her. It was more like clicking a missing piece into place. She made easy conversation with everyone. Laughed, smiled, and enjoyed her food. Almost like this wasn’t the first time she’d been here.
I liked it.
And the fact that I liked it freaked me out.
There’d been a time when I’d imagined the first family dinner with a different woman sitting next to me. That dinner had never happened, and as far as I was concerned, that woman might as well not exist anymore. I didn’t miss her, and I didn’t regret that we’d ended. But I’d also learned a hard lesson—a lesson Fiona was making me question.
I didn’t know how to feel about that.
We finished dinner and for once, I didn’t get up to leave at the first possible break in the conversation. Fiona was still chatting happily—mostly about gardening and chickens—and asking questions about Tilikum. And I didn’t feel the urgent need to get out of here. So when Gram and Grace took Fiona out back to walk through the gardens, and Asher grabbed the rest of us beers from the fridge, I went with it.
I took my beer outside onto the porch, leaving my brothers arguing about some action flick in the kitchen. Asher came outside and stood next to me, leaning his forearms against the railing.
We stood in silence for a few minutes, just drinking our beers. It was good to have Asher back. Everything had felt so wrong without him here.
“You know, Gram’s never given someone else a nickname,” he said, interrupting the silence.
“What?”
“She called Fiona Cricket.”
“Yeah, what’s your point?”
“She doesn’t give other people nicknames. Just us, and Grace.”
I did know that. I’d been choosing to ignore it. “So?”
“Nothing.” He took a sip of his beer. “Just an observation.”
We stood in silence again, actual crickets chirping in the night. I had a lot of fucking feelings battering me from the inside, and I wasn’t sure what to do with all of them. It had been a hell of a long time since I’d had an in-depth conversation with Asher—or any of my brothers. But a question crossed my mind, so I went ahead and asked.
“Ash, when you first got back together with Grace, did you have doubts?”
He turned toward me, clearly surprised by my question. “Yeah. Not about her. I had doubts about myself. Truthfully, I was scared shitless.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely. I was afraid I’d screw it up and she’d wish I’d never come home.”
“How did you deal with that?”
He took another drink. “Not very well. You were here, you saw my downward spiral. But mostly I just tried to break it down into pieces I could handle. At first, I couldn’t cope with forever. That was too big. Felt like there were too many ways for me to fail her. So we decided to give it a summer. That felt manageable. It took the pressure off.”
“So you didn’t feel like you had to have all the answers right away.”
“Yeah, exactly. The truth is, I knew it was forever with her. A summer would never have been enough. But I still needed it to be that way so I could get my shit together.”
I stared at my beer bottle. “Makes sense.”
“You struggling with something, man?”
“No, I’m fine. Just wondering.”
I was struggling with something, but I didn’t want to talk about it. And what he was saying did make sense. I wasn’t sure where things with Fiona were going, but maybe that was fine. Although it felt like we’d fast-tracked the getting to know each other part, I was probably putting unnecessary pressure on myself. I liked Fiona. She was here for now. Maybe it was that simple.
I needed it to be. I wasn’t sure if I could handle anything else.
25
Fiona
I was in the best mood.
That dirty make-out session with Evan in his shop the other day—crazy? Yes. Unexpected? Completely. Mind-numbingly awesome? Why yes, yes it had been.
Going to dinner at Gram’s and hanging out with his family last night? Scary for sure. But once I’d gotten comfortable—which had taken all of about ten seconds because Gram was the coolest human ever—it had been so much fun.
Gram had introduced me to her chickens and showed me around her garden. She’d kept calling me Cricket, which was the most adorable thing ever. I’d never had a nickname that I actually liked. Some people called me Fi, but that wasn’t so much a nickname as a lazy way of not saying Fiona. The only other person who’d nicknamed me was Felix Orman,