Page 3 of Fanboy in the Falls (Devon Falls #3)

Someday, Tom will find a romantic relationship with someone who can give him everything he wants and needs, and I know I can never be that person. —Colin Templegate

“There’s something about the air in Devon Falls.”

I murmur the words out loud to myself as I take a sip of the glass of marquette in my hand—a Northern Stars Winery specialty—and sink down onto the steps of the porch in front of the house where I stay when I come up to Vermont to visit the winery.

That sentence is something my brother Christian used to say whenever he talked about Devon Falls.

After he married Sam Evers, he and Sam would come up to Vermont with Jack Lancer, Sam’s best friend during residency.

Jack grew up here, and Jack loved showing this place off to his friends even before he moved back here to help his mom run her medical practice.

And of course, with Tom and Sam being brothers and with me and Christian being brothers, Tom and I ended up in Devon Falls fairly often.

The jokes our parents used to make about the four of us being attached at the hip while we were growing up together stayed funny right through Sam and Christian’s marriage and then steadily on through the media’s obsession with our friendship while I was racing and he was finally getting big breaks in Hollywood.

But we buried those jokes in Colorado with Christian a few years ago. There’s nothing funny, it turns out, about losing part of your hip.

“There’s something about the air here.”

I whisper the words again as I rub a thumb against brand new blue porch paint.

I’ve spent the last few months renovating this house, and I was hoping at some point it would start to feel like a home.

So far, no luck, and I still feel like a damn nomad checking into an Airbnb whenever I pull into the driveway.

My parent’s house outside of Denver hasn’t felt like home since they abandoned it after Christian’s funeral to hide in a condo in the mountains.

My apartment in Manhattan hasn’t felt like home since Christian and Sam disappeared from Sunday morning breakfasts there and Tom started spending more and more time in LA.

I had hopes for Devon Falls. Sam’s here permanently now, and I’ve gotten used to the idea that he’s getting married again.

Malachai’s a good guy, and he makes Sam happy.

I’ve spent this last year determined to find the next phase of my life after racing, and I was tired of fending off phone calls begging me to come back to the circuit.

So fixing up a house in this area and trying to sell a bunch of wine in northern Vermont, of all places, seemed like as good a challenge and next step as any.

But here I am, drinking alone and talking to myself on my front porch in front of a sunset full of purples and pinks, wishing I felt a hell of a lot more pride and excitement whenever I looked at the kitchen table I built entirely by myself.

My phone rings in my hand, and I don’t bother to look at the name on the screen.

I just came from dinner at Sam and Malachai’s, so there are only two people this is likely to be: Claire, my former racing adversary/friend, demanding to know if I’m finally coming out of the impromptu retirement I went into after Christian died, or Tom, who calls for updates and questions about everything from the deeply important (“we need to discuss the ROI percentage on the ads I suggested you and Evelyn run”) to the deeply not-important (“my eighteen-year-old co-star says wearing your socks up past your ankles is cool now, but I don’t know if I should trust this information”).

“Hello?”

“Bestie!” Tom’s voice rings over the line excitedly. “Did you miss me today?”

“You know it,” I tell him dryly. “Placing stickers on wine bottles for four hours with Evelyn’s crew would absolutely have been more efficient with you telling us every single time a sticker was a millimeter too high or low.”

“I did that one time, and your sticker placement improved by four hundred trillion percent. I counted,” he replies proudly. “So you did miss me!”

“Well, I only had to miss you for about ten minutes before I got an alert in my newsfeed about you.” I pull up the headline that I couldn’t stop staring at while I was eating lunch, pounding empanadas and meatloaf at Luis’ Cafe and Bar in the center of town. “You’re dating Beatrice again, huh?”

I gulp back the strange taste of something like unease that always creeps into my mouth whenever I imagine Tom finally settling down with someone.

I know I’ve got no right to any of that unease.

I’ve never been much into dating, and it was easy to swear it off completely when I first earned a spot driving a car for one of the top teams on the open-wheel racing circuit.

The public loves to get all up in the personal business of every race car driver who makes it to the big tiers of the sport.

Relationships are dissected across headlines, Reddit forums, and every hole of social media.

I managed to avoid that scrutiny by avoiding romantic and sexual relationships entirely.

There were always some rumors flying around that I was asexual and aromantic, and for all I know, those rumors are right. I’ve always found it a lot easier to avoid relationships entirely than try to figure out anything about my romantic life or sexuality in the public eye.

But sometimes I wonder about a life where I could be in a deeper relationship with someone like Tom.

Someone who makes me laugh and smile and keeps me grounded in the world in the way no one else does.

Someone who would be my person whenever I needed them to be, like they say on that medical drama Tom loves to watch.

“Oh, Beatrice?” Tom sighs. “Love, the writer of that article is the same one who’s still convinced you’re going to marry Claire at any minute. So….”

“Questionable source,” we both say together before we start laughing.

Claire Bismark may be one of my best friends, but marrying a former rival driver would have implications I don’t even want to consider.

I’m pretty sure no one on the racing tabloid scene has ever speculated that I’m planning to wed one of my fellow male drivers, but they still love plastering me and Claire across the internet the moment someone sees us laughing or smiling at each other. Heteronormativity for the win, I guess.

“Highly questionable,” Tom says. “Nope, I haven’t seen Beatrice since the two of us had a very delightful afternoon with one of Bea’s friends from the touring cast of Wicked . And yes, dancers are just as flexible as you might imagine.”

I won’t imagine that at all, thank you very much. Tom may fill the role of my person for me now, but I’m all too aware that he can’t forever. I’ve just never been attracted to Tom that way. Hell, I’ve never been attracted to many people at all. Something about my wiring, I guess.

But Tom’s not like me. Tom’s wired for love and romance. Someday, he’ll find a romantic relationship with someone who can give him everything he wants and needs, and I know I can never be that person.

I don’t like to think about the day when Tom finally finds the one. Will he and I still take vacations together, just the two of us? I’m guessing not. He probably won’t sleep in my bed when he stays with me anymore.

Change. Things will fucking change; I know that for sure.

Just like they did after Christian died and I stepped away from racing, into this weird, long-ass abyss I’m in now, the one where I just keep trying to figure out what the hell my life is supposed to be from now on.

I take a long sip of wine and decide it’s time to change the subject.

“I saw Gabe at the inn today when I was working there. All I did was tell him I was leaving some paperwork for him, and he almost dropped a whole case of wine on both of our feet.”

Tom bursts out laughing. “Oh, little one!” he says fondly.

Little one. That all started as a joke at the winery’s soft opening last year, on that day when all three of us got kind of wasted and Tom and I ended up taking care of Gabe after he lost most of his cheese and cracker plate into some rhododendron.

Tom and I learned two things that day: Gabe had never had wine before in his life, and I have a penchant for making up nicknames for people when I’m buzzed.

“I suppose that means he’s still not over his crush on you,” Tom adds, his tone mild and teasing.

“I still think it’s more hero worship than a crush,” I answer.

“And you know he worships you too, Tommy.” Which is all fine.

Gabe’s thing for Tom doesn’t give me the strange heebie-jeebies that thinking about him and Beatrice does.

And over the years, I’ve gotten used to people acting strangely around me just because I had skills driving a car and won a lot of money and attention doing it.

I was never in that car for the money or the attention.

I was in it for the adrenaline rush. For the thrill of winning.

Still, I spend a lot of time hoping I’m right, and Gabe doesn’t really have an actual crush on me or Tom.

That would be complicated as hell for way too many reasons.

Reason number one being that Gabe is one of the very few people I’ve felt any kind of real, immediate connection with in one hell of a long time.

There’s just something about the guy. Maybe it’s his perpetual cheer, or his excitement for life, or the way he blurts out his life secrets on blankets and throws keys at me.

Whatever it is, I know I have a hard time looking away from him when he’s in the same room with me.

And that’s not something I can say about too many people I’ve ever met.

Until I figure all that out, it’s easier to just hope Gabe will get over this hero worship he has for me and Tom so he can run the winery’s inn without dropping hundreds of dollars of wine on both our toes.

“Ah.” Tom sighs. “Our little fanboy. Well, slip him some Xanax, bestie, so he doesn’t go apoplectic when I show up at Northern Stars tomorrow.”

I nearly choke on my marquette. “Excuse me? What are you talking about? You’re starring in a movie, Tom. You’re filming. You can’t come to Vermont right now.”

There’s a long silence on the other end of the line. “Schedule changed, darling,” Tom finally says. “They finished up my part early, so I’m all wrapped. I figure I’ll come out to Vermont and stay until the leaf festival, so I can help set up for the new event space opening.”

Most of me wants to pump my fist and do what Claire calls my “white man’s excuse for dancing,” but the other part of me is stuck on questions.

Tom was supposed to be filming for months.

How the hell did they finish up his scenes so quickly?

“Are you sure everything’s okay?” I ask him.

“You can just disappear like that? Don’t you need to stay in LA for publicity or whatever? ”

There’s another long silence. Well, long for Tom, anyway. “I was just thinking,” he finally says softly. “Do you remember what Christian used to say? He used to say there’s something about the air in Devon Falls.”

You know the worst part of having a best friend who’s been in your back pocket since you were six years old?

They understand every damn part of you. Every piece of every cell in your body.

Every segment of your soul. And they always know how to make you shut up when they want to. They know the exact right words to say.

So I decide it’s time to stop looking a gift horse in the mouth.

The house behind me always feels much less like a rental when Tom is here.

Having my best friend show up in Devon Falls is the equivalent of the first-place racer in front of me getting disqualified, and I’ll happily take this victory, however unearned it may be.

“Send me your flight info,” I tell him. “What time are you—oh, crap.” A beeping sound in my ear interrupts me.

“Hey, Tom? Malachai’s on the line. Let me call you back, okay? ”

“Malachai’s calling you? Of course,” Tom says.

He knows Malachai doesn’t call me a whole hell of a lot.

We get along fine, the two of us, but I think I still make him a little uneasy at times.

That makes sense, given how weird I acted when I first found out about him and Sam getting together.

These days, I’m determined to make up for my behavior back then and make sure he can feel comfortable around me.

So if Malachai’s calling, I’m picking up.

“Malachai, what’s going on?”

“It’s all over the town message boards,” he practically shouts. “The inn’s on fire!”