Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 62095 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 310(@200wpm)___ 248(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62095 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 310(@200wpm)___ 248(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
The only downside to Natalie staying as far away from sugar as she could was that I had to eat her crumble in secret. She could make things for me, but she didn’t want them around the house, and I respected that.
One day, I legit walked into Darius’s restaurant to heat up the latest crumble in his kitchen. He was giving me a weird look when I returned to the bar so I could eat. They’d just opened, so the lunch crowd wasn’t here yet.
“Why are you holding somethin’ that smells and looks delicious?” he asked. “That’s so unlike you.”
I barely spared him a glance. He could stand there and rack wineglasses all he wanted. I was busy. I only needed a stool and the bartop. In an hour, I had to be back at work.
“Let me eat my crumble in peace,” I said.
He walked closer and looked at the dish. “What’s in there?”
“Caramel apple with some crispy oats thing and rum.” I stabbed it with my fork and tucked in.
Fucking divine.
“Can I tr—”
“No. It’s mine.” I formed a protective shield around the food with my arm. “Nat made it for me, not you.”
He sucked his teeth. “Do you even know how to eat pie these days?”
“It’s motherfucking crumble,” I told him. “Can people get it right?”
He rolled his eyes.
“If I don’t eat the whole thing, you can have a taste,” I settled for.
“That’s fuckin’ mean.”
I shrugged and shoveled more crumble into my mouth. “If you one day decided to take your retirement from military work seriously, maybe I’d reward you. Maybe.”
But as it was, he still occasionally did shit that put him in harm’s way, and I was fucking over it. Ryan wasn’t any different. I understood that money was great in the private sector, but we’d lost enough in our family.
“I’m retired!” he exclaimed. “I haven’t done shit.”
It was my turn to roll my eyes. When he lied about his gigs, it just meant he didn’t want anyone to know he was taking another break from “retirement.” But his new limp wasn’t unnoticeable, and I wasn’t born yesterday. His recent trip to Las Vegas to “attend some agriculture thing” was pure horseshit. I watched the news, dammit.
“Who runs a national agriculture convention in Vegas anyway?” I blurted out. “Shouldn’t they be in Texas or one of the flyover states?”
He shot me an annoyed look. “Every fuckin’ state has those fairs. And for the record, I’mma buy feeder pigs.”
Whatever.
“I’ll tell Gray to remind you to make an appointment with me,” I said. “You need a recovery routine for that shit leg of yours.”
He clenched his jaw and stacked another empty rack on the others. “I thought being in love would mellow you out.”
Whoa. I stared at him, fork in midair. “How do you know I’m in love?”
I hadn’t told anyone. Not even Natalie. I was waiting for the right moment.
To be honest, it’d hit me at a weird moment—after she’d opened up about the nature of her engagement to her best friend. I’d felt mildly threatened by a dead guy, so when the relief had struck me at discovering he hadn’t been her true love or anything, I’d cursed my chauvinism and realized I was so fucking screwed that it could only be love. Not only did I wanna be her present and future, I was evidently a big enough of a dick not to want any shoes from the past to fill.
Darius looked at me dryly. “If anybody else stopped shaving, stopped putting shit in their hair, pulled on flannel shirts, and ate their body weight in pie—crumble—I woulda assumed divorce or grief. With you, it’s clearly the opposite. Natalie removed the stick from your ass.”
Kinda impossible to stay pissy with him now. I laughed instead, because he was spot-on.
I’d put on a couple of pounds too.
No fucks given.
I’d never been happier.
My brother’s expression changed, and it was like he was seeing an alien eating perfect crumble.
“Yeah, see, a couple of months ago, that comment would’ve pissed you off.”
Probably. But here we were. That woman had changed everything for me.
“You haven’t asked how I know about you two,” he noted next.
Oh, I could guess. “Natalie had coffee with Chloe the other day. Chloe presumably told Gray or Ma, who told you.”
Darius’s face had “not too shabby” written across it. “She actually told Elise, who already knew somehow, who called me.”
Close enough. The family grapevine worked faster than an Amazon delivery.
“All bullshit aside, I’m happy for you, Ethan. I’ve missed my little brother.”
I smiled around a mouthful of crumble.
He pointed to the dish. “Can I have some now?”
“Do I look like I’m done?”
His scowl came right back. “I’ll fucking remember this next time Gray makes his cinnamon roll bites.”
That was fine with me. Crumble was my exception, and it wasn’t just any crumble. It couldn’t be too sweet. I needed the taste of the butter in the mix and a pinch of salt to go with the filling. The rum helped too. Fucking incredible.