Obviously, I notice Eva wearing a dress, since she looks sexy as hell in the yellow fabric, scattered with tiny flowers. Her hair is down, falling in waves past her shoulders. She’s wearing lip gloss that makes her mouth look impossibly soft.
I want to kiss her so badly my hands shake. I grip my crutches and focus on the pressure in my armpits.
“Ready?” she asks.
I’m not ready, but I nod anyway. The golf cart is absurdly small. Our shoulders bump as we start down the path between properties, and I’m hyperaware of every point of contact.
Eva drives carefully, navigating ruts and roots. She’s nervous—she’s chattering about whether she should have brought something, whether grumpy Ethan and his brother Alex will like her, whether this is a terrible idea.
“They’re all going to love you.” The words come out like a grunt.
“How do you know?”
“Because everyone likes you. It’s annoying.”
She laughs, and some of the tension eases.
Bedd Fellows Farm appears through the trees. The farmhouse is lit up, warm and welcoming, and I can already hear voices, laughter, and dogs barking.
I should come down here more, and I don’t, and now all the Bedds will sit there with nonjudgmental friendliness.
Eva parks near the barn, and I see Baabara’s palace. “Wow,” Eva breathes. “I thought maybe I distorted Baabara’s palace in my memory, but it really is regal.”
“It’s bigger than most studio apartments,” I confirm. Despite my nerves, I laugh. “Ethan got drunk once and passed out in there after we had a fight.”
“A fight about what?”
“Lia.”
Eva looks at me, waiting.
“Before she came back to Fork Lick, I was… protective. She broke up with Ethan, and he was my best friend, and I decided to honor her request to keep her diagnosis a secret.”
“But you were wrong.”
“Yeah. Probably.” I stare at the barn, avoiding her eyes. “He hated me for a while. Thought I was taking her side, keeping things from him on purpose. I was, but not for the reasons he thought. I was trying to protect her. Trying to control something when everything else was out of control.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
I raise a brow at her. Most people would say I was wrong, that I should have told Ethan, that secrets poison relationships. The fact that she seems to see me without judgment takes my breath away.
“It was,” I admit. “It still is.” Moving home after she was healthy brought a different kind of suffering, where I couldn’t talk about it with my best friend because she broke his heart, and I knew why. It felt like I could never be myself with Ethan again.
Eva touches my arm. “You okay?”
I realize I’ve been gripping the side of the golf cart too hard. “Fine. Let’s get this over with.”
Gran opens the door before we can knock. “There you are! Come in, come in!” The house is chaos as I crutch through the door and into Ethel’s dining room.
Samuel and Diane are here with their kids and two dogs that immediately come to investigate me. Apparently, Ethel has given up on her “no dogs in the house” rule. Sam strokes his neat, tidy beard and frowns at my cast.
His twin Colleen has her arm around her husband, Bacon—I can never remember his real name—while their children run around. Baby Porter is sleeping peacefully in a bassinet despite the noise. Alex and Molly are in the kitchen, and Molly’s dad, Wesley, is sitting very close to Gran on the couch.
Eva notices immediately. I see her eyes widen and clock the delight on her face as she notes the obvious affection between the older couple.
My body clenches Too many people. Too much noise. But Eva squeezes my hand once before letting go, and somehow that makes it bearable. Her fingers are warm and certain, and the touch lasts maybe two seconds, but I feel it everywhere.
Gran does introductions rapid-fire. Samuel and Alex are polite but gruff—protective of their family, suspicious of the outsider. Colleen is warm, immediately asking Eva about Pierce Acres. Then Bacon jumps in. “You do social media professionally, right? For businesses?”
