Page 94 of How to Say I Do
CHAPTER25
Wyatt
Wakingup felt like a freight train had barreled through my body. Sunlight hammered my eyeballs. I groaned and flopped from my side to my belly like an orca whale rolling in the sea. Each part of me felt disconnected from my whole. My aching head and my sore biceps and my screaming thighs, my tired toes and my tight back, and, most of all, my foggy head. I groaned again, this time into the pillow, and caught the immediate he’d-been-right-here scent of Noël.
Noël.I pushed to my elbows and searched my bedroom. Outside my windows, the world was a wonderland of late-summer radiance. Inside, my jeans and a clean shirt were laid out at the foot of my bed. My hat was crown-down on the dresser, and my boots were lined up side by side, but there was no sign of Noël.
Jeans tugged on, shirt pulled overhead. My mouth tasted like a skunk had said hello to my face around midnight, so I brushed my teeth and my tongue twice.
Downstairs noises were floating up to the landing. Someone was in my kitchen, but if that someone was Noël, my house was in danger. He was still an elementary-level cook, if I was being generous.
I had vague memories of Liam and Savannah saying they would stick around, but a lot of my memories from between the end of the harvest and the party last night were a blurry, patchy, exhaustion-hued mess. I peeked into the other bedroom. Liam, Savannah, and Jason had indeed stayed the night. The bed in Liam’s room was unmade, and Spider-Man pajamas were bunched up in the center of the floor, kicked off by eight-year-old feet.
So my familyandNoël were downstairs.
I padded down the stairs slowly. The tapping sounds my boots made weren’t nearly as entertaining hungover as they had been the night before.
Clearly, everyone else had come through last night’s party unscathed. Every casserole and baking dish and wine glass from last night had been washed clean and lain out to dry on my dining room table. All the empty wine bottles we’d gone through—wow, that many?—had been rinsed and were tucked into boxes that were now stacked by the back door, ready to be sanitized and reused. The great thing about a party in a small town is everyone wants to help you. Whenever last night had ended, Connie and her friends had stayed to wash and dry, likely while their misters kicked dirt and yawned outside their trucks.
I spotted the backs of Savannah’s and Jason’s heads, the two of them sitting at the kitchen island. Savannah was two-handing a cup of coffee. Jason was making train noises and furiously scribbling in a page of his coloring book.
Liam was at the stove, and he had a spatula in one hand and was barking at Noël. Noël had his back pressed against the counter near my toaster. That slice to Noël’s eyes and the angle of his jaw told me Liam had just insulted him.
“Yes, you caught me,” Noël snapped. “How do you say it in these parts? ‘I’m a one-trick cowboy?’”
“Pony.”
“Whatever. Toast is what I make for Wyatt.”
Liam rolled the spatula around his wrist and shot Noël a shit-eating grin. “Who needs pancakes or eggs? We’ve got you here to make toast.”
“That’s right, so you might as well turn that thing off—”
“The griddle? You don’t know what a griddle is?”
“Why should I?”
“Lord forbid you learn how to pour a flapjack.”
Jesus. Any second now they were going to go for the knives and use each other for target practice.
“Would you like a different flavor of toast, Liam—”
“Bread doesn’t come inflavors—”
“I could get crazy up in here, go wild with toasttoppings. I’ve done garlic, but how does arsenic or radiator fluid sound,justfor you—”
I burst into the kitchen, ready to hurl myself between the two of them.
But Liam and Noël both spun to me with nearly-identical grins and not a murder weapon in sight. Noël slung his arms around my neck and kissed me. Liam saluted from the stove, keeping one eye on his sizzling griddle. Bacon smells filled the kitchen, mingling with pancake batter, powdered sugar, melted butter, burnt bread—
“Fuck,” Noël snapped.
He spun back to his charred slices of toast as Liam admonished, “Language. Little Mister is here,” and Jason wailed like a police siren.
“Mister Noël said a bad word!”
“That’s right, he did,” Liam said. “And what happens when someone says a bad word?”
