“Okay, well, let’s go home. I have so much to show you.”
Oh, my heart, I love this boy more than words can say. Hanging out with Larkin is definitely the right move. I realize that I’m homesick. I didn’t realize you could be homesick for people, but my heart is so damn happy being here right now.
We get home in no time, and we spend the next hour going back and forth between Maddie and Gavin showing me all the new things they’ve gotten since I’ve moved.
“You know, you look a lot happier now,” Gavin says out of nowhere.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. I know you weren’t happy about moving to Bluebell Falls, but whatever you’re doing there, keep doing it. It’s nice to see my favorite aunt so content.”
“I’m your only aunt,” I rebuke, but his words stick with me.
“Doesn’t matter. You’re still my favorite.” He gives me a huge smile.
The door slams open, scaring the shit out of the three of us but revealing Larkin and Theo holding a mountain of food. I stand up and help them lay it all out on the kitchen island.
Larkin bear-hugs me when she finally has her arms free.
“I’ve missed you so much.”
“I’ve missed you too,” I tearfully reply.
She leans back, scrutinizing my hazy eyes. She sees me starting to crumble and gives me another tight squeeze before pulling back and turning her focus to dinner. She knows once the kids go to bed; I’m unloading everything. The unspoken bond we have will never get old.
“Good to see you, Ainsley,” Theo says, giving me a hug as well. He’s the perfect man for Larkin, and I can’t help the flair of jealousy I have when thinking about how out of control my life feels right now.
Dinner is full of laughter and the kids speaking at unreasonable volumes, but God, I missed them.
When it’s finally bedtime, I tuck Maddie in and give Gavin a hug good night because he’s too big to be tucked in now—his words, not mine.
I find Larkin on the couch with a bottle of wine and two glasses, and Theo nowhere to be seen.
“Theo is doing a little work to give us some girl time,” she answers my unspoken question.
Collapsing back on the couch, I sigh in relief.
“Spill. What’s going on?” The concern in her tone is comforting and exactly what I need.
“I’m dating Ledger but in secret, and I love it but I don’t think I like the secrecy. I know he doesn’t. And we work together, and we set a boundary where we don’t talk about dating at work or work while we’re outside of work, and it’s so fucking hard. I have no idea what I want to do with my life, no clue what kind of career I want for myself, and I’m no closer to figuring that out than when I moved. And Ledger is this huge complication to it all.” I blow out a breath after I word-vomit everything weighing on my chest.
“Holy shit, you’re dating Ledger! And you didn’t fucking tell me!” The hurt I see makes me feel guilty as hell.
“I know, but we work together, and I wanted to keep it quiet because that fucking town is nothing but a gossip mill.”
“I don’t live there! You think I would tell anyone?”
I sigh. “No, but the whole situation freaks me out. I mean, how did you do it? How do you still do it?”
“Do what?”
“Work with Theo? How do you separate everything?”
“Umm, we don’t.” She laughs. “Is that what you think? That we keep our home life separate from our work life? You remember how we got Gavin, right? We’ve never separated the two. I’m not honestly sure how that would work.”
“But how do you make sure neither of you gets screwed at work?” Maybe it’s my old boss, maybe it’s the shitty finance world rearing its ugly head again, but it can’t be that simple, right?
“Mutual respect? Obviously, at first it wasn’t that way.” She smirks. “But now we help each other when we can, bounce ideas off of each other, step up if one of us needs to get the kids. My mind doesn’t go to, ‘What if he screws me over?’. Even when we first gottogether, I thought about it for a half a second but realized we have too much respect for each other. Combining our work and home life just flowed naturally for us.”
