Page 94 of Hot Shot

“Told you,” she sings.

“Nobody get hurt, okay?” Remy says.

“Trust me,” Wilder starts, “what I’m gonna do to her won’t hurt.”

Remy punches him in the arm so hard, we list off toward the street.

“Ouch,” he says, laughing. “You know I’m not gonna hurt her.”

“Who says I’m worried about you?”

The attention turns to me, and I feel the twist of fear in my ribcage. But I’m through being scared.

“Nobody knows what’s gonna happen, Remy,” I note. “All I know is that I’m tired of ignoring how I feel and what I want. Sometimes you’ve just gotta jump, consequences be damned. I know you can understand that.”

Remy looks at Jessa and squeezes her tighter. “Yeah, I get it. And thank fucking God because I was sick to death of watching you two pine after each other like teenagers.”

We laugh, but before any of us speaks, Tate turns around so he’s walking backwards in front of Shelby.

“Shoe’s untied,” he says with a smirk. And when she looks down, he flicks her nose.

“You are such a fucking child, Tatum.”

“What? It really is untied.”

She looks down again, and I can practically hear her restraining herself.

Tate laughs. “Oh, come on. I’m just fucking with you. Here—I’ll make it up to you.” He drops to one knee and reaches for her shoelaces, and for a second, it looks like a scene out of Cinderella.

Until he rips off her shoe and takes off running with it.

She makes a primal noise between her teeth, pulling off her other shoe before running Tate down, a string of insults tumbling from her mouth. He’s too fast. But she has the arm of an all-star softball pitcher, and when she chucks her shoe at him, it hits him square in the back of the head.

I doubt it’s the force of her bullseye that sends him tumbling to the ground and into a somersault that continues far beyond what the laws of physics should have granted. But it’s so fucking funny that even Shelby hinges at the waist with her hands on her thighs, catching her breath and cackling. Tate is lying in the middle of the sidewalk, flat on his back with her shoe on his chest. When we catch up, she walks over to him, bends to grab her shoe, and says something we don’t hear. Then she pats him on the cheek several times hard enough to know it must have stung.

But he just laughs, watching her as she steps over him to continue down the sidewalk like he was never there.

Molly blinks. “Are they always like this?”

“Yes,” we all say at the same time, filing into The Horseshoe in a chorus of laughter.

The bar erupts in cheers when the crowd sees Remy, who waves and takes a bow and acts like a ham. The light is golden and warm, and classic country is playing for the couples spinning around the dance floor.

And everything about it feels like home. The happy faces I’ve known all my life, the occasional laughter floating above the din of the crowd and old, familiar music. The scent of Wilder whispering across my skin and into my lungs. The feel of him, sowarm and solid next to me, my hand lost inside of his, his smile just for me.

Why did I ever leave this place? I could have gotten a teaching degree anywhere. But at eighteen, it felt like I couldn’t pass up the opportunity at Oxford. It did gain me a best friend, and I wouldn’t trade Jessa for anything, not even my heartache. But I wish I’d never met Davis. I wish I’d never lost myself to the idea of him, the notion of our life together, the novelty of the fairy tale he promised. I wish I’d seen through him and come home after college. I thought back then that coming home would be a sacrifice. But it was the staying that cost me everything.

I can see it now plain as day from where I stand in this silly old bar.

The realization fills me with wonder.

Tate turns to us from the bar. “Y’all want a drink?”

But Wilder smiles down at me and shakes his head. “I’d rather dance with my wife.”

He’s sweeping me toward the dance floor before I can catch the breath he stole, ridding me of his gargantuan jacket only to toss it onto an empty table near the edge of the crowd. A spin, and I’m in his arms, two-stepping wherever he leads me, certain I’d follow him anywhere.

He steals a little kiss and beams down at me.

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