Page 79 of Distress Signal

Wyatt Saunders.

A bit of a sore subject for the entire family these days, after her mother tried to kill both AspenandCrew last year, but she’d been Trey’s best friend forever, and none of us were blind to the fact that he’d been in love with her for nearly as long.

After her mother died, Wyatt and her dad had picked up and left town in the middle of the night without a word to anyone—including Trey.

He didn’t talk about it, but we all knew he’d been trying to reach her for nearly a year with no luck.

I didn’t miss the look Crew and Aspen shared.

“What, baby bro?” I said to him. “You got something to say?”

Crew swallowed hard, clearly in a tough spot, but Aspen was the one who spoke.

“We invited her to the wedding. And she RSVPed…yes.”

It went so quiet in that room, you could’ve heard a pin drop.

“It’ll be good to see her,” Mama hedged. “Let her know we don’t blame her for any of it.”

West, who still stood in front of Trey, pulled his phone out of his pocket.

“I’ll call Tyler,” he mumbled before leaving the room.

I had half a mind to go after him, but I wasn’t going to intrude on that conversation, if there evenwasone. The one thing we knew unequivocally about Tyler Atwood was that she was as wild and free as a damn bird. That woman wouldn’t be caught unless she wanted to be.

I didn’t know if he meant to call her or simply needed an excuse to slip free of the scrutiny. Likely a combination of both. The front door closed, and he appeared on the porch, his back to the windows.

“And what about you?” Mama stared directly at Lane. “Will you be going stag?”

“It’s my brother’s wedding,” he said. “I don’t need a date.”

“But you have one,” Crew supplied happily. “The sheriff is bringing a plus one.”

“Sutton?” Mama asked with a brow raised, voicing the thought we all had.

Surprisingly, Lane shook his head.

“Addie,” he rasped out.

Oh shit.

Trey snorted. “That’s gonna get messy.”

“Sutton is coming,” Aspen supplied. “She was one of the first RSVPs I received.”

Reagan sat silent at my side, head turning back and forth, tracking the conversation, likely not having a single fucking clue what was happening.

“I’ll break it all down for you later,” I whispered, once again eliciting that tremble in her body, grinning as her flesh pebbled with goosebumps.

“I’m gonna need diagrams and a manual to keep all of these people straight.”

I liked that she wanted to know, no matter how complicated explaining it all would be.

That meant she wanted to stay.

twenty-three

. . .