Freaking terrifying.
I nod. “It’s so lovely to meet you. I love your son so much, and I have since I met him on New Year’s Eve. I didn’t know that I loved him at first sight, of course, but there was something there and we just clicked. So this meeting has been a long time coming.”
Annie puts coffee on the table, then sits across from us. “Logan says that there’s a reason for the secrecy?”
I swallow around a lump in my throat. “Yeah. It’s a funny small world story, but it turns out that we, uh, had a mutual acquaintance in common in Vegas.”
Logan coughs overacquaintance.
I guess I don’t need to be diplomatic about it. “I’m Frank Wilson’s daughter.”
“Frank…” Annie’s eyes go wide. She looks at Jeff. “Did you know?”
Logan’s dad looks stunned. “No. You’re…” He gestures his hand down toward the floor. “You’re little Frankie Wilson?”
“Do you remember me?” I’m stunned, too.
Logan squeezes my hand. “My dad has a photographic memory for names and faces.”
“Especially hockey-adjacent people. And I just saw your dad not that long ago.”
Annie gives me a funny look, but she doesn’t add anything to that. I wonder if she’s thinking about spending time with my mother. I want to ask how that was, but I can imagine. Very superficial, very nice. Probably no mention of Melissa Wilson’s daughter.
My stomach goes into free fall.
“And the emergency last week?”
“That’s getting ahead of the story a bit.” Logan looks at me. “That night just went on and on.”
His eyes crinkle, and I give him a private smile. We had so much champagne that night, but I remember this from that very first moment, how easy it was to get lost in his eyes. It still is.
“Never wanted it to end, yeah.” I turn back to his parents. “It was a birthday present. That’s how it started. Trying to make Logan’s birthday in Vegas as fun as possible. So we got a unique to Vegas souvenir.”
“A marriage license,” he adds. And it’s really the first time we’ve talked about it out loud since the initial panic of the whole fiasco unfolding.
We both hear how that sounds, and we look at each other again.
His expression is priceless.
“What were we thinking?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Seriously, that was a red flag of the highest order.”
“You just gave me your phone!”
“I don’t even know how much it cost us.”
“Did I make you pay for your own birthday present?”
He leans in, his shoulders shaking. “I don’t remember.”
“Same.” I wipe my eyes. “Oh, man.”
Annie clears her throat.
Jeff makes a questioning, thinking sound. Somewhere betweenummmandhuh.
“Right.” Logan sobers up. “We got married. That night. Later that night. After a lot of champagne and a good amount of me telling her about you guys.”
