“Okay.” Michael’s voice was calm. “And how do you feel about that?”
“Terrified, guilty, excited, and terrible for being excited.” I pressed my hands to my face. “It’s four months, Michael.Fourmonths since Marco passed, and I’m getting dressed up for dinner with another man.”
“Does this other man make you feel less alone?”
The question caught me off guard. “Well… yes.”
“Does he understand what you’re going through?”
“He lost his wife a year ago. And he has six kids under ten. Can you imagine that? So yeah, he understands in a way that no one else does.”
Michael nodded slowly. “And you’re going to spend this dinner talking about business, or are you going to talk about other things?”
“I don’t know.” My voice cracked. “Both? Neither? I don’t know what I’m doing, Michael. I just know that when I talk to him, I can breathe. When he looks at me, I don’t have to pretend to be okay. And when he touched my hand—” I stopped, the memory of Patrick’s fingers against mine making my chest tight. “I finally felt something other than grief.”
“Tess.” Michael’s voice was gentle. “You’re allowed to feel something other than grief.”
“Am I? Because it feels like betrayal. Like I’m erasing Marco.”
“You could never erase Marco.” He leaned back, his expression softening. “You loved him for half your life. You built a company. You made four incredible kids. Nothing changes that. Marco may be gone, but you’re here. You’re still a young woman, you deserve to feel something good.”
Tears burned at the back of my eyes. “What if I’m doing this too fast?”
“What if you’re not?” he countered. “What if there’s no timeline? What if you’re just a person who met someone who understands, and you’re allowed to explore that without it meaning you loved Marco any less?”
I wanted to believe him. God, I wanted to believe him.
His expression shifted to big-brother protective mode. “But I’m also your brother. I’ve always watched out for you, and I will not stop now. So yes, I’m also allowed to make sure he’s good enough for you.”
Despite everything, I felt my lips twitch. “You’ve been protecting me since I was three and Tommy Brierly tried to steal my juice box.”
“He deserved what he got.” Michael said. “And anyone who hurts you now will get the same treatment. Age-appropriate version, of course.”
I stood and moved around the desk, and he rose to meet me. When he pulled me into a hug, I let myself lean into it—this man who’d held me together when Marco died, who’d moved into my house and taken over the sheer volume of it, and never once complained.
“Thank you,” I whispered against his shoulder.
“For what?”
“For letting me do this. For not making me feel like a terrible person.”
He pulled back to look at me, his hands on my shoulders. “You’re not a terrible person, Tess. You’re just a person trying to survive.” He paused, then added with a slight grin, “You’ve been strong-willed since the day you were born.”
I smiled through my tears. “That’s me in a nutshell.”
He chuckled. “I wish things were still that simple. Back in the day, I could fix everything by shoving a few boys into a sandbox.” He gave my shoulders one last squeeze before letting go. “Now go find Shelly. She’s probably already got your outfit picked out.”
“Absolutely not.”
I stood in front of my closet in my bra and slip, staring at the contents as if they’d personally offended me. Every dress I owned suddenly looked wrong—too formal, too casual, too… whatever.
Shelly sat cross-legged on my bed, fingers tapping against her knee. She’d shown up ten minutes ago with that knowing look on her face and immediately banished Michael and the kids downstairs.
“The black one makes me look like I’m going to another funeral,” I said, pulling out a dress and holding it up. “The blue one is too… I don’t know, it’s just not right.”
“The blue one is too date-night,” Shelly supplied. “And you’re trying to maintain the fiction that this is just dinner between two professionals.”
“Itisjust dinner.”
