by Megan Crane
He was absolutely right. She’d known perfectly well he wasn’t homeless or even particularly badly off. Even if she hadn’t paid attention to his clothes, or the room he was staying in, or even the hotel that only her better-off cousins had chosen, it was obvious. He exuded the kind of confidence that a man just didn’t have if he had nothing.
But she hadn’t wondered. She hadn’t pressed him.
She had decided that he was the Vaughn she’d known ten years ago, and heaven forbid that anything got between Devyn—or her mother—and the mind she’d already made up.
She looked around at her family now, in all its complicated glory. Grandma was holding court down at the other end of the living room, sitting in an armchair like it was her throne, saying something to surly Uncle Jason that was making him roll his eyes. Melody sat on her other side, laughing, as if whatever Grandma was saying was funny. Devyn didn’t have to hear it to know that it was unlikely to be funny at all.
But maybe that was why she has such a soft spot for her grandmother, despite everything. Because Grandma was bitter and often mean. She glared and she glowered and she never said one nasty thing when three would do.
And yet everybody in this room adored her, anyway. Or maybe even because she was always so...herself.
Why did Devyn think, even now, that she had to stay on her best behavior all the time? As if that was the only way that anyone would ever love her?
It was clear enough, right here in this living room, that bad behavior wasn’t any kind of deal-breaker. That this clan of hardheaded, stubborn, too mouthy for their own good Greys would probably love her more if she let her messy parts show.
If she needed any confirmation about that, she needed only to look at where Jesse was sitting on the couch with his brand-new wife, playing with his two little half-sisters and their new toys that Santa had brought.
The little half-sisters his own ex-girlfriend had given his father.
But here they all were. Maybe Jesse and Billy weren’t about to get matching tattoos to declare themselves best friends, but they weren’t flipping tables and snarling at each other, either.
She’d never truly stopped to think that it wasn’t simply her cousins who made her go to Montana every Christmas and as many summer days as she could swing. It wasn’t just her cousins who made her sit cross-legged on the floor and listen to her grandmother complain throughout a news program, eating cheese and crackers Grandma had only brought to make one of her pissy, petty little points.
It wasn’t only her cousins who she loved with this fierce, uncompromising devotion. She would do anything for any person in this room.
Except herself.
In fact, she was the only person in the room she wasn’t all that kind to.
Maybe it was time to change that, she thought as her grandfather gave his usual speech about family and love and the enduring Greys. Maybe it was time to stop paying penance for her mother’s choices.
Maybe, just maybe, it was time to stop cutting off her nose to spite her face.
Or try, anyway.
If he would still have her.
Chapter Fifteen
Melody woke up the morning of her birthday on fire.
She roused both Devyn and Sydney from their beds sometime shortly after six a.m., and the day only got more dramatic from there.
There were all the errands to run that Melody had apparently forgotten to take care of until just then, because it had been much more fun to swan about Jackson Hole reacquainting herself with her exes. There were the caterers to talk to and trips out to the venue, an old converted barn with stunning Teton views, to make sure that it had enough heat after the holiday snow. That the roads were passable. And to install the lanterns to light the way that Melody decided she needed at around ten o’clock that morning.
That wasn’t even getting into the decoration situation.
“I don’t understand how you can claim that you’d planned a party when you’ve actually planned nothing,” Sydney was saying, in complete outrage, for approximately the nine thousandth time. She slouched next to Devyn in Melody’s SUV on the way to the fancy market on Pearl Street where Melody insisted the particular kind of chocolates she suddenly wanted to put on every table needed to be bought.
“It’s like you’ve never been to one of Mom’s parties before,” Devyn said mildly.
Her sister glared at her. “Keep it up. I’ll put you on the no-fly list myself.”
“Can you actually do that? Is that one of your duties?” Devyn avoided a few tourists meandering in the middle of the snowy street in downtown Jackson. Barely. “Are you ever going to tell me if you’re actually a spy?”
“It would take three seconds on my laptop and Homeland Security would own you forever, Devyn. Keep that in mind the next time you want to get cute with me.”
But she was smirking, of course.
It was rush rush rush all day and then as night began to fall, there were a strange couple of hours where everything was done but it was too early to head over to the party and get it all over with.
Devyn spent entirely too much time fussing with her appearance while telling herself that there was absolutely no reason she was doing such a thing. She had no expectations. No hopes, no daydreams, nothing.
Nothing at all.
“So are you and Vaughn together or not?” Sydney asked from her doorway, as if she could read all those things Devyn absolutely wasn’t thinking.
Devyn dropped the sparkly eyeliner she’d been reapplying. For the fourth time.
“What?” she asked weakly. “Me and Vaughn?”
“Don’t even start.” Sydney rolled her eyes. “On the off chance I had somehow missed the exhibition at the skating party, Skylar and Scottie told me that you were walk-of-shaming at his hotel last week.”
“I was getting coffee. I like coffee.”
“And we won’t even get into the two of you standing over by the windows in the sun-room on Christmas Eve, looking like someone was about to propose. And then Vaughn storming out of here, looking like you kicked him. And then lo and behold, you wearing a very similar expression yourself for the rest the evening.”
Devyn tried to maintain a poker face. “Coincidence?”
Sydney shook her head. “Why wouldn’t you get together with Vaughn? Maybe you failed to notice that he’s gorgeous? He was gorgeous when we were kids. It’s even worse now.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Devyn. It is that simple.” Sydney studied her face for a moment. “I know it’s scary to even think about falling in love because what if that makes us Mom? What if we’ve spent all this time absolutely certain that we’re nothing like her only to fall in love and discover that we’re exactly the same?”
“We are not,” Devyn said automatically. Even though she knew the truth was, she was a whole lot more like her mother than she’d ever imagined possible.
But Sydney was still going. “What if it starts a domino effect? Fall in love once and then over and over and over again, until you’ve traipsed back and forth across the country seventeen times and then you celebrate your fiftieth birthday by inviting all your greatest hits back to remind you of every single mistake you’ve ever made...”
She trailed off, making a face.
Devyn blinked. “Not that you’ve thought about it or anything.”
“I’m terrified of love,” Sydney said, matter-of-factly. “You know what Mom’s love is like. And my dad isn’t like your dad. Your dad loves you. It’s obvious, even though he’s clearly a hands-off kind of a guy.”
Devyn didn’t know where Sydney was going, but she couldn’t argue about Derrick. Devyn had never, ever doubted that he loved her. Fiercely and fully. He didn’t have to be hands-on or even around that much for her to know it. His love for his only child was another monolith. Granite and immovable. Enduring and forever.
It had never occurred to her before what a gift that was.
“My dad doesn’t hate me or a
nything,” Sydney was saying, “but I’m his mistake. I’m the physical reminder, every time he sees me, that he was so wrong about Mom. Is that love? I don’t know. I know it seems a lot less complicated for him with his other kids.”
“You never told me that,” Devyn said softly. “Why didn’t you tell me he treated you like that?”
“You always seemed to think it was so great that I had my dad’s place to go to if I wanted. A safe and stable home, as I believe it’s known.” Sydney shrugged, her shoulders jerky. “I didn’t have the heart to tell you that just because it’s stable doesn’t mean it’s awesome.”
“Maybe nothing is. Maybe that’s the lesson.”
“That’s exactly the opposite of the lesson.” Sydney rolled her eyes. “I don’t think I realized until I watched you dance around Vaughn this weekend how deeply stupid I’ve been all this time.”
“Hey. Ouch.”
Her sister ignored her. “I buried myself in work. I told myself I had better and more important things to do than get lost in time-sucking personal relationships. I never needed friends, because I have you. I have our cousins. I certainly never needed a man, because I’ve seen how that goes. Over and over and over and what if it’s genetic? What if I really am exactly like her?”
“Sydney. My God. You’re absolutely nothing like her.”
Sydney smiled at that, somehow managing to look as sad as she did kind. It made Devyn...hurt.
“I know I’m nothing like her, Devyn,” she said. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m nothing like her. I know it. But do you?”
Devyn still didn’t know the answer to that an hour or so later, when she was standing in her mother’s converted barn. It was a winter wonderland after all, exactly as ordered. Christmas lights hung from all the rafters with red and gold streamers. They’d managed to bring the season inside, with none of the cold, with bright gold stars and evergreen trees everywhere there weren’t tables.
This was it, Devyn told herself, maybe a little more sternly than necessary. All she had to do was get through the night and all of this was over again.
She could just as easily feel turned inside out and stitched back together incorrectly while in her studio apartment back in Chicago, where there would be no family members to happen by and wreck her world with their throwaway comments that made Devyn’s entire life feel as if it...fit her wrong.
As if it always had, and she just hadn’t seen it until now.
But then Vaughn walked through the barn door and she accepted the fact that she’d been kidding herself all along.
And more, that she hadn’t been loitering near the entryway because she cared which friends of her mother’s had actually turned up. She’d been waiting for him. She’d been waiting to see if he would turn up after that last conversation they’d had at the tree-trimming party on Christmas Eve.
He looked better than she remembered, though it was hard to imagine how that could be possible. He wore dark trousers, a sport jacket, boots, and a cowboy hat like he’d been especially crafted to walk into a barn in Wyoming and steal all the air from the place. She wasn’t sure her heart could take it.
Especially not when his gaze found hers and he tipped that hat to her, though the look in his dark eyes was unreadable and his mouth remained in a hard, unsmiling line.
Devyn figured she had no one to blame for that but herself.
He didn’t come over to speak to her, which didn’t surprise her at all. Why would he, after the other night? The question was, could she gather up her courage and walk over to him? Apologize the way she knew she should?
She wanted to. She squared her shoulders. She took a deep breath—
But then she heard her name called. Too sharply to be ignored.
“Red alert,” Sydney said, coming to stand beside her, and for once not appearing to notice what Devyn might or might not be doing. “The party just started and there is all kinds of drama happening over by the drink table. Already.”
Devyn looked back at Vaughn one more time, and her chest felt as if it had been cracked wide open, but she followed her sister into the crowd and toward the far side of the barn.
To discover that Howie was leading an insurrection, right there where the dance floor bumped up to the bar.
“I want a decision now,” he barked at Melody in his steroidy way.
Melody, who was dressed in gold and looked beautiful and ethereal and very much like the prize she’d set herself up to be this week, was standing in the middle of a semicircle of her exes. And despite the smile on her face, she did not look happy.
“I think Howie is about to get booted off the island,” Devyn said beneath her breath to Sydney.
“I will provide that boot,” Sydney retorted. “Right up his ass.”
“I feel like he’s a much better focus for your Homeland Security threats.”
Sydney stifled a laugh. “I can’t think of a better candidate.”
Tensions were rising in the semicircle of doom. The exes were muttering amongst themselves, and there were more red faces and scowls than adoring smiles.
Melody gazed at Howie. “Sweetheart, I think you need to take a drink,” she said, in her encouraging, earth-mother tone, as if the vanilla chai scent of her could solve all the problems in the entire world.
But that didn’t work the magic it was supposed to. If anything, all the tendons in Howie’s neck stood out even further than before. Not a good look, as far as Devyn was concerned. It made her think of corded, leathery things.
“Now, Melody!” Howie barked at her.
The wall of exes around Howie muttered even more. Again, as if it was a high school rumble and these old men were prepared to throw down.
Something in her snapped a little bit. Because if she was tired of her own bad behavior, she was sick unto death of theirs.
“What are you all doing?” she demanded, ignoring the startled look Sydney threw her as she stepped up next to her mother. “How old are all of you? This is a birthday party, not an afterschool fistfight out behind the school. If you can’t behave, maybe you shouldn’t be here.”
Melody fluttered in her direction. “Devyn, I’m sure they don’t mean—”
“This is what you do, Melly,” Astral said, sounding not even remotely Zen and using that nickname even Melody hated. “You toy with soul connections. You spit in the face of any deeper, cosmic knowing.”
“Admit it. You never had any intention of doing anything but humiliating us,” came a voice that put Devyn’s hackles up before she saw it was Eddie, a repeat offender who she hadn’t liked the first, third, or final fifth time Melody had dated him.
And she liked him even less now.
“It’s the same old crap,” said the tiny, meticulous man whose name was Theo or Gio or something Devyn couldn’t remember, because she’d wanted to block him out. Because tiny, meticulous men got a little crazy when their sense of order was overturned. Or challenged in any way, say by a sulky teenager. “More of Melody’s utter disregard for the feelings of others.”
“Make your choice!” Someone else—it sounded like Hector—bellowed from the crowd.
“It’s not like you’ve never met Melody before,” Devyn threw at them then, stepping even closer to her mother. She let her gaze sweep over the assembled men, remembering all of them. The ones who had tried to take a fatherly role with her and the ones who had made it clear they were only tolerating her while Melody was looking. The ones who had treated Melody well and the ones who hadn’t bothered. Good ones, bad ones. All these representations of years of her life, and almost every one of them bristling with indignation. “What did you think would happen? If you didn’t want to take part in this game you should never have come.”
“You’ve always had a smart mouth, little girl,” Howie snarled at her, and took a step toward her. “It’s long past time you learned to shut it.”
“Hey.”
One word. Stone and granite. It cut through the noise like an ava
lanche.
And Devyn thought the entire room turned, just as she did, to find her father standing there at the bar, a beer in his hand and something a lot like murder on his face as he stared at Howie.
He’d dressed for the occasion. He wore a dark jacket over a dark shirt, and actual trousers instead of jeans. But just in case anyone was in any doubt, his shirt was open at the collar so one of his tattoos curled a little bit there in the open space. And he wore big silver rings on his fingers.
There was no doubt that of all the exes gathered around Melody and muttering out their discontent, Derrick Voss was the only one who was more than a lot of bluster.
And the look he was giving Howie should have burned the other man’s head off. Howie actually took a step back.
“Watch your mouth when you talk to my daughter,” Derrick advised him. He didn’t have to shout. Or even straighten from the bar. “And her mother.”
“You wanted to meet my dad, Howie,” Devyn said sweetly. “Here he is.”
“It’s time to pay the piper, Melody,” Howie said after a moment, though the aggression in his voice and strained tendons had receded by about seventy percent. “Are you going to choose someone tonight? Or not?”
Devyn had never seen her mother look so...torn. She actually wrung her hands.
“I love so much that all of you came,” she said, and there was none of the usual theatrics. Just the real Melody beneath all the usual flailing. “It means more to me than you can possibly know. I’ve loved remembering our times together. I’ve enjoyed all those memories, and I’ve adored finding out what you’re up to now. I truly have.”
“Choose!” someone demanded from within the semicircle.
“She’s not choosing, bro,” Brody said, sounding bored. Or just high. “It’s not happening.”
“You promised you’d make a decision,” one of the Tomachevsky twins protested.
“You promised you’d pick one,” the other twin agreed, which Devyn supposed answered that age-old question.
“How can I choose?” Melody replied softly. She opened her hands wide. “If I could have chosen one of you, I already would have. Years ago.”
