“I don’t want to hurt—”
“Sit with me.”She tugs on my arm, scooting over and shifting a sleeping Pebbles and her propped-up foot until she’s made room for me on the bed.
“Stop squirming,” I murmur. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
She executes a move that has me wrapping my arm around her. “If we were two normal people with normal families, that would totally call for anokay, Dad.”
I smile as I bury my nose in her hair and inhale. She smells like sawdust and antiseptic, likelife.
“You ever worry your kids will be just like you?” I ask her before I can get off thelet’s dream about the future when we have kids togethertrain track that my brain has suddenly jumped on thanks to theDaddig.
“Every. Damn. Day. But then I remind myself that I’m not my mother. I’m not my father. And no matter what my kids look like, or what they’re talented in, orespeciallyif they don’t know what they want to do with their lives, I will love them and accept them and be there for them. And then I realize I’ll probably never have time for that, because I’ll be a workaholic like my sister now that I know my chocolates are my true calling.”
I squeeze my arm around her tighter and press a kiss to her hair.
I’ve done this with Hannah more times than I can count.
But when Tavi leans into me, my body’s reaction isn’t what it was with Hannah’s.
This ismore.
“You won’t be a workaholic. You know what matters.”
“Youknow what matters. You’re the best of the best, Dylan Wright. Promise me you willneverforget that.”
I chuckle softly. “That’s the last thing these walls ever would’ve expected someone to say to me.”
“It’s not your fault you didn’t have the best support system when you went to school here.”
“Eh. Some of my stepdads weren’t so bad.”
“That would be like me saying I wanted to be like one of my dad’s mistresses. They’re not all bad people, but if you know they’ll go as fast as they came ...”
“And you didn’t want them there in the first place ...,” I agree quietly.
“You’re going to be a great dad someday.” There’s a wistfulness in her tone that I don’t like.
It saysbut I won’t be here to see it. “Tavi—”
“Thank you,” she interrupts softly.
“For what?”
“For letting me in. For sharing your history and trusting me with it. For keeping my secrets about the chocolates and the church. That’s—it’s not something people do in the world where I came from. You’ve been—Dylan, you’ve been one of the best things to ever happen to me. And I will never,everforget you.”
“You don’t have to forget me. I’ll be right here.”
She gazes up at me, and I have no idea exactly what’s going through her brain, but I know shestilldoesn’t believe she’s worthy of me.
Her.
Tavi Lightly.
The brightest star in the whole damn universe and the only woman who’s ever not just accepted me for who I am but fuckingcelebratedme for who I am and how I got here.
I know she’s planning on leaving. I get that.
But she’s herenow. We have time to figure out how to make this work.
