The slow march down the aisle ends all too soon as we file out of the church and line up to greet everyone who has come to witness the cranky bastard Burns get married. Half the town is here because of the bet—which I started and feel no shame about it. All of us expected Miss Janet to kill him before making it down the aisle. Love truly is blind, I guess.
Amber releases my elbow the moment we line up, continuing to ignore me as guests shuffle past, shaking our hands. She’s shivering from the cool autumn air, so I remove my jacket and wrap it around her shoulders. Before she can protest, someone comes up to shake her hand, telling her how beautiful she is before they glance at me and then back at her with a knowing smile. Her glowing green eyes ignite with anger as they start to coo at how cute we look together. We are an attractive couple. Our babies would have been beautiful. She mutters a curse under her breath as another pudgy woman clutches her hands to her chest and sighs when she steps up to us.
“You two are so adorable. I’m glad you found your way back to each other,” she says. Thank goodness we’re in a church, or that sharp tongue of Amber’s would get her in trouble.
“How long do we have to stand here?” Burns stage-whispers to Mrs. Burns. Ha! Got it right this time.
“Until everyone has been thanked for coming.” Mrs. Burns pats his shoulder with a sweet smile. The woman was blessed with the patience of a saint. She’s got to be a saint for putting up with Burns—or maybe she’s a pod person.
“Settle down, Alvin, or you’re likely to anger the missus before you get to the wedding night festivities,” Jax says at the end of the line, not giving a hoot that we stand in a house of worship. The boy did grow up half wild at no fault of his own.
“You boys ever call me Alvin, and I’ll tan your hide,” Burns threatens. “Oh, Pastor…. Thank you for getting us hitched.”
“My pleasure,” the pastor says as he moves to shake the happy couple’s hands. “And I’ll be seeing you this Sunday for service.”
“Of course, you will.” Mrs. Burns speaks for them as Burns tries to hide his grimace. Biting my tongue to smoother my laugh, I quickly shake the pastor’s hand, who quickly shuffles past us Colson boys. I don’t blame him—we weren’t exactly upstanding teenagers and pulled our share of pranks on the poor pastor. Nothing too terrible, but I do think we may have gone a bit too far when we tried to convince him that the church was haunted.
“Let’s get moving, we have a party to start.” Burns turns to us, waving his hands toward the door.
“Dawn, do you have room for me to ride over to Benny’s?” Amber asks my soon-to-be sister-in-law.
“You can ride with me,” I cut in, sending Dawn a very pointed stare. She can read my brother Clint’s mind, so she should be able to read mine and make up an excuse that works in my favor.
“I didn’t ask you,” Amber says, rolling her eyes and crossing her arms underneath my jacket she has yet to take off. I’m calling that a win. A pitiful win, but a win, nonetheless. Or am I over thinking things?
“Yes, you can ride with us,” Dawn says, hiding her smile rather poorly and utterly letting me down. Some soon-to-be sister-in-law she is.
“I should probably drive you lovely ladies,” I attempt again, because like I said, I have no shame and Amber ignoring me, blowing me off, and overall standoffishness is getting under my skin. “Clint’s still in a sling and has no business driving.”
“I was cleared to drive last week,” Clint, a man of few words, says with a smirk. His left arm is still in a sling from the two bullets he took to the shoulder only a few weeks ago. His right arm pulls his new fiancée close to his side, and envy gut-punches me again.
“Can we roll?” Jax interrupts, giving me a cheesy wink as his hands clamp around my shoulders and shakes me a little. “I’m ready for a drink.”
“We don’t have time to argue, and I need to get to my kids,” Amber says. She takes my jacket off and thrusts it toward me. “I’m riding with Clint and Dawn.”
“Keep it,” I say and turn away from her. Damn.
“You just don’t know when to give up,” Jax jokes when we are out of hearing distance from Amber.
“Shut it, Jax,” I say, punching him in the shoulder.
“He has a point,” Eric pipes in, slapping me on the back. “Why are you trying so hard?”
“I’ll tell you when you tell me what’s going on between you and Sarah?” I return, eyeing him with a smug grin. Sarah is Amber’s sister and like Amber was also a bridesmaid in Burn’s wedding. Since her arrival in town a few weeks ago to help Dawn and Clint clean up some drama that left two bullet holes in my brother and Eric and Sarah beat up from a car wreck, the two have been inseparable.
“Eric and Sarah are just as disastrous as you and Amber,” Jax says before ducking his head and climbing into the backseat of my pick-up truck.
“Shut it, Jax.”
“Now I know why I haven’t been home in ten years. All you guys ever say to me is ‘Shut it, Jax’.”
“Say something worth listening to and we won’t have to tell you to shut it.” Eric smiles over his shoulder at Jax.
“Why are you and Sarah so disastrous?” This is the first I knew the two were ever a thing. When I left for the military, Eric was banging any available girl who gave him the time of day.
Eric doesn’t say anything at first, but finally sighs and says, “We were a thing for a minute, but it didn’t work out…”
“It wasn’t a minute; it was two years. And if I recall, you ended it when she left for college,” Jax shares. “You broke her heart the same way Luke broke Amber’s. You both are lucky the Baker women are even talking to you. Hell, I don’t even know why Benny lets you both frequent his establishment.”
Amber’s dad own’s Benny’s Bar, the only decent place to get a cold beer in Peak Valley. It also happened to be my only connection to Amber. She was the night bartender before Dawn took over for her. Now she’s an ER nurse working the night shift.
“Shut it, Jax,” Eric say again, his annoyance with the situation etched across his face.
He raises his hands up in surrender. “Only speaking the truth.”
“At least Amber’s pissed. That means I have a shot,” I say as I pull out of the church parking lot onto Peak Valley’s main road.
“Where did you come up with that kind of logic?” Eric says.
“If she’s pissed, it means she still cares. I’d be worried if she was civil,” I say with a knowing smile and a wink.
“You think because she doesn’t want to have anything to do with you, she’s still in love with you?” Eric asks with narrowed eyes.
“It makes sense.” Jax shrugs. “Kind of like playing hard to get.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Eric sputters, looking more agitated and glaring back at Jax. “Amber is an adult; I don’t think she’s playing any head games. I think she’s still bitter about your epic screw up.”
“It wasn’t my screw up,” I growl, tightening my hands on the steering wheel.