Page 46 of Holding On

Shit.

I have three sisters. I realize my error, even if I didn’t say it out loud and scan the room, finding Cami tucked in the corner, leaning against the wall watching everyone gush about Tinsley. “Excuse us, just for a minute, we’ll be right back,” I try to placate the whining girls that want to know everything about Tinsley. I take Tinsley’s hand and walk over to Cami, who now looks like a deer in headlights with her wide eyes.

“Oh! Hi!” Cami squeaks.

“Tinsley Sinclair, this is Cami Walsh, my youngest sister.” Not my half-sister. Not my new sister. Just my youngest sister. The warmth in my chest at the introduction tells me I chose the right words—along with the genuine smile that spread across Cami’s face as she stands up with a hand extended to Tinsley.

“It’s so nice to meet you, Cami. Jack has told me all about you and I would love to pick your brain about yoga. Jack said you’re really passionate about it.” My chest fills with pride at my girl going out of her way to make Cami feel comfortable.

“Uh, yeah, sure! It’s great to meet you. I’m sorry, I didn’t know you two were … together?” Her voice raises at the end of the question.

“We’ve had to keep it very under wraps, but that will all be behind us soon enough. I promise even Finn didn’t know the extent of my relationship with Tinsley.”

“Haha, really?” Tinsley looks up at me. “Why didn’t you tell him? I thought your brothers all knew.”

I shake my head. “No, Liam knew, but that was it. And I didn’t tell Finn because he’s a fan and I was worried he wouldn’t be able to⁠—”

“HOLY CANNOLI! WHY IS TINSLEY SINCLAIR HERE AND WHO KNEW IT WAS MY CHRISTMAS WISH TO MEET HER?” Finn yells across the room the second he enters.

“—play it cool.” I finish as Tinsley and Cami dissolve into a fit of giggles.

Finn eventually found a normal level for his voice, although I did have to punch him in the arm when he made a joke about her choosing the wrong Callahan brother, which then Wells echoed with a punch in his other arm to leave his sister alone.

“So, how many days until I can tell everyone and anyone that I personally know Tinsley Sinclair?” Finn asks as he looks at his cards.

I scrunch my eyebrows but Liam jumps in before I can say anything. “Twenty minutes past the fuck o’clock. Do you know how much she values her privacy? Do we want Jack to disappear every time he is with her? No, we want them to know that we can respect her job and also welcome her into our family with some tact.”

Ryan playfully slaps the back of his head. “Yeah, Finn, what he said. It’s like you’ve never even hung out with a mega superstar or something.” He chuckles because that statement is true for some of my brothers, but the attention for being a celebrity has zero appeal to me personally.

“Does this mean I can’t ask her for a photo?” Finn looks like we just told him that he can never have sugar again.

“No, it means you let her dictate what that looks like. If you become friends, and she chooses to post something with you on it, then go share that. But let her lead, yeah?” I try to soften the blow to my brother who apparently wants to race my nieces to see who gets Tinsley to wear the BFF bracelet first.

Finn fakes a cough and is trying to play it cool before asking, “Is her best friend Fiona single, by chance? Because if so, I am definitely interested in meeting her under a circumstance that we could be more than friends.”

“You’re hopeless.” Theo grins.

“But I admire his persistence,” Walker adds.

Fiona would chew him up and spit him out for breakfast, but I don’t tell him that. I’ll let the kid dream—and it would be entertaining as hell to watch. Fiona is a man-eater and a ballbuster; Finn would be way out of his depths with her.

“For all is fair, when it comes to the love we may share, let me show you, baby, how much I can care if you were to be mine.” Finn stares off wistfully.

Walker tilts his head at my youngest brother. “Are you having a stroke?”

“It’s called poetry, Walker! It doesn’t have to rhyme or make sense. It’s called artistic freedom. Tinsley and Fiona would understand. I’m surrounded by neanderthals.” Finn shakes his head at us.

“Speaking of Tinsley and Fiona,” Ryan mentions and I narrow my eyes at him. “Are you going with her to the Grammys in a few days? They’re scheduled for that duet, so I’m assuming you’ll be there too?”

The fucking Grammys. I have cursed that event more than any single event in the last six months, but the end is so close. After the Grammys, Tinsley and Roman will have their public breakup and then I can claim my girl for the whole world to see. There will be no question if we are dating as soon as she is no longer under that fucking contract.

Liam is the only one at the table that knows about it because he was helping us try and dig up a way to get out of it, and he also knows about what happened with Rick because Liam helped us find and hire Thor for her security team.

“No, I can’t be there this year. I leave in the morning to go to London for a project that needs both Wells and I there in person. Actually, Theo, one of our meetings about the whole thing involves your brother,” I tell my newest brother-in-law. Sullivan Smith-Harrington is a tech genius who founded one of my favorite tech companies to collaborate with. His company does a little bit of everything, but they revolutionized the wireless headphone scene, specifically with how comfortable the earpiece is to wear, as well as the battery’s longevity on a single charge. If Van would let me, I’d buy out his company in a heartbeat, but Van insists he wants to just do his own thing, and so long as we can continue to find a way to work together, I won’t try to buy him out. I’m more than curious to meet the recent addition to his team that’s leading this new joint project. If Lennox Covington lives up to half of Van’s hype, I’ll be more than impressed—and that’s not something that happens often.

“I thought you and him were a little too chatty at the wedding,” Theo says as he throws a chip into the pot and the hand continues. “But Van had good things to say about you guys.”

“It’s crazy how small parts of the world are, like the tech world,” Ryan adds.