally’s eyes go wide as she listens to the way she’s made my heart pound. “This is what you do to me,” I whisper. “If you ask me, we make a mighty fine mess, Sunshine.”
“Stop thankin’ me. You give as good as you get, Sunshine.” He flashes me a wide white smile. “I mean that in the perverted sense.”
“All I do know is that I’m so happy you’re here. I want you to stay. I want to be around you all the time. I want you to be my guy. Not just the guy I have a good time with. But the guy I call, and confide in, and come home to. You’re my favorite human, Wy.”
I scoff. “Dad wouldn’t put a rifle in your face.”
😂
“I want you to stay.” Only been waiting twelve years to hear those words.
“I knew it!” Patsy throws her arms in the air. “I knew it, I knew it, I knew it! Y’all have been acting mighty strange lately. And I coulda sworn I saw a hickey on Sally’s neck the other—” “It wasn’t a hickey,” Sally replies. John B sighs. “I beg you, don’t elaborate.” “Beard burn?” Patsy asks. Sally’s face is red as a beet, but she’s smiling. “Yes.”
💀
I’ve never wanted to get a tattoo before, but now I’m thinking about it. I’ve been thinking about it a lot.
😭😍
“Okay, okay. I won’t ask. One final piece of wisdom: people will make you happier than a job ever will.”
The kitchen is small, and we keep bumping into each other as we open drawers and reach for cabinets. “Sorry,” Wyatt says when his hand grazes my breasts as he grabs a wooden spoon. “Wait. No, I’m not.”
😂😂😂
“This is really comfortable, Wyatt. Wow.” “I’m glad you like it.” I don’t tell her I paid a fortune to have a new mattress, bed frame, and bedding rush-delivered this week. She’ll find out eventually.
I’m so in love with you I can’t breathe, I think, even as I keep laughing.
What I don’t tell Sally? That I’m making Ina Garten’s famous “engagement chicken,” which apparently was the meal Emily Blunt and John Krasinski shared before he proposed to her. Am I trying to manifest that shit? Maybe.
The paper falls away, revealing a box set of all the Little House on the Prairie books.
😭😍💜
I’m so fucking in love with this girl that I literally can’t speak. For a split second, I worry I’m having a heart attack. Please, God, don’t let me die just when shit’s getting good.
“Ever consider you could never ever hold me back, even if you tried? You’re not a roadblock, Wyatt. You’re the wind beneath my fucking wings.”
😂 but also 😍
He’s naked—we’re naked a lot these days—and I can’t help but smile at how pale his butt is compared to the rest of him.
😂😂😂😂
“Are you trying to set Ava up with Sawyer?” I ask when Wyatt and I are safely out of earshot in his truck. Wyatt chuckles. “Hell yeah I’m trying to set Ava up with Sawyer. They both have three-year-old girls. They’re both lonely.”
Sawyer's book?!
He scoffs. “Of course it wasn’t right. I just—y’all gotta understand how my regrets have eaten away at me over the years. I never want my daughter to have to wonder about what-ifs.”
Hey so...this man is fucking crazy...
“You know Cash got Mom’s engagement ring,” Wyatt explains, “and I got her wedding band. But I still wanted the band to be a part of your ring, so Mollie gave me the name of her jeweler, and I had him redo the band and added the yellow diamond. Because, yeah, you’re my sunshine. I hope you like it.”
Stopppp 😭😍💜
