“The… Why, thank you, Tobias. That’s… that’s… beautiful.” My dad broke off, too overcome to continue. His already leaky eyes leaked a little more, and I knew Toby had just earned himself a permanent spot at the top of the Favorite Goodman Son list. “Cue the music!” he choked out.
Littlejohn leaned across the table. “Awful nice’a you to name it after Big Rafe. He’s been a good mayor.” He nodded once, then clapped his hands and stood up. “Time for dancing!”
Veronica stood up quickly also. “Alright!”
“Oh.” Littlejohn seemed startled, like he’d forgotten she was there. “Okay, then.”
“Trouble in paradise already with those two.” Marius Wynott pursed his lips and shook his head as LJ and Veronica headed for the makeshift dance floor at the back of the bar. He leaned across me to tell Toby, “I know you’re too polite to tell everyone you named the bridge for Resolute Goodman, the founder of Whispering Key, so it’ll stay our little secret.” He tapped the side of his nose. “But your nod to history does you credit.” He slid out his side of the booth.
Toby pressed his lips together. “The island was founded by Resolute Goodman?”
“And Jacob Godfrey,” Mason agreed. “They’re the ones who buried the treasure we found.”
“Pfft. I knew that.”
“Of course you did, baby.” I ruffled his hair. “That’s why your nod to history does you credit.”
Fenn came over to wrap his arms around Mason from behind and drop a kiss on his head. “Heya, Loafers.” A rain of glitter fell off his hair and landed in Mason’s lap.
“Ack.” Mason brushed the glitter away. “Fenn Reardon, have you been having Zoom unicorn parties with my niece again?”
Fenn rolled his lips together and blinked guiltily. “Possibly?”
Mason shook his head. “Was it magical?”
“Obviously.” Fenn grinned. “I’m getting a drink. You want your usual?”
Mason nodded, and Fenn kissed him again before heading to the bar. Mason turned to watch him go, and an unmistakable smile played around his mouth.
When he turned back, he gave Toby a knowing smile. “You’re naming the bridge after Beale, aren’t you? No, no!” He held up a hand. “Neither confirm nor deny. I’m your best friend, and I know the truth. You’re in love, so it just makes sense. You know, at first I didn’t see you two together, and that was my fault. Sometimes the weirdest pairings just… work.” He looked over his shoulder at his glittery boyfriend. “I’m so glad you’re here, Toby.”
“Me, too,” Toby said softly.
“Welcome to Whispering Key.”
When Fenn came back, Toby and I excused ourselves to go try out the dance floor, and holding him in my arms as we spun to the music was every bit as amazing as I’d hoped it would be. Thanks to the martinis, Toby couldn’t stop himself from grinning goofily up at me, and if he hadn’t been wearing a blue jumpsuit that cost nearly as much as a mortgage payment, I would have said the man in my arms bore hardly any resemblance to the guy who first washed up on Whispering Key.
He crooked a finger up at me, and I leaned down so he could whisper in my ear.
“I have a secret to tell you.”
“Oh, yeah?” I held him tighter and breathed him in. Coconut lime Toby. Delicious.
“The night of Mason’s party, when Mase and I were talking, Fenn walked in and he gave Mason this look.”
“A look.”
“You know, a look-look. Like Mason was the most important person on the planet. That kind of look. And I wished someone would look at me that way.”
I pulled back just far enough to see his face. “You mean the way I look at you? Like I know you better than anyone and love every single thing I know?”
Toby’s mouth opened and shut wordlessly for half a minute before he managed, “You think you know me that well?”
“I know I do. You might be the king of trivia, but I am the king of Toby trivia.”
“Pffft. No. Pffft. That’s not even. Pfft.”
I laughed. “For example? I know that a minute ago when Dale said he was giving us supplements to improve our prowesses, you were thinking that if our prowesses were any more prowessful, we’d die.”
Toby coughed weakly. “That… was a lucky guess.”
“Uh-huh. And I know that when you said you wanted to name that bridge Goodman Bridge, you weren’t thinking of naming it after my dad, even though you care about him, or about Resolute Goodman, even though you’re real devoted to the history of the island.”
“Oh, yeah? You think Mason was right, then?” He gave me an arch look. “You think I wanna name it after you?”
“Mmmm.” I ducked my head back and forth. “Kinda.”
He sank his fingers into my hair. “You think I love you or something?”
“I do think that.”
And I knew for sure I loved him. I loved that he accepted all of me. I loved that he saw me clearly. I loved that he would always be tender, and prickly, and hilarious, sometimes at the same time. I loved that in some ways he was my total opposite and in some ways he was my mirror image. I even loved that he’d kept Jayd’s secret because it was the right thing to do. I loved him the way I loved my family, and the Key, and Marjorie—instantly and irrationally, not despite their faults, but because of them—except I loved him more.
He wasn’t the soul mate I’d have picked for myself, but he was exactly, exactly the one I’d needed.
“…and I think you picked the name Goodman for another reason, too.”
Toby’s mouth quirked in surprise. “Do tell.”
I spun him out, then reeled him back in, and cupped his face in my hands. “I think deep down you know you’ll be a Goodman, too, someday, so you weren’t just thinking about naming it for me, you were thinking about naming it for us.”
Toby’s mouth fell open again, and he blushed. “Sweet, dimpled Adele, how did you know that?”
“Toby trivia king. Undefeated.”
He shook his head and grinned like he was the lucky one around here, and I felt ten feet tall. “Okay, I admit, I hoped putting the idea of you and me being a permanent thing out into the Universe might be powerful. You’re never gonna convince me to give up coffee, and I will only do yoga if it’s sexy yoga, but this Universe business…” He shrugged. “I mean, it’s worked out pretty damn well for us so far, right?”
“Right,” I agreed. And Toby wasn’t wrong—the law of attraction was super powerful. But Toby and me together? We were unstoppable.
Then I leaned down and kissed him, pulling him against me, because in every version of the future it would be him and me together.
Want to know what Fenn and Mason were up to in O’Leary while Toby and Beale were falling in love? Check out the free bonus epilogue, Unicorns Forever, exclusively for newsletter subscribers, to see what happened when Fenn and Mason met Micah and Con!
About the Author
May lives outside Boston. She spends her days raising three incredibly sarcastic children, finding inventive ways to drive her husband crazy, planning beach vacations, avoiding the gym, reading M/M romance, and occasionally writing it. She’s also published several M/F romance titles as Maisy Archer.