Page 2 of Sing Me Home
Maybe he’s a homeless guy she picked up on the beach and she wants us to give him a place to shower. Maybe a meal.Hey, it was the most generous thought I could come up with.
But then his hand slipped around her waist and another invisible punch hit me in the ribs. They weretogether?
No. There was no way someone as classy as Charlie would be with him. Then again, she’d let somebody do that to her hair.
“Have you lost your mind?” Ashton yelled.
Charlie’s eyes were wide. Her mouth opened, closed, and opened again. But wisely, no words came out.
“She has!” Tally answered for her. “She absolutely has. There’s no other explanation!”
What was happening? Sure, her hair and thisguywere questionable life choices, but they didn’t warrant this kind of vitriol.
But then I smelled it. Just faintly. Sweet, grassy, and a touch skunky.
“Why does it smell like weed in here?” I hissed to my cousin Liam.
He tipped his head toward the guy Charlie was with.
Sure enough, Captain McSaggyBritches looked like he was floating. Pupils blown, giggling under his breath like he’d just been told the world’s funniest joke. Not reading the room at all.
“You drop out of school! Take off to Africa.” Ashton—a retired English Professor—shuddered like he couldn’t believe his kid had done that. “Then you show up late to a family vacation with this announcement and expect us to be happy about it?”
“What announcement?” I whispered to Griffin on my other side, laughing into his fist.
Liam wasn’t laughing at all. He looked like he was going to be sick. “I’m sorry, man.”
My hands curled into fists, nails cutting into my palms. Liam knew. Once, when we were fifteen, he’d asked me. Said it was obvious how I felt about Charlie and promised not to tell anyone. He’d kept his word. Somehow Griff had never figured it out.
“You’ve known him for three weeks!” Ashton shouted, red-faced, a vein trying to explode from his neck. “And you got married by an African safari guide?”
I didn’t even hear the next line because my entire body jerked at the wordmarried. It couldn’t be true. Charlie had done some dumb crap in her life, but…marry this guy? I dared to look at her left hand, certain I must’ve misunderstood. A small silver band on her ring finger cut deeper than any words ever could. The matching ring on his left hand only twisted the knife.
My heart tried to hurl itself into my throat and choke me out of disbelief. “Y-you got married?” My voice cracked for the first time in three years.
Charlie’s head swiveled on her shoulders like an owl. At the sight of me, her big brown eyes grew even bigger. She hadn’t even known I was in the room.
“You’re anidiot,” slipped out of my mouth before I knew it. But the hurt it caused her felt good. So I kept going. “Like seriously. You might be the dumbest person I know.”
Liam groaned.
It was mean. But you know what was meaner? Her marrying this tool. She was supposed to marryme. In like five years. But still.Me, not this joker. Live on the ranch together. Sing love songs every evening—she’d hit the melody and I’d take the harmony. Name our kids after Texas towns like Dallas, Abilene, and Bailey. How could she not know that with every fiber of her being? I’d known since before my hormones kicked in.
In a split second, her expression turned from hurt to downright murderous. “Cash!” Mom yelled from somewhere behind me. “Not okay!”
She was right.
I didn’t care.
Charlie’s face flamed and her eyes turned into twin blowtorches, cranked to max. I always could get under her skin like no one else.
“Excuse me?” She walked over and snapped right in my face. “Who do you think you are, calling me an idiot?”
“I’m obviously smarter than you.” I snorted. “I know I wouldn’t drop out of college and come home married tothis.” I gestured at herhusbandwho stared up at the ceiling fan like it was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen.
Her face turned even redder. “Shut up, Dollar Bill!” she screamed. “You don’t know any?—”
I scoffed, waved her away, turned, and strode across the room. I couldn’t stand there for another second. I was going to punch something if I didn’t leave right now. Or start crying.
