Chapter 3

Marie’s POV

His arms are around me before I catch up to what's happening. Warm, solid, leather and something citrusy. It’s a lot to process after six hours in a car, but he smells like cedar and cold air, completely cutting through the stale highway dust clinging to my clothes.

I let myself sink into it.

"Gosh, Marie! Look at you," Tristan says into my hair.

He pulls back to look at me, hands still loose on my shoulders, grinning like I'm the best thing that's happened to him all week. "You got taller."

"I did not get taller, Tristan. Don’t be stupid."

"Well, you got cooler, then. DJ, right? Frank mentioned it. Some fancy club circuit, big lights, the whole thing?"

"It's not that glamorous."

"Everything's that glamorous compared to fixing carburetors." I laugh for the first time since I got here. Something in my shoulders, wound tight since arriving, lets go an inch.

"You look good," he says. "Millhaven's better already."

"You're laying it on thick for a guy I haven't seen since I was sixteen."

"I've had plenty of time to practice my material."

I laugh again. God, it's nice. Stupidly, uncomplicatedly nice, to talk to someone you know so well. Someone who isn't carrying a decade of things neither of us has ever said out loud.

***

Dessert happens around the kitchen island instead of the table. Less formal, easier — people just standing around eating cobbler out of mismatched bowls, more room to breathe.

Luke shows up somewhere in the middle of it, barreling through the back door with a six-pack under one arm, already apologizing to Frank for being late. He folds me into a hug so enthusiastic he nearly knocks the bowl out of my hand.

"There she is," he says, holding me out at arm's length like he's inspecting me. "Okay. Yeah. Still terrifying. Good, I was worried adulthood would've mellowed you out."

"You first," I say, and he laughs, that same easy, brotherly laugh I remember. Whatever else this town is going to be, at least Luke is exactly who he always was — no weight to him, no history I have to carefully step around.

"Brought the good stuff, too," Luke says, sliding a bottle out of the cardboard sleeve and thumping it onto the granite between us. He points a finger at Dean. "And before you say anything, I paid for this batch."

Dean doesn't move from his spot by the sink. "Didn't say a word, Luke."

"Yeah, but your face did." Luke rolls his eyes, cracking the cap off with his thumb and taking a long sip before tossing a crumpled paper towel straight into Tristan's empty bowl.

I find myself watching the three of them. Dean, quiet by the sink, arms crossed. Luke, loud, gesturing with a spoon. Tristan somewhere in the middle, easy laughter, a hand landing on Frank's shoulder like he's always belonged here.

"You three still close?" I ask, mostly to Luke, because he's the one who looks likely to actually answer honestly.

"Thick as thieves."

"Frank probably already gave you the whole speech," Tristan says. He reaches across the island, absently grabbing a second spoon to scrape the last bit of peach filling from the edge of my dish before I even realize he's doing it. "About handing it over to us. He's been saying that for two years and still shows up every single day, so." He grins. "Take it with a grain of salt. But yeah — you should come by sometime. It's not what you're picturing. Half the guys have kids running around, somebody's always grilling, Luke DJs badly off his phone and thinks nobody notices. It's more like a big backyard than whatever's in your head right now."

"And what's in my head?"

"Leather and cigars and men arm-wrestling over territory, probably." He says it deadpan, and it startles a laugh out of me.

"That's oddly specific."

"You'd be surprised how many people think that. But it's mostly just — home. For a lot of people who didn't have one growing up." Something flickers under the ease of it, there and gone, and he moves past it before I can ask. "Anyway. Come see for yourself. Beats sitting around feeling like you landed on the moon."

"Feels a little like I did."

"I remember that feeling. When my dad passed, I came back to Millhaven not knowing a single thing about how to exist here anymore. Took me a minute."

"I'm sorry, Tristan."

"It's alright. Long time ago now." He says it lightly.

Across the kitchen, I catch Dean watching us. Just for a second.

"Anyway," Tristan says, leaning against the counter, closer now, that same warm directness from the hallway. He shifts his weight, turning his shoulder just enough to block Luke out of the line of sight, creating this tiny, private pocket right in the middle of a crowded room. "Let me take you out. Not the clubhouse though — somewhere with better food. We should catch up properly without a crowded kitchen and an audience."

It catches me off guard. "Just us?" I ask, lower than I mean to.

"Just us," he says, without hesitating for a single second.

"Yeah," I say. "Okay. Yeah, let's do that."

His whole face lights up. He says something about Sunday, and I nod, half-listening.

Because I’m glancing past his shoulder.

Dean isn't looking at us anymore. He's looking down into his bowl. The quiet tap-tap-tap of his spoon against the ceramic stops dead. Jaw set so tight I can see it working from here, knuckles pale where his hand is wrapped around his spoon like he's trying not to bend it in half.

It's nothing. It's probably nothing. Guys get weird about their friends dating people, that's not new information, that's not —

But something about the stillness of it, the deliberate way he's not looking at either of us, catches somewhere under my ribs and won't let go.

I have absolutely no idea what to do with that.