Page 118 of Sing Me Home
Just then, an ATV came tearing up outside, engine cutting out sharp. Blue sprinted in first—no shock there. The man still ran a forty like he was trying out for the Combine. Dad was the next to arrive, with his pistol up like Jack Steele come to life. Silas and Ash moved in tight behind him with rifles—probably for show more than anything else. A single shot from one of those would spray buckshot like confetti and take out half the room with it. Holden jogged in last without a weapon. He didn’t need one. One look at him, and you knew: justice just showed up.
Our heads snapped around when Lorne scampered across the floor like a tarantula, fumbling for one of the loose pistols. Blue already had Liam’s football in hand. He cocked his arm back and launched it straight for Lorne’s head. But Theo was just as fast, the tranq gun popping again. Lorne squealed as the football and dart hit at the same time. He grabbed his butt cheek with one hand and his ear with the other. Dad was already there, kicking the gun away.
“What were you going to do?” Charlie yelled,fullof fire. “You’ve never touched a gun in your life. You don’t even know how to turn off the safety.”
“That’s my girl.” I pressed a kiss to her hair.
We turned when a shadow fell across the doorway. Sheriff Anderson walked in looking like something out of a John Wayne movie. Hand on his holster, handlebar mustache formed into perfect curlicues. “Well, well, well. You always know it’s gonna be a good time if you get a call to head out to the Duprees.”
epilogue
Cash
The next couple of months were a montage of snuggling on the tour bus, kissing till our lips were sore, savoring every minute of just being a couple.
Charlie was wrong. There wasn’t a single moment that made me doubt my love for her or wish I was with someone more famous. She grounded me and kept me sane amid complete chaos. But mostly, I felt what in my heart I’d always known…Charlie was home. And every second we were together, I became more sure of that truth.
So at the last show of the tour, right after our “Hard to Love You/Hard to Leave You” mashup, I proposed right there, dropping to one knee in front of her. When she looked down into my eyes and whispered a breathy but confident, ‘yes,’ she made all my childhood dreams come true.
Then, the montage began again—Setting up appointments for her to get more skin grafts, followed by engagement photos, figuring out a living situation, and making up the guest list—all hurling us with lightning speed toward a spring wedding.
It couldn’t come fast enough for me, but we were finally here.
My hands rested on her hips, tracing the delicate pearls stitched into her dress. We were in the center of the parquet dance floor my parents had set up in the backyard. I looked at her…and forgot how to breathe. Glitter shimmered on her cheeks, something smoky around her eyes. I’d never seen her look more beautiful.
A video played on a loop on a large movie screen, with pictures of Charlie and me from childhood all the way till now, including snippets of the Netflix documentary—an instant hit, by the way.
Charlie smiled off to her right, still teary-eyed from the surprise that my parents had flown in for her. Mike Riley—the cop who’d found her in L.A. and set her on the path toward coming home—held a glass of Martinelli’s up in a toast. His wife did the same next to him. Charlie blew them a kiss.
“I think I owe that man my life,” I murmured, mouth to her ear. “Do you think he’ll take naming our firstborn after him as payment. Johnny Michael Dupree Squared. Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
“Over my dead body.” She chortled and pulled me in for a kiss.
Bowen was the DJ for the evening, a hobby he’d gotten into recently. He nodded at us and said into his headset, “Y’all ever seen two best friends fall in love and make it look this good?” Our guests shouted that they hadn’t.
Except for Uncle Silas. “Yes! Clem and I did it better.”
“What’re you talking about? He saidbestfriends,” Aunt Lemon bellowed from behind the table where she refilled the tray of Chick-fil-A nuggets. “You left for a decade and wouldn’t answer my texts or calls.”
“Because you married someone else,” Uncle Silas retorted.
“Exactly.” She laughed. “We were not best friends.”
“Just like Cash and Charlie,” Silas thrust his hands at us. “Shemarried someone else.”
“Thanks for the reminder,” I muttered.
“Don’t worry,” Charlie purred. “I’ll make it up to you momentarily.” Then she giggled. “Your cheeks.”
They were burning.
Aunt Lemon crossed her arms, lips pursed at Silas. “A decade, Si. Ten. Years. They beat us by a mile.”
He shook his head. “You’re never gonna let me forget that, are you?”
“Just like you won’t let me forget you’re my second husband.”
“Love being reminded of that,” Griffin muttered someone on the dance floor.
