Floored - Karla Sorensen Page 0,86

heart grow about two sizes because even though there wasn't a shred of shared DNA between us, and I was practically stepping into my teen years when she married Logan, she held a piece of my soul. Just like I held a piece of hers.

"I think it says we need to find something to do today," I told her. "I haven't made up my mind yet."

"Deal." Her face lit up. "Can we start working on your registry?"

"Isn't my shower supposed to be like, a month before I give birth?"

"What's your point?"

I laughed. "Let's circle back to that next month, okay?"

That conversation helped bridge a previously untouched gap in my relationship with Jude in our weekly phone call.

Paige had left to run errands, so I sat in the family room under a blanket with my phone on my lap and Jude on speaker.

"Is it stupid to move out if I have a free place to live?" I asked him.

He hummed. "Not stupid, no."

There was a slight hesitation in his words that had me smiling. "But ..."

"But," he said, "I think I'd want my own space. If it were me. But I've been on my own since I was seventeen, so I might not be a good person to help you make that decision."

"Seventeen?"

"Mm-hmm. Moved to Germany to play in the Bundesliga, which is their national league. That's where I got my start."

I shook my head. "That's so young to be thrown into a world like that. I can't even imagine."

"I learned a lot," he said ruefully. "On and off the pitch. And for a kid who came from a bloody sheep farm, it was nothing I could've prepared myself for."

My fingers twisted the edge of the blanket. "Is that when your parents ... started disapproving?"

Jude let out a slow breath, and I found myself holding mine before he answered. "They started a few years earlier than that, when I took a job outside of the farm to make enough money to keep myself in the youth clubs." Jude went quiet, and I held my breath, waiting for anything else he might give me. "My dad, especially. I was the eldest son, yeah? And it was my job to take over the farm, just as he'd done with his own father. But I think ... I think they saw how serious I was, working myself to the bone to play a game they didn't understand."

Relief was sweet and unhurried as I listened to him talk about his time in Germany. What he loved about the independence he found, and what he didn't. He asked me, in a slight subject change, about living with Claire in college and what that had been like. He asked me about Finn, who I'd only managed to see a couple of times since I moved back, busy, busy boy that he was.

"What do they all say?" Jude asked when we fell quiet. Most of our weekly calls lasted around thirty to forty minutes, but I'd been on the phone with him for over an hour. "Do they think you should move out?"

"Logan and Paige want me to stay. Probably because they'll worry less. Claire isn't saying one way or the other, but ... I know what she's thinking."

"Twin thing," he teased.

"Sometimes. I can't like, read her thoughts, but it's like hearing your neighbors talk through thin walls. You get impressions, you know? And I get the sense she thinks it would be good for me to live on my own." I spread my hands over my belly. "So, your vote is to move out?"

"For whatever it's worth," he murmured, "yes, that's my vote. But I'll support whatever you choose."

The gloomy days of January, only a few of them cold enough for snow to stick on the ground, gave way to slightly warmer, just as gloomy days in February. Lia and I turned twenty-three, and split a giant platter of pink and white cupcakes after a family dinner. My class, considering it was one of the last before I finished my program, felt like it was the least of my stresses. I read and wrote and had discussions with small groups. My family, all busy with their own lives, found time to carve out pockets with me when possible.

Molly traveled about half the month, and when she was back, she always took me out for time with just the two of us, considering she'd made it her mission to find me the best scone in the greater Seattle