“Okay.” Fox swallows, eyelids working overtime. “I… won’t.”
“Good.” Gil nods. “Satisfied, my beauty?”
She frowns at both of them. “I am most assuredly not.”
He hums. “Convince your mother that you believe we believe in you, Fox. I’ll get these pancakes cooking.”
I wonder if I should tell Fox that all that blinking isn’t going to magically make him not be crying.
I wonder that I have time to wonder about telling Fox anything at all when I am ruminating over his father’s words, words that sound so much like the ones I’ve been trying to drill into Fox’s head, too.
He is all of those things. Every single one of them.
And any woman would be stupid not to love him back.
And I am not a stupid woman.
Which means…
Hm.
Hm.
Do I love him back?
My heart hammers in my chest at the notion as he moves away from the stove to stand opposite his mom at the counter. “I believe you, Mom.”
Her eyes narrow. “You were always pretty stubborn,” she says. “So you’ll excuse me if I worry that you don’t justbelieveus after a single conversation.”
His eyes dart to me as he replies, “I’ve been given somewhat of an education recently on what others believe about me and how it doesn’t always line up with what I think they do or should actually believe. This conversation with you isn’t justoneconversation. It’s only the most recent of many.”
Gil hums knowingly while Belinda follows her son’s gaze to me.
I smile nervously.
“Well that’s settled, then,” Belinda declares with a nod. “We all think the world of Fox, and he knows that we think the world of him.”
I nod back. Yep, yep, yep. We think the world of him. He knows it. All is well.
Except for the part where I might have been in love with him this entire time and didn’t know it.
Maybe.
Possibly.
Probably.
Semantics, really.
Chapter Thirty
?
What is love? Baby, don– oh. Sorry. Wrong chat.
Poem
My leg bounces.
