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“Guess you’ll need to do all the work,” he teases.
Chewing on my bottom lip, I consider his words. “Won’t your parents come barging in?”
“I already warned Dad that if the workshop was a rockin’ to not come a knockin’.”
I giggle at his gall. “You did not.”
“I totally did.”
“Oh, Two…” I trail off, shaking my head.
“Hmm?”
“Don’t ever change. You’re perfect the way you are.”
Perfectly imperfect and completely mine.
Two
Summer
I still can’t believe Gemma bought Hemingford Hall.
We’ve only been officially moved in for a month and it already feels like home. It took some convincing, but Gemma persuaded Paula to sell to her. Gregory didn’t need to be convinced. As he put it, “It’s about damn time.” Paula has already come to visit three times since they closed.
“Avoiding all the chaos, man?” Dax asks as he saunters around the side of the building, ambling my way.
“Yup. Gemma’s mom will put me to work if I go back inside. I don’t like wedding shit.”
Dax snorts out a laugh. “One day, you’ll have to put up with it when you marry that girl.”
I cock an eyebrow at him.
“What?” Dax says, folding his massive frame into the rickety Adirondack chair beside me. “We both know you’re dying to propose to her.”
“Maybe,” I lie, unable to fight a smile. “I was just hoping we could elope and avoid all this.” I wave a hand in the air and grunt. “This shit is exhausting.”
Dax chuckles. “She’s the youngest and the only girl in her family. If you think this wedding is over the top, just wait until hers comes along. Neither her parents nor yours will go for an elopement.”
We sit in relative quiet. Every so often, I can hear giggles coming from inside. Gemma offered for Dempsey and Sloane to get married at Hemingford Hall as soon as she closed. Me, Dax, Gemma, and my dads all worked tirelessly this month on one of the grand rooms to make it ready for a quaint wedding. They’re currently adding last-minute decorations for the wedding itself, which consisted of flowers and tulle and a lot of demanding women. I couldn’t escape fast enough.
“Last week,” Dax says as he fiddles with the tie hanging off his neck, “when Dempsey and Sloane came over for a few beers, Sloane answered a lot of my questions.”
“About the police academy. You still thinking of joining?”
“Yeah, man. The more I think about it, the more I feel the pull to be a cop. College is fun and all, but I don’t want to push papers around an office all day. We both know my grades aren’t good enough to get into med school like Mom wants. I still think I can help people and make a difference. Being a cop could be the right fit for me.”
I try to imagine Dax as a cop. I’m not sure they make uniforms big enough to stretch over his muscular arms, but what do I know. I’ve seen cops with plump bellies and their uniforms accommodated them just fine. He likes to speed, so at least he’d be good at catching reckless criminals.
“The idea of you with a gun scares the living shit out of me,” I deadpan.
He kicks my dress shoe with his. “Fuck off, bro. I’d like get trained on it or whatever.”
“What does your mom think?”
“I haven’t told her yet. She’s still miffed at me for moving in with you and Gemma.”
I’d expected my dads to be upset about my decision to move out, but they’d been surprisingly agreeable to it, though a tiny bit sad. Dax’s mom, though, threw a tantrum. Cried, begged, and even cursed him out at one point, none of which worked since he still moved out.
