Page 73 of About That Night

I throw my hands up. “Fine. Goodnight. Have a great trip. Tell Cash and Sera congratulations. I’ll try to get up there in a few weeks.”

When I reach the porch again, I take my seat as my brothers look expectantly at me. My father looks like he mixed some edibles with his whiskey. He’s just staring out across the yard and doesn’t look my way.

“Watch out, boys, she’s lost her mind to baby fever.”

“Why? What did she say?” Toby asks.

“She said, and I fucking quote, ‘can you quit screwing around and just put a baby in that girl already?’”

“What girl?” Conway asks.

“Who have we just been talking about?” Toby asks in astonishment.

That snaps my dad out of his fog.

“Okay, that lightning didn’t do you any favors, son,” our father says. “I think it fried your brain. Chastity. Who else would she be talking about?”

The irony is my father is notorious for never paying attention to what’s going on, and he’s clearly drunk, so I don’t know where he gets off calling Conway out. But he’s not wrong. She was definitely talking about Chastity.

“How should I know what that woman is thinking?” Conway grumbles. “I’m fine. The lightning didn’t do anything to me.”

“Yes, Chastity. She told me to put a baby in her.” And that we’d explored each other’s bodies, but I keep that part to myself. My brothers would have a fucking field day with that. If they ever catch wind of it, they’ll find a way to torment me with it indefinitely. A fantasy football T-shirt with that phrase on it, a birthday cake, my future bachelor party invitation. A sandwich board outside my restaurant.

“If she said that to you, Hank, I’m in real trouble,” George says.

“Uh, yeah. Y’all are married, so good luck.”

“George!” my mother screams. “I need to speak to you.”

George looks like a deer in the headlights. “What do I say?”

“I told her she was nuts. I don’t think that will work with you, though, because your excuses are stupid.”

“Shut up.”

I laugh, because as I pick up my cigar, I study it. How would I feel if we were sitting here celebrating the birth of my baby? I take a puff.

The feeling that washes over me surprises me.

I want a life with Chastity. I want a family with her and Josiah.

A baby.

It hits me like that bolt of lightning that knocked Conway on his ass. I feel knocked on my ass.

Holy shit. I am way in love with Chastity. I’m completely and totally in love with her. She’s the woman I want to marry. That’s what all this means.

My family is one hundred percent right. I’m mowing her grass and getting immense satisfaction from doing so. I love helping her out and taking care of her whenever I can. I think she is arguably the most awe-inspiring creature I’ve ever met, and even when I wasn’t thinking about her, I was thinking about her, because I haven’t dated at all in the past two years.

I’m in love with Chastity DuBois.

“You know, I only wanted two kids,” Dad says, his tone thoughtful.

It completely catches me off guard, ripping me out of astonished and heartfelt musings. I laugh and then choke on the cigar smoke in my mouth.

Conway sprays his bourbon out of his mouth and straight across the porch.

This is a whiskey-spraying kind of night.

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