My Cone and Only (King Family #1) - Susannah Nix Page 0,25

me. Friendly, but from a reserved distance, and without any suggestion behind it.

Until Josh and Mia got together. Once they were safely coupled up and disgustingly, madly in love with each other, Wyatt went back to flirting with her in that harmless, playful way he flirted with women he wanted to flatter without actually trying to lure them into his bed. The way he flirted with older or happily married women or with his lesbian friends Alexis and Xuan. Women he considered “safe” because they posed no temptation and were likewise in no danger of taking him seriously.

The kind of flirting he never did with me. Maybe because he knew I wasn’t “safe.” There was a chance I might take him seriously. But did I pose a temptation to him? That was what I didn’t know. Did he have impulses where I was concerned that he was afraid of acting on?

Or was he just afraid of giving my brother that impression? Maybe Wyatt was being extra cautious to avoid invoking my brother’s wrath over nothing. He could also be sending me a message—trying to keep me from getting the wrong idea. Showing me there was a line in the sand, and I was on the other side of it.

But would I be on the other side of that line if it wasn’t for my brother? Or did the line reflect Wyatt’s real feelings about me? I had no idea.

Ugh. I was going to make myself nuts obsessing over this. But I couldn’t stop. Not until I knew the truth. And the only way I’d ever know for sure what Wyatt was thinking was to confront him about it directly. Even then, I wasn’t certain he’d tell me the truth.

I couldn’t decide whether I should try to raise the subject with Wyatt or let it lie. On the one hand, ignoring it wasn’t likely to bring me peace of mind anytime soon. But on the other, I wasn’t sure I had the nerve to ask Wyatt outright how he felt about me—or fess up to how I felt about him.

Most people who knew me would probably be shocked to hear that. I’d earned a reputation as a feisty, tough-talking, assertive-as-hell chick who didn’t shy away from anything.

Except when it came to my heart.

Admitting I cared about someone was my Achilles’ heel. It was so much easier to pretend I was too tough to care than to let myself be seen as vulnerable. I’d messed up a couple of relationships because of it and been accused of being detached and withholding.

So baring my soul to the man I’d quietly been in love with for half my life? Not exactly something that was easy for me to do.

I was feeling good and maudlin when I parked in the driveway of the house I’d inherited from my grandmother. I had to park my car in the driveway, because the garage door had fallen partially off its tracks and wouldn’t open anymore. The front steps I walked up were similarly sagging in places, the wood grown soft and starting to rot. Peeling paint flaked off the porch railings, and patches of mildew grew on the siding, which boasted more than a few rotten boards and holes in need of repair.

It was a 1925 two-story Victorian that had originally belonged to my great-grandparents and was the house my grandmother had grown up in. She’d held on to it after her parents died, renting it out to supplement the income she and my grandfather had earned from the shop they used to have on Main Street. But after my grandfather passed, the house maintenance got to be too much for Meemaw to keep up with, especially once her own health began declining. So it had been sitting here empty for a lot of years, slowly falling into disrepair.

I wasn’t really sure why she’d left it to me instead of to her daughters—my mom and my aunt Birdie. Maybe because she’d decided to leave her other house—the one she’d lived in with my grandfather—to Birdie, who’d moved back in to take care of her. And because my parents had started talking about retiring to Maine, where my dad had already inherited property from his family. And because everyone knew Josh wanted to take over the goat farm—and I didn’t.

Maybe Meemaw just wanted me to have something for myself. I liked to think she knew how much I’d always loved this house, and she’d wanted it to go to