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“Why?” I ask, genuinely curious. If I had a big family and we were close, I’d never shut up about them.
“I miss them. And I feel guilty for never going home. The guilt makes me not respond to messages or answer calls, but I want to be there with them, you know? It’s just…hard.”
I nod. He looks sad, but also resigned, like he doesn’t know the way out of the spot he got himself into.
“Tell them about me,” I say.
“What?” he asks, shocked.
“You miss your brothers. I can see that after spending all day with you, which means other people can see it too. But I bet you feel stuck in this rut that you created by distancing yourself. You’re never going to get out of the rut if you don’t try. So use me as a buffer to reach out and start a conversation.”
He looks at me like I’m crazy. “And you’re okay with that?”
I nod. “I mean, yeah. If I can’t handle your family knowing about us dating then we’re doomed from the start, don’t you think? I really don’t want to be doomed, because this is very nice. Also, you’re pretty amazing, and I have to assume that your family is a large part of why you are the way you are, so I’m sure they’re not terrible people. So no, I don’t mind you telling them about me. Use it as a way to climb out of the rut.”
I yawn. The snowball fight, relaxing day, dinner, and sex finally catching up to me. Boone’s warm and I snuggle deeper into him.
“You’re amazing,” he says after pressing a kiss to the crown of my head.
“I know. But don’t think that this gets you out of telling me about your brothers,” I mumble.
“That’s fair. Get some sleep, Buttercup.” The last thing I feel is him running his hand down my back before I drift off into exhausted happy sleep.
11
BOONE
The sound of plows running down the road is what wakes me. A quick glance at the window and then the clock on the dresser is enough to tell me that it’s early. Way too early to be awake while on vacation.
Jem’s head is pillowed on my bicep, and her face is slack in sleep. Plush lips are slightly parted for her breaths to whisper over. The corners of her lips are tipped up in a small smile, and even in her sleep she’s gorgeous. Knowing that she’s probably tired from the last two days, I don’t wake her up with my mouth between her legs like I want to, but take the time to think about how this time with her has hit me. How the whirlwind of her showing up on my porch somehow got us all the way to here.
I’ve never been one to think too hard. Life—for me—is pretty simple. Wake up, go to work, come home, eat, shower, sleep, and repeat with the occasional event with friends tossed in. But Jem is new. She’s something that I’m going to work damn hard to fit into my life, not because she’s forcing her way in or that she’s hard work particularly, but because having her here with me feels like a small space that I didn’t know was empty is full now.
I want to know her. To know all of her tics and what makes her…her. The only thing that would stop me from doing that is her.
Her and the job with your dad.
Fuck. I’ve been thinking long and hard about going home. About working with Dad, about being close to my brothers again. The gap between us just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and Jem was right in pointing it out.
Yeah, I lost Mom. But we all did and I don’t have the market on the grief for that. My brothers are able to live and work in Everette, and I don’t know why it’s so different for me, but I think that I owe it to myself to try to close the gap that my distance has caused.
And then I remember what Jem said when I asked her if she was planning on leaving Felt. That the idea of moving is crazy and that she loves it here, and now I’m torn.
On one hand, I want to see where this goes between us. On the other, I’m scared that I’m going to decide to move back home and she’s going to be here, perpetually out of reach.
Sure, we could do the long-distance thing, but the thought isn’t appealing. I can’t ask her to move from her home so that she can be with me, especially not after only thirty-six hours of us figuring out what this is.
There’s a chance that I could bridge the gap between my family and home and still live here, but there will always be a part of me that’s separate. And I miss my family. I miss my brothers and their bullshit. I miss Friday night dinners around the big-ass oak table at the house.
Jem shifts slightly in my arms, a small hum passing her lips as she stretches, and I shove the problem into the corner of my brain to think about later.
Rolling until she’s facing me, Jem pulls the sheet over her mouth before she murmurs, “Good morning.”
I press a kiss to her forehead. “Morning.”
She feels so right in my arms. Like I was just waiting for her to scoot on in and now I can’t imagine it being different between us. Going back to peripheral friends of friends in our group.
“Why are you covering your mouth?” I ask when she doesn’t drop the sheet from her face.
