Fools (Licking Thicket 3)

So, what with one thing and another, it had been this past Wednesday before Dunn and I had found ourselves waking up in bed together of a morning, with nothing to worry about but ourselves for nearly forty-eight hours.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I’d asked softly when my boyfriend had kissed me awake.

Dunn had smiled the smile he only smiled for me, we’d left Lu and Carter in charge of our businesses and our Bernadette, and by the time we’d gone to sleep that night, I’d been kissing my husband.

That simple. That us. That perfect.

Well. Perfect… except for one teeny, tiny, honestly infinitesimal, little problem.

“Holy heckballs.” Colin Richards rushed over, his brown eyes shining like maybe they’d opened the bar and started passing out Fuzzy Thickets already. “What is that hardware on your finger, Tucker Wright?” He pointed at my hand where it rested on Dunn’s shoulder.

Shit.

I licked my lips. I cleared my throat. I searched the room for my mother-in-law, who didn’t know she was my mother-in-law yet, and then I began to stammer.

“This is… it’s… we… Funny story, actually.” I forced a slightly panicked-sounding laugh. “Dunn, baby, you tell the best stories. You tell it.”

See, you might think Dunn and I would have been smart enough to spend some of our time in Vegas, or maybe on the plane ride home yesterday, thinking about how we might break the news of our marriage to Cindy Ann and the rest of the Thicket…

But you’d be wrong.

We both knew the whole situation was going to take some finessing. After all, we’d kinda cheated Cindy Ann out of planning a wedding for Dunn like she’d planned for Brooks, and she was bound to be upset. Still, I was hopeful she’d forgive us in time.

We’d planned to hide it until after Brooks and Mal’s wedding, for sure, so we wouldn’t steal any part of their thunder, but we’d been so jet-lagged the night before that we’d forgotten to take off our rings before the rehearsal dinner. Cindy Ann had been too distracted to notice, and… well, I think we’d gotten cocky.

This morning, I’d definitely meant to take my ring off… but instead, I’d stood in the bathroom after my shower staring down at the metal on my finger until my husband had come up behind me and peered over my shoulder to see what I was doing.

“I like having it there,” I’d told him plaintively. “Is that silly? It just seems wrong to take it off or hide it. But I guess it’s just for one evening, right?”

Dunn’s hand had covered mine. “Leave it,” he’d said, all gruff and growly. “I like seeing it there too, baby.”

Needless to say, his possessiveness had incited a predictable reaction that had involved both of us getting back in the shower, and… ahem. Here we were, still be-ringed.

And now caught.

“That,” Dunn said confidently, “is one of those rings they give out in high school.”

I blinked at him. So did Colin.

“You mean a class ring?” Colin’s husband, Ryder, came over then, their daughter Sadie perched on his hip. “That’s no ring from Licking Thicket High, man. Where’s the bovine? Where’s the LTH on one side and the MOO on the other?”

“Not a class ring,” I scoffed. “Gosh, no. The… um… the other kind of high school ring.” I rubbed my lips together. “Boy, oh boy! I am parched. Dunn, baby, I think we need to go find ourselves a drink. And maybe those little appetizer things with the cheese and the—”

“Wait, d’you mean a purity ring?” Parrish Partridge asked from my other side, leaning in to look at my hand while his husband held their daughter on his shoulders nearby. “I wore one of those back in high school. It was to let people know I wasn’t gonna have you know what”—he glanced significantly at little Sadie and at his own daughter Marigold—“before marriage.” He smirked. “’Course, back then it was easy to abstain since I didn’t know how good it could be. Nowadays I could never, um…”

“Keep talking, baby,” Diesel called.

Ryder ducked his head to laugh into Colin’s shoulder and tried to pretend it was a cough.

Parrish’s eyes went round, like his mind had finally caught up to his mouth. He looked back and forth between me and Dunn, then down at our rings, and his gaze took on a pitying cast. “I mean… no, that’s… that’s really cool. That’s, like, a bold choice in this day and age. For both of you to, um, to not… you know what.”

“They’re not purity rings,” Dunn bit out, pulling me against his side.

“No,” Parrish agreed, clearly humoring him. “No, of course not. But if they were—”

“They’re not,” he insisted.

“—that would be so, so fine. And if you needed to talk about anything, either one of you,” Parrish said kindly, since he was the world’s sweetest human, “especially since you’re kinda new to this, Dunn, Diesel and I would be happy to—”