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Pushing her fingers into her mouth, Bonnie lets out a shrill, tooting whistle. “Guys, Oz and Etta have something to tell us!” she shouts.
The whole room goes quiet, even the kids seem to stop what they’re doing to turn and stare at us, and suddenly, dissolving into a puddle of awkward discomfort on the floor seems so much more appealing than standing here with all of their focus on me.
“Hey guys, I know you all met Etta a few days ago. I don’t know if she explained how we originally met, but it was when we were kids after my dad left my mom for her mom.”
Even though I’ve heard him explain this multiple times now, I still can’t help flinching when he just puts it out there like that.
“I suppose, in theory, we’re stepsiblings, but in reality, we spent a few weekends together eighteen years ago, then a handful of Christmases. We hadn’t seen each other in fifteen years until she moved to town last week. But the moment I saw her, I knew she was mine.” A smirk tips the corners of his lips, and he turns his head and looks at me before he looks back to the sea of waiting Barnetts. “We got married on Tuesday, so meet my wife.”
I don’t know why I brace for their reaction, but I do. Apart from Nero and Tori, no one else has blinked an eye about either our parents being married or us getting married, so I don’t know why I expect the Barnetts to be any different.
Suddenly, the silence explodes into a cascade of well-wishes and congratulations. I swear, this is the nicest family ever.
Once the melee calms down, Betty waddles over to me, her hand supporting her pregnant belly. “Congratulations,” she says, pulling me into as tight a hug as she can manage with her stomach in the way.
“Thanks,” I say softly.
“So, you guys were…” She trails off but wiggles her eyebrows and smirks at me. “The other day when you came for dinner?”
“It was complicated,” I admit.
“It always is with the men in this town,” she says with a laugh.
“Yeah…the Barnett family legacy?” I ask.
“Love at first sight,” she says airily but with a smile.
“Do you believe it?” I question.
“I didn’t…until it happened to me. Did I tell you how Cody and I met?” she asks.
I shake my head.
“Missy and I are half sisters, but we’d never met. I’d been trying to find her for years, but by the time I finally tracked her down, I found out she’d only known about me for a few months. I turned up at her lawyer’s office on her twenty-first birthday and waited around, hoping to see her. She was there with all of the guys, like her security detail.” Betty laughs, her eyes going soft as she recounts the memory. “Once I saw her, I stepped forward and introduced myself, and she asked me to come home with her. Cody insisted on riding in my car with me to give me directions. I had a boyfriend at the time, he was an asshole. We broke up while I was staying here, and then Cody and I…” Lifting her chin, she presses her lips together into a grin, then shrugs. “Well, I’m sure you can guess. Cody was all in from day one, but I wasn’t, so I left and hid. From him, from Missy, from everyone, and it was awful. When I found out I was pregnant, I knew I had to tell him. He turned up at my place a few hours later, then he brought me back here and married me a day later. It took me a while to truly see we were meant to be, but he was so incredibly sure. He said it was like my soul reached out to his and that was it. I was his, and he was mine, and there wasn’t any question or option to change anything.”
“That’s…” I trail off, unsure what to even say.
“Crazy? Oh, I know. It makes absolutely zero sense, and I still don’t pretend to actually understand it. But it happened, and I don’t know if it was the family legacy or maybe fate or simply dumb luck. But whatever the reason, we still happened, and he honestly believes that he knew I was always meant to be his right in that very first moment. It’s hard to argue with that level of certainty,” she says with a wink.
Sighing, I nod. “Oz and I have a lot of history. But I don’t think we had a life-changing moment like you did. He thinks we were always meant to be together and that when we missed our chance as kids, fate brought us back to each other.”
“Is that what you think too?” she asks.
Glancing over my shoulder, I search for Oz in the busy room full of people. “No,” I confess.
“Hmm,” she muses.
“Until a week ago, I thought he was kind of evil.”
“Evil?” Her eyebrows arch so high it seems like they almost hit her hairline.
“When we were kids, he was very different than he is now.”
“Teenage boys can be difficult to live with,” she says, chuckling softly.
“They’re worse when they hate you as much as Oz hated me. We didn’t actually know each other for that long, three years maybe, but those weren’t great years for me. When I found out he lived here, I was hoping that I’d never have to see him again.”
“So, what changed?” she asks.
