Page 108 of Just One of the Groomsmen
Tucker was the one part of her life that felt perfectly right at the moment. His words replayed through her head:You and me…? This feels right, Addie. More right than anything ever has.
And it did.
“I so happy he’s back in town where he belongs,” Nonna said. “And just tonight, as all my friends were talking about how many of their grandkids have moved, I was thinking about how glad I am that you live here.”
Guilt bubbled up. It wasn’t like shewantedto live far away.
Addie spent a lot of time trying to counterbalance Mom’s and Nonna’s strong personalities. She liaised and encouraged them both to compromise, and without her here, who would do it?
Dad had washed his hands of it, claiming he didn’t want to pick sides between his wife and his mom, and Addie wondered how bad it’d get before he decided to step in.
Her thoughts continued to tug back and forth. For and against the job.
Yes, she needed to talk to Tucker about it, but at the same time, she wanted to figure out how she even felt before she did.
Then maybe she’d know what to say. How to start.
A dozen other things she didn’t know now.
“You okay, love?” Nonna asked, tipping the bag toward her. “Need more fries?”
Addie snagged several and slumped against the couch cushions. For once in her life, it seemed like everything had finally aligned. She no longer felt lonely, the gang was back together, and instead of messing up things with Tucker, crossing lines had brought them closer than ever.
It’d given her hope that they had a shot at something amazing.
She’d barely gotten to enjoy the afterglow before life threw her a curve ball, and she wasn’t sure whether she should swing or try to catch it, and the pressure of the huge decision left her unsettled all over again.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Addie’s breaths came right on top of each other and she could feel her pounding pulse throbbing through every inch of her body, but in this type of situation, none of that mattered.
“I think I hear someone,” Tucker rasped out, and the two of them immediately crouched low, the harvested peanut plants in the field they’d been sprinting through far better at tripping them up than providing decent coverage.
The night sky and clouds obscuring the moon helped, but they were sitting ducks out here if they didn’t find somewhere better to hide.
“I swore I heard the four-wheeler’s engine,” he added. “They might’ve shut it off to listen for us.”
Shep wanted to go unconventional for his bachelor party with a throwback game from back in the day, one they hadn’t played in nearly a decade. Possibly because they were too old, even though Addie’s competitive spirit begged to differ.
Fugitive involved splitting into teams, running through fields, and a home base. The “fugitives” were escapees on the run from the law. The “US Marshals” had to search them down via four-wheeler and/or foot and capture them. If they did, they won, but if the fugitives made it to home base before the Marshals, they won.
Mostly bragging rights on both sides, but tonight’s losing team had to pay for dinner and drinks.
As usual, Addie and Tucker had teamed up. Easton and Shep were the lawmen, and Ford had paired with Shep’s cousin who was in town and probably currently reexamining his life choices.
Addie’s thighs burned, screaming for some kind of movement besides squatting, and she scanned the area, squinting as she tried to regain her bearings.
“We should break for the next field.” She placed her hand on Tucker’s arm. “Just remember the fence has claws.”
One night he’d run straight into the wire fence and flipped right over it, and besides the hard landing on the other side, he’d shredded his shirt and ended up with long scratches up his abdomen from the barbed wire across the top.
They’d cleaned out the cuts once they got around to it, but that was after going to a party and building a bonfire, and now that she was older, she marveled he hadn’t ended up with tetanus.
They should all know better than to run through fields late at night without much light or cover now, too, but the whole point of a bachelor party was to revert to feeling like a carefree group of friends with no responsibilities, right?
And if Easton failed to catch them after his extensive cop training, and she got to rub that in his face, even better.
Obviously “maturity” wasn’t the watchword.
