Page 12 of Sweet Home Louisiana

Everyone laughed.

“You’ve got a hole in your nose, girl!”Leo called back to Kennedy, referring to her nose piercing, that went along with a lot of others.“That’s all I can see when I look at you.”

Everyone knew he didn’t mean that.Not at all.Kennedy was his self-proclaimed favorite.

“Oh, well, then you’ve been missing me rolling my eyes, sticking my tongue out, and flipping you off!”Kennedy told him.

Leo chuckled and said to Maddie, “No, I haven’t.And if she didn’t flip me off once in a while I’d be worried I hadn’t raised her right.”

Maddie’s heart melted further.She’d always loved Leo.“Oh really?”

“No woman should put up with shit from men and I definitely give her my share,” he said with a nod.

“Just to keep her in practice for dealing with all the other guys?”Maddie asked, feeling the threat of tears pass and a general warmth settle in her chest.Thank you, Leo.

“Exactly.”He gave her a wink.

Maddie laughed.She was succumbing to their charm and craziness.She could already feel it.She had to fight it.But…maybe after pecan pie.

This definitely had to be the last time she came back.

She could go weeks without thinking of Autre.And seven out of ten times when shedidthink about the little town or her family or Louisiana in general, it was because of something good—some restaurant in San Francisco trying to make a good jambalaya or serving something they called sweet tea, or a local bar celebrating Mardi Gras, or people building bonfires on the beach, not realizing that no one did jambalaya, sweet tea, Mardi Gras, or bonfire parties like where she’d grown up.

But other times, like every time she sold one of her paintings, she’d think about what prompted her to only paint stormy scenes from the Louisiana coast and dark, haunted images of the bayou.

She’d grown up here.Until age sixteen, she’d loved this place as much as any of these people did.But everything had changed that June night twelve years ago and now her memories and feelings for Autre were a lot morewhat-ifsandI wishes.

All of that influenced her art for sure.There was regret and longing that she poured into her painting.But she was okay with that.It was a good outlet, it made her a living, and allowed her to shut all the feelings and memories down other times.

Then she’d started getting monthly checks from the Boys of the Bayou and every single time she looked at that return address, she cried.

That had to stop.

“Welcome home.”

The deep voice pulled her out of her thoughts.She looked up—a lot farther up than she’d needed to look for Cora, Ellie, or Leo—into the piercing green eyes of Sawyer Landry.

Her brother’s best friend.The guy who had been like a brother to her.The other majority partner in Boys of the Bayou.The reason she was here now.

She should correct him about the “home” thing like she had Owen.But she swallowed and forced a smile.“Hey, Sawyer.”

He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed before dropping it.Yeah, Sawyer wasn’t really a touchy-feely guy.

“Good to see you,” he said.He was studying her carefully.

He was worried.She could see it.Feel it.Sawyer had always been a bit protective, but it seemed to have been dialed up a few notches.Was he worried she was mad about being here?And that she might burn something ofhisdown?Or just about her in general?She’d just lost her brother.She was being forced to be here.By him.He had reason to worry about her emotional state, she supposed.

She gave him a smile.It was a little forced, but not entirely.It wasn’t Sawyer’s fault that having someone feel protective of her made her uncomfortable.She didn’t want anyone feeling responsible for her.

It wasn’t hard to figure out where that came from.Her father, feeling protective of Maddie’s mom, had tried to kill a guy and had landed himself in prison.Tommy and Owen, both feeling protective ofher, had crashed through a window and spent the night in the hospital.Feeling protective of Owen,shehad set a guy’s shed on fire—and it easily could have been his house—and had stolen a car—kind of—and spent a night in jail herself.

That’s what happened when you really cared about someone.Cared to your very bones.Cared to the point that you would sacrifice everything.It made you freaking crazy.

She didn’t want that.For any of them.She couldn’t keep these people from caring about each other, but she could absolutely not be a part of it.

And if Sawyer was concerned about her, Owen definitely would be.Sawyer would try to snap her out of it with a crawfish boil, her favorite locally made root beer, and talk of the good old days.Owen, on the other hand, might end up in jail or the hospital again.Or in the hospital on the way to jail.

She really needed to persuade them that she was fine and didn’t want anything to do with Boys of the Bayou or Autre.She just had to prove to them that she was over all of this.Owen had confirmed the theory she’d been mulling over.These people were proud and loyal and protective.If she didn’t want the things they did—very especially the business and the family—that would offend them and they would easily let her go.

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