Page 26 of Love Me Again

“Would you rather go back to the way things were before?” Cora asked blandly, sitting in her seat, hands clasped over her pregnant belly while her husband gathered up her plate and silverware.

Micah pouted. “No,” he muttered irritably.

Josie had the strangest flash of memory of making dinner for her father and Boone in their little apartment. She’d gotten up to clear the dishes, and Boone had gently pressed her back into her seat.

You cooked. I clean. That’s the rule.

What other little things he’d done had come from growing up in this house, with these people? That he’d purposefully kept her from.

Boone was behind Josie then. He reached around her and grabbed her glass. He smiled at her while he did it and Josie just…stared. She hadn’t seen him in almost two years and nothing had really changed about him. A little too skinny, no doubt because of the injuries, but his blue eyes were exactly the same, and looking into them was like erasing the almost two years of living without him.

Awareness. Memory. It all skittered along in her skin, developed hooks and dug deep and tight. An old familiar wanting so deep and potent swirled inside of her and she wondered…

She looked away abruptly. No, absolutely not. Okay, so she had to get out of⁠—

“And while they clean, we get to go relax,” Molly said cheerfully, grabbing Josie’s arm much like Deb had before dinner.

Josie knew she could and should fight it, fight them, but it was so strange and disorienting for people to seem to want her around. They included her not just like they had to, but because they wanted to. Like she belonged here.

She decidedly did not, but Molly was pulling her along with all the other women who filed out of the dining room, through the beautiful house, and into the cozy living room from the first day where they’d wrapped her in a blanket and plied her with warm drinks and cookies.

They all seemed to have their own assigned seating, even though Lou didn’t live here, but Molly must have given up her seat for Josie, because she settled herself on the ground in between Josie’s comfortable chair and the coffee table in the center of the room.

Talk revolved around Christmas plans and memories. No one made it seem like it was strange she was here—they explained things that needed explaining to an outsider, asked her questions pertinent to whatever stories they were telling or plans they were making so it felt easy to just be here, talking to them.

Molly disappeared for a few minutes, then returned with a bottle of wine and three wine glasses. She gave one to her mother, then one to Josie.

When Josie hesitated, Molly shook her head.

“You have to partake with me, because all these pregnant ladies can’t. And if you don’t have the glass, Grandma Maisey will, and she gets really crazy with a glass of wine in her. She might even show you her sword collection.”

The old woman cackled delightedly. “Oh, she’ll see it before her time here is done.”

Josie thought it sounded like a threat, so she took the offered glass of wine. She barely ever drank, but when she took a sip, the wine was sweet and warmed pleasantly. And Deb and Molly were drinking, and it felt like Cora and Lou would be too if they weren’t pregnant. Like this was just a relaxing thing they did sometimes. All together.

At some point after she’d finished her first glass, and Molly had refilled it, Deb had excused herself. Then Grandma Maisey did as well. It had been long enough, the men had no doubt finished cleaning up, but they didn’t appear. Instead, Josie sat with Cora, Lou and Molly in the cozy living room and talked.

Cora discussed baby names. Lou talked due dates and then flowers—apparently over on her and Gavin’s ranch she had a flower farm. They asked Molly how her horse-riding lessons were going, and at some point in all this—about the time they all started turning their attention toward her—Josie realized she’d had two full glasses of wine and was quite tipsy.

She did not know how she was going to get back to the cabin, but she was just close enough to drunk not to care.

“So, you’re a vet,” Cora said to Josie. “Do you have your own practice?”

Josie shook her head. “My dad worked for the rodeo. So I was more his assistant than anything. We never really talked about it directly, but I guess the plan was always just for me to take over for him once he was ready to retire.”

Instead, he was dead.

God, Josie didn’t want to think about that.

“Are you going to go back to the rodeo after Christmas?” Molly asked.

She didn’t want to talk about this either. What she was going to do. Because for the first time in her life, she didn’t have a clue. She opened her mouth to change the subject, but no change of subject came to her. Instead, the truth tumbled out, no doubt the wine’s fault.

“I have no idea.”

She didn’t miss the looks they all shared, though she couldn’t fully read whatever nonverbal language passed between the three women. Except they all looked so kind and understanding, like if she started talking, they’d just listen.

There’d been no one to listen to her for six months. Longer, really. She’d never wanted to burden Dad with her pain over losing Boone. She’d worked so hard to prove to him she was fine. So that she’d never really grieved the loss of that before she’d lost him.