“Thanks for listening, brother,” Toby muttered.

“All good. Later, Toby.”

“Later, Johnny.”

They disconnected, and Toby went back to his water bottle.

He sucked some back, processing all that, and the relief it gave him, and the fact that felt really fucking good.

But he was left with his brother’s words bouncing in his mind.

Think about the fact you might want to be around when Adeline gets her feet under her and hits her groove with bein’ a single mom.

He’d stepped way over the line in some of the shit he’d spewed at Addie yesterday.

But her obstinately getting in his face, blowing him off and making him sound like a moron was way over the line too.

He cared about her and worried for her and maybe he didn’t use the right words or tone to share that, but she’d blown up and to save face, acted like he was an idiot.

It was the first time since he met her he had second thoughts about how he felt about Adeline Forrester.

They might be able to get past that, they might not.

In Toby’s mind, with the way their argument ended, that was on her.

What came after, he had no clue.

The issues he just handled with Johnny had gone in a way he never would have expected.

That was life.

It almost always went ways you didn’t expect.

You just sailed those winds. Fighting them served no purpose.

His mother had left her family, not looking back, when he was three.

Both the grandparents he knew, since his mother’s parents had never been in their lives, died way too young.

His father had followed suit.

He’d watched his brother fall deeply in love, just like their father, only to have his woman chose another man over him. That man was her brother, but since her brother was a pathologically self-absorbed lunatic, not a living soul with a head on their shoulders would have thought that was the right call. Johnny had found Eliza and had been healed, but it was only luck that Eliza was Eliza, or Toby knew Johnny would still be living half a life, going through the motions with a heart broken in a way that couldn’t be mended.

And it wasn’t nice, but it was the truth, that Toby had gotten involved with losers, nutcases or bitches, like it was hereditary to be drawn to women who fucked you up.

Adeline was in a spot, but she was not making the right calls, and that wasn’t just his opinion, he knew that shit to be true.

Time would tell.

And as his big brother advised, Toby would give it a week.

It was up to her.

Then he’d know what made her.

And if it went the way he didn’t want, it would suck huge, but he’d bounce.

If it went the way he did . . .

With his brother now on board, Izzy on board, even freaking Margot on board . . .

That would be an entirely different story.

 

Addie

Of course it would happen an hour before I got off and could go home and get off my feet.

Nearly every job I’d had required me to be on them standing or walking, but it was becoming evident that ten hours was about my limit.

She’d come through my line at least a dozen times in the months I’d worked there.

And every time, she had not hidden she was not good people.

She was mostly on the phone or texting, acting like I didn’t exist (my bagger either).

The message was clear. I was beneath her. Her groceries were magically rung up, bagged up and put in her cart so she could look into the distance and strut away without bothering with the little people.

It was that or she’d be in the mood to fuck with me and demand a price check, declaring something was on sale, or two for one when it was not, and she knew it. She did it just because she could.

Brunette. Tall. Almost painfully trim.

She was beautiful. She dressed great. She clearly had money, if the designer handbags she so overtly carried and her fresh manicures that were undoubtedly not done by herself were anything to go by.

She was also one of those women who was up her own ass and wouldn’t know the sisterhood if it bit her in it.

And it did not bode well when she was next up at my register and it was the first time since I noticed her existence that she was looking me square in the face.

She knew Toby.

From what I understood of his past reputation in Matlock, she might even have slept with Toby.

And she’d heard about the fight.

“Hey,” she greeted chirpily.

Damn.

“Hello,” I replied, grabbing the first thing on the belt to scan it and not for the first time noticing the woman never bought ice cream, and right now the entirety of her groceries centered around an abundance of different varieties of fancy bottled or canned water.

“Probably a drag having to work on a Saturday night,” she noted after I scanned a bag of frozen edamame.

“Pays the bills,” I muttered, going for the bag of frozen spinach, thinking the last person on earth who needed to know it actually didn’t was this chick.

“Still a bummer,” she said.

I just jerked my head in what could be construed as an affirmative.

“You know, just to say . . .” she started.

I braced for it.

And she sure gave it to me.

“Small town, folks talk. So, when I saw you at a register, I thought about it, I really did,” I looked to her after I scanned a case of St. Croix (grapefruit), “and I decided after you had your thing yesterday, that we girls gotta have each other’s backs. So I picked your line.”

I could tell by the gleeful light in her eye she wasn’t looking out for anyone but herself. In this instance, doing it getting her daily quota of mean-girl jollies.

“And I should warn you about Take ’Em and Leave ’Em Toby,” she finished.

I focused on her a brief moment and then reached for the next case of St. Croix (mango).

But I made no reply.

My sister had been seeing, then living with, and was now engaged to Johnny Gamble, and I’d been hanging with them and both the Gamble Brothers for months.

People talked, others gossiped, and some of them got off on doing it with or around folks who were intimately involved in a certain mix.

And I saw a lot of the citizens of Matlock. I figured the entire town had gone through my line at the store at least once.

So I really wanted to prick her mean-girl bubble and inform her that she was not the first person to share about Take ’Em and Leave ’Em Toby.

Though most people said it with what they thought was teasing “Ah, those Gamble Brothers” fun (and most of that “Ah, those Gamble Brothers” was about how solid Johnny was, and what a good-natured, ne’er-do-well bad boy Toby was, and I had to admit it never failed to rile me), when it was still judgey and gossipy, even if they didn’t exactly (maybe) intend it to be mean-spirited.

Bottom line for me, I knew Toby dipped in and out of Matlock since he’d graduated high school.

But he wasn’t forty, married with children and playing around on his devoted wife.

He was a young, insanely handsome guy who some considered a player because he played.

I’d played too.

You did that if you were unattached and enjoyed getting yourself some.

It didn’t make you an asshole.

And one thing I knew, Tobias Gamble was no asshole (notwithstanding him getting in my face the day before, but that wasn’t about assholery—even I had to admit that was about worry).