My Cone and Only (King Family #1) - Susannah Nix Page 0,82
at Ryan while I lied to him. “Andie’s great, but we’re just friends. I’m not interested in snapping her or anyone up. I like my freedom too much to tie myself down to any one girl.”
“Still not ready to grow up yet, huh?”
I managed to toss a cocky grin over my shoulder. “Never.”
Ryan propped his paint roller in the tray. “Don’t you ever look at Manny and Adriana and how happy they are, and wish you could have what they have?”
Yes. Wasn’t that what I’d wished for at seventeen? To marry Andie one day so I could wake up next to her every morning. Exactly like I’d woken up next to her every day this week. Now that I’d had a taste of what it could be like, I wanted it more than ever.
“Do you?” I shot back to shift the conversation off of me. “You’re almost forty, and I don’t see you settling down with anyone.”
He flipped open the cooler to grab a bottle of water. “Only because I haven’t met the right woman yet. When I find her, you can bet I’ll happily trade the freedom of being single for a chance to make a life with someone I love.”
I wondered if that was really true. Ryan seemed pretty set in his bachelor ways. He’d been living alone in the same house for fifteen years, and when he wasn’t working shifts at the firehouse or the EMS service he moonlighted at, what was left of his free time was spent training for the Scottish Highland Games he competed in around the state. I wasn’t convinced he was as open to sharing his life as he claimed.
“When’s the last time you even went on a date?” I asked him.
I remembered a time when Ryan had been…not a ladies’ man, per se, but certainly popular with the ladies. I expected he was still just as popular with the ladies, but I hadn’t noticed him returning their interest in a while. A long while, in fact. He’d had a few serious girlfriends and more than a few not-so-serious girlfriends in the past, but lately he hadn’t had any girlfriends at all.
He glared at me as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “None of your business.”
“What, my love life’s fair game and yours isn’t?”
“Exactly.”
“Pretty sure it’s been a couple of years,” Tanner chimed in. “By my recollection.”
I tried to recall the last time I’d seen Ryan with a steady girlfriend. It had to have been a couple of years, at least. Had he gotten tired of dating as he grew older and more set in his ways? Or had something happened to sour him on it? I couldn’t recall any of his breakups being acrimonious, but then Ryan was unlikely to have told me if they were.
He’d always played his cards close to his chest, especially when it came to things like his love life. Maybe because he was so much older and considered himself more of a father figure to us than a brother. Or maybe that was just how he was with everyone. Not the type of guy to kiss and tell.
“We’re not talking about me,” Ryan growled, dropping into the dad voice he used whenever one of us was in trouble. “We’re talking about Wyatt and what’s got him so distracted.”
Tanner and I traded an eye roll, both of us knowing it was useless to try and pry anything else out of Ryan.
Regardless, there was something I could tell my brothers, even if I couldn’t tell them about Andie yet. Another secret it was past time I shared.
“I guess I might as well come clean,” I said as I stooped to get myself a water. “Before you hear about it from someone else.”
“Hear about what?” Tanner asked, stepping down from the ladder.
I grabbed another water from the cooler and tossed it to him. “I’ve been trying my hand at songwriting.”
My brothers exchanged a silent glance before looking back at me.
“Since when?” Tanner asked, keeping his expression neutral.
I took a long drink of water, wiping my mouth before I answered. “A couple of years, I guess.”
Tanner looked surprised. He probably thought I told him everything because he was the only person I’d told about my feelings for Andie.
“I didn’t tell anyone about it until recently,” I said, trying to make him feel better. “I was waiting until I was sure they were good enough to play for people.”