Olivia stares straight at me in a way that’s hard to duck. “Honey, I don’t know who you had in your past who convinced you that you need to beg for table scraps, but you’re also a kind, compassionate, bright soul who deserves every good thing. And I don’t mean men. I mean all different kinds of good things in life.”
I bite into the croissant to distract myself from tearing up again as I realize the full message in Olivia’s words.
Your parents might have treated you like life was a competition with your sisters, but it’s not. You don’t have to keep comparing yourself to everyone. You get to just be you.
My tongue registers what I’m tasting as I’m having this epiphany, and I moan in delight.
Flaky, buttery croissants fresh out of the oven—who could ever actually leave here?
The women trade smiles.
“It struck me yesterday as I was watching you that Heath doesn’t meet most of our guests immediately upon their arrival,” Samantha says. “He rarely sees them at their most vulnerable. I think the timing and how you two met threw him off-kilter.”
Olivia nods. “Honestly, it’s good to see. It’s like he’s waking up.”
“Did we tell you that you’re the first viral friend to ever make use of that apartment in his basement?”
“And that none of our previous guests have ever introduced themselves to him by punching him,” Olivia says with a sly grin.
Samantha doesn’t smile back like you’d expect. “I thought his mother-in-law was going to once.”
“She’s something.”
“The father-in-law’s worse.”
“If I ever catch him trying to come onto this property again the way he did when they decided they wanted Lav…”
I swallow, then wish I hadn’t, because the croissant gets stuck in my throat.
Not in a way that’ll choke me, but in a way that almost makes me wish I was.
I have to move.
Heath said that yesterday.
That he and Lavender have to move.
There’s a lot about yesterday that’s fuzzy and unclear, but I remember him telling me he didn’t think he was a good dad and that he had to leave.
So it doesn’t matter that I have a crush on him.
He’s not staying.
“But at least that’s over,” Samantha says.
“Damn well better be,” Olivia mutters.
Samantha looks back at me. “Do you know, if you told me a month ago that the two of you would be streaking through the grapevines together, I would’ve put a hundred against it, and I’m not the betting type.”
“With or without a chicken,” Olivia adds.
“I was fully dressed the whole time, and he was wearing boxers,” I stammer.
Did his boxers have Hawaiian flowers on them, or is that the wine feeding me funny memories? I don’t remember why he stripped down to his boxers.
But he had to have at some point to wake up in those clown pants.
They’re both smiling again.
