“Me, too! It’d be my pleasure,” Christie returns, bowing.

They embark on a detailed store tour and enthusiastic book talk for over an hour while I research cars for Marina and field family texts. This morning, I helped Dad move hay bales, which first meant changing the battery on his tractor. I barely had time to go home, shower, and change before meeting Marina. Even now, Mom asks me to pick up supplies for tonight’s dinner—a dinner I haven’t agreed to attend—and I feel weighted and exhausted over their demands. I’m pulled in a thousand places, but none are truly where I want to be.

Glancing up from my phone, I find Marina and Christie laughing over a page he’s sharing from his worn book. She whispers something, and he grabs onto the shelf to steady himself as he laughs. They look like old friends sharing a hilarious secret.

All this change topped off with a rough encounter with her former fiancé, yet she remains unequivocally Marina. I can’t help but admire how present and upbeat she is.

She catches my eye as she gushes over their private joke. Her smile widens, making my heartbeat thud harder, and my feet almost move in her direction. That smile was for me.

I don’t just enjoy her. I long for her attention. With her, I don’t need my grouchy, reclusive shields. They drop so I can be whatever she needs me to be. Protector. Helper. Fucking lapdog, if she wants. Weirder still, that’s what I want—to be Marina’s go-to guy, for her to pull me in a thousand places as long as it brings me closer to her.

My guilt has turned into a guilty pleasure. That’s disturbing territory for a self-proclaimed loner hellbent on his solitude. And foolish considering she’s too young, too beautiful, and too goddamned chipper for me.

Smoke fills the air, drawing my attention to Wade and Roy. They snicker, leering at me from behind the counter like idiot schoolboys about to share my crush with the rest of the class.

“Fuck off,” I mouth, only making them laugh harder. Huffing, I return to my phone.

24. Marnie

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Marnie

Grady’s text pings just as I slug through my front door after quitting the funeral home.

Did you do it? How’d it go?

I collapse on the red couch, eyeing his words like they might give me profound insight into him. He keeps going above and beyond for me. Does he see me as another sibling he’s obligated to care for, only instead of being born into the role, he crashed into it?

This makes me feel horrible.