Southern Sinner (North Carolina Highlands 3)

I don’t offer the joint to Rhett, and he doesn’t ask for it.

“I’m serious, Hank.” He grabs my wrist when I try to take another toke and looks me in the eye. “He needs to know you’re okay. We all do. This bender you and I are on, it’s been awesome, and clearly, I’m in no rush for it to end.” He motions to the empty shot glasses in front of him. “But at some point, it has to. We gotta go home, and life—it has to go on.”

Maybe it’s the marijuana, or maybe it’s the earnest look on Rhett’s face, but it all hits me at once: how much I miss my mom, and how much I miss Milly’s sass and baby Maisie’s smiles and Bel and Beau’s company, and good Lord how I’d love to show up to this week’s Sunday supper and chow down on whatever deliciousness Samuel’s whipping up.

One thing I don’t miss, though? Work.

I didn’t hate my job as head of guest relations. In fact, I fucking loved a lot of it: interacting with guests and working with an incredible team of smart, driven people. Strategizing and implementing a guest experience that rivals some of the greatest resorts in the world. Eating and drinking at the south’s best restaurant under the guise of “research.”

Sharing my family’s brand of southern hospitality with the world.

But I dove headfirst into the job right after I retired from the pros. I don’t know what I expected life would be like post-retirement, but I hadn’t anticipated eighty-hour weeks and a nonexistent social life for the two-plus years I worked at Blue Mountain.

At first, I didn’t mind working like a maniac because I was doing it for our family. For my own little family, the one I’d dreamed about having for as long as I could remember. I want the fuss and the excitement and the sense of purpose that comes with getting married and having babies. It’s a big part of why I retired from football in the first place. I wanted to be present for my future wife and kids—healthy too—in a way my father wasn’t.

But I didn’t have time to think about starting a family, much less meet a woman who’d help me make that happen when I worked like I did. Guess I got a little resentful after a while. Coming home exhausted to an empty house got really fucking old.

I was doing the good thing, the right thing, by helping build the resort. But if I’m being honest, I wasn’t happy. I felt lost.

I felt like I was drowning.

And then the whole Emma thing happened, and . . .

Yeah. Maybe I’m asking too much of the universe not to only want a relationship like Bel and Beau’s, or Samuel and Emma’s, but a relationship with someone they’ll love and accept. Because at the end of the day, my family’s opinion matters to me. They matter.

I glance down at the blunt in my hand. Smoke curls lazily from the lit end, a misshapen question mark that rises between my younger brother and me.

“Are you feeling any better about it?” Rhett lowers his voice. “Do you still think about Emma? I know in the beginning . . .”

“I did think about her. But now I don’t.” Rhett raises an eyebrow. “I mean it. Mostly. Especially in the past couple weeks, I haven’t thought about Emma, or Samuel for that matter, much at all. Am I over her? Am I over what happened? I mean . . .” I lift a shoulder. “One thing I do know, I’m not gonna be the guy who holds back his brother from marrying the girl of his dreams. Even after all the shit that went down between us, Samuel is still family. I love him.”

Rhett flinches. “Pretty words, Hank, and I wanna buy ’em. But you gotta convince Samuel, and to be honest, I don’t think you’re there yet.”

“How the hell else can I prove to y’all that I’m okay? Show up with my own fiancée or some shit?”

“Ha.” Rhett runs a hand over his stubble. “That would work. You finagle an engagement I don’t know about? That chick from Vegas? I knew y’all were up to no good. If Elvis officiates the wedding, Mama’ll kick your—”

“Don’t talk smack about Stevie. Or Elvis.”

“Kidding, kidding,” Rhett says, holding his hands up in mock surrender. “I liked her, though. Stevie. Gorgeous girl.”

An image of her supermodel smile flashes across my thoughts, followed in short order by the image of her standing naked in stilettos in my hotel suite.

I shift in my chair. “Stevie’s a fucking knockout.”

Repeating her name, I catch a wild idea in my head.

A ridiculous, problematic, highly moronic idea.

Dangerous too.

But talk about fun—we could have so much of it all over my house. In my car too, and maybe in the stables if we were feeling especially adventurous . . .