Page 7 of Sunday's Best

A crease forms between his thick, dark eyebrows, and the frown on his serious face deepens. “I’m not plotting their demise.”

“Ah, so just mine, then.” I fold my arms across my chest, fingertips resting on the space where the ghost of his touch lingers. “You guys will be back home for the local rodeo at the end of the month, right?”

“Right…”

I’ve gone this long pretending not to know he’s regularly cheating on me. What’s a couple more weeks?

“If—and that is a big if—I wake up tomorrow and feel like I don’t want to risk sitting next to the egg salad guy, I’ll stick around until then.”

He breathes out an, “Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Heading back to the party?” he asks. “Logan’s probably looking for you.”

I laugh, glancing over his shoulder, to where the party seems to have only gotten more rowdy. “No, I think I’m going to head to bed.”

“Me too.”

We walk back in silence, and I finally allow myself a shallow breath when Logan isn’t still standing outside with that girl. Then a fuller one when I tug open the door and find he’s in bed, alone. Who knows what happened in the time between when I saw them together and now, but at least he had enough sense not to fuck her in the trailer we’re all sharing.

“Hey.” Logan sits up, blinking at us in the dark. “You disappeared.”

“Yeah, I, uh—” Using the wooden boot jack by the front door, I yank my right foot from the cowboy boot it swelled to fill over the course of the day. A small moan of relief rumbles at the back of my throat just as Holden scooches past me to get to the bathroom. “I got lost finding my way back here.”

I can hear the smirk in Logan’s voice when he says, “You’ve always had the worst sense of direction.”

I don’t, actually. When we drove to visit my grandparents at Christmas, he was hell-bent on arguing that his route was better. I didn’t want to ruin the trip, so I had to concede that I was bad with directions.

“Yeah, if it weren’t for running into Holden, I’d still be out there.” A truth in many senses.

I take my place in bed, next to my boyfriend, and fake a complaint about the trailer being unbearably warm so he won’t touch me.

On the opposite side of our tiny living quarters, the sofa bed groans under Holden’s shifting weight, then the trailer goes quiet, save for the soft hum of the refrigerator and faint thumps of distant music bleeding through the walls.

Holden moves around again. And again. I shift in place, not because I’m uncomfortable, but because I want him to know I’m struggling to sleep, too. He probably assumes my mind’s racing with thoughts of Logan, our relationship, whether I’ll be buying the first bus ticket available come morning.

Meanwhile, I can’t stop picturing his hands on my arms, his half-smile, his teasing cadence. I can’t sleep, and it’s the wrong brother keeping me awake.

Four

The coffee machine’s sibilance, sun streaming in through the small window over the trailer’s dinette, and a delicious grovel from a fictional man in my Kindle; I don’t see how a morning can get any better.

Holden’s penchant for early mornings makes sense now.

Today I’m the first one awake, though I’m not sure if pulling an all-nighter counts as the first to be awake or the last to go to sleep. Either way, it doesn’t feel like winning in the same way staying up all night did when I was a kid. I’m physically tired and emotionally drained and still no closer to having my life figured out.

I’m going to stay with the guys until we’re back in our hometown, mostly because I don’t love the idea of spending hours on a bus or not knowing whether Logan would let me stay in his house temporarily after we break up. But my decision is also partially—more than I’d like to admit—because last night Holden’s eyes held a softness and vulnerability I’d never seen from him.

Logan’s snoring is muffled by the pillow I may or may not have put on top of his face, and Holden’s spread across the sofa bed on his back with a blanket that’s inches from falling to the floor and fully exposing his lower half. His bare chest rises and falls with the slow breath of sleep, and his bitten-pink, full lips part ever so slightly with each soft exhalation. His jawline isn’t quite as sharp as his brother’s but still features plenty of definition, and I’m sure the stroke of my fingertips over his coarse, dark stubble could find more.

Admittedly, the view has a lot to do with how great my morning is.

Suddenly, the thought crosses my mind that Holden could be watching me sleep every morning, just like I’m watching him. And now I’ll likely never have a peaceful sleep in this trailer again.

On that note, I slip out from the tiny dinette booth and quietly fill a mug with coffee, careful not to tap the metal spoon too hard against the sides when I mix in my mocha-flavored coffee creamer.

“Pour me a cup, would ya?” Holden mumbles in a gravelly rasp.