Page 48 of Crushes to WHAT

“Oh my gosh, is that him?” Mom squeals. “Oh, I’m just so happy for you, Almond.”

“Plus, I’m not asking Fox to shut down the bar for a family dinner. He’s already going to be testy with me when I make him give out free drinks to celebrate the wedding. I’m picking my battles.”

Emerson sighs.

Mom does the phone equivalent of a shrug—plowing onward. “Monday, then, and we’ll do it at my house so Fox doesn’t have to fret about the bar. I’m sure Samantha can handle it for a night.”

Having met Samantha, I’m not so sure. Somehow both Fox’s most reliable employee after Poem and a shaking, anxious wreck, I kind of think Fox might be more likely to shut the bar down for a night before he’d leave her in charge of it.

I file that under Not My Problem, confirm that the plan works for us, listen to my mom gush about there being an us, then hang up the phone.

“She says that we can do family dinner at her house on Monday,” I inform my fake-boyfriend-slash-real-fiancé. “Which means Tuesday is all free for…”

“Our wedding,” he finishes, eyes darkening.

“Our wedding,” I agree, blushing.

Emerson sits, pulling us both up with the motion. I blush harder when I end up straddling him, and I quickly adjust my skirt so it’s not dipping into full scandal. We might have gone there in my many, many imaginings, but I’m not ready for real life to catch up that much.

Real life can wait three days, for our wedding night.

Butterflies erupt in my belly at the thought, and my cheeks redden even further.

“What are you thinking about?” Emerson murmurs, low and way too freaking hot for my current mental state to handle.

“Uh,” I squeak, hedging. “Our marriage?” It’s not quite a lie, is it?

Emerson’s eyelids lower, and I get the impression he knows exactly what marital blessings fill my mind—and he approves.

I resist the urge to hide my face. I succeed, though perhaps only because my arms are trapped beneath Emerson’s, which wrap around my shoulders to hold me steady so I don’t fall into the coffee table.

I’m surrounded by him, safe in a cocoon of Emerson. As a moderately tall, definitely curvy woman, I don’t often feel small, but right now, he makes me feel tiny, like casting me in his net is not a feat at all, let alone a challenging one. He hugs me fully, to the point of engulfment.

I lie my head against his shoulder, tuck my face into his throat, and immerse myself in the sensation of care, safety, and comfort.

We stay like this for so long that when Emerson finally returns to his bookshelf project, the sun is well on its way to setting, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

And I most definitely don’t, either.

Chapter Twenty-Five

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Pre-parent pep talk is a must.

Almond

In my time as a certified hair guru, I’ve acquired hundreds, if not thousands, of hair products. Most of them I try out on myself, and if I really love them, I’ll keep them in the shop to use on clients. I have tried-and-trues that I can use on a wide variety of hair types, but I also have specialized products for specialized hair—curls, colors, aging. Then, I have everything else.

Shampoos, conditioners, glosses, cans of mousse and hairspray, plus a menagerie of more specific haircare products fill a huge, trillion-gallon tote that I normally keep in the bottom of my linen closet. I pull it out once every few months when it starts to overflow so that I can parse through what I have and decide what’s going to Fox and what’s going to the closest women’s shelter.

I used to try to push some onto Wolfe as well, but one bathroom-covered-in-shampoo incident too many led to a ban on all extra products he might have to store where small hands can reach. Despite Amia growing out of the mega messy toddler phase, Wolfe hasn’t let up on this directive. I have hopes of him chilling out sometime around her teenage years.

Currently I sit beside the tub in the middle of my construction zone hair studio. A dusty drag path starts at the door and ends beneath the plastic container, showing part of the route I took to get here from my linen closet.

At this point, about half of the new tile has been laid, and while my bottom rests on plastic covering a layer of construction something Emerson put down over the subfloor, the tote sits atop a checkerboard of butter yellow and pale pink that I know will shine beautifully once it’s clean. I use the one-foot squares to help me organize products into categories: keep, give to Fox, give to the shelter, sacrifice to the abyss because it’s actually criminal that this exists and I cannot in good conscience give it to another living being.

My hand tremors as I place a deep conditioner in the pile for the shelter and shakes when a curl cream follows.