Page 47 of Friends to WHAT?!

Will Leora love her back, just the same?

I think so.

I hope so.

I… don’t know. Not for sure—not guaranteed.

I take a deep breath, and I force myself to see past my emotions to the responsibilities and people I need to consider.

I cannot forget Amia’s care in my love for Leora, and I cannot forget Leora’s care in my love for Amia. I need to be cautious, even as my thundering heart yearns for me to move forward, crash against the banks, and claim what’s mine.

In every other area, I can go forth with the current I create. In this… I need to be smart, too. I need to take charge, yes, but in a different way. I need to find the balance that Leora believes I’m on my way to mastering—the soft and the hard, the flowing river’s surface and the raging current beneath.

I will wait. I will see how Amia and Leora interact together outside of a grocery store accosting, and I will take care with each of them as we navigate the new that we already have without adding the newness of a love declaration to the mix. For now, it will be enough that Leora is here, and that she sees me, and that my heart feels hope for a future where she could be a person I do the things that Warren Hale thinks I should do with her.

I turn away from the monitor and face Leora, who remains cuddled against my hand. I grab her free one, place it on my own face, and give her the semblance of a hug back.

“Thank you,” I tell her. Two words instead of three.

“Always,” she replies.

And I believe her, because I no longer live hopeless.

Chapter Twenty-Two

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C-U-T-E.

Leora

I clutch the strap to my tote bag tightly as I breathe in a deep, calming breath.

“It’s okay,” I mutter, possibly looking like the town loon on the sidewalk in front of Blackwood Barb. A local townie crosses the street, making thatpossiblyinto more of aprobablysituation.

“It’s just Wolfe,” I tell myself. “Just Wolfe, and his daughter—the most important person in his life—who he wants me to meet officially on purpose, because now we’ve fulfilled his three hang outs rule, and so it is perfectly acceptable and fine and normal for me to meet her. Because that is the natural order of things. I love nature. Huge fan of nature, me. I built my entire career around loving nature. So I should love this.” I gulp. “And I do. Of course. I just also completely hate it, and I can’t breathe, and maybe I should turn around and go home and not risk Amia hating me completely and forever, because what do I know about interacting with small children? They come into the store, and I threaten to turn them into rocks I can sell if they misbehave. If that doesn’t screamDo not let this woman near your child!, then I don’t know what does. So even though we’re following the natural order of things, maybe we’re following thewrongnatural order. Like when you pray for rain and instead you’re given a massive lightning strike.”

Through the window, I can see Wolfe, Amia, and Sterne. The sight of the trio is what stopped me here, outside the building, wondering if I’m setting myself up for a massive mistake.

They’re near the back of the large, mostly open space. Amia sits on a rolling chair at a tattoo bench, doing some sort of child project on top of it. At another tattoo chair sits Wolfe, hunched over Sterne. They’re laughing, the three of them, and Wolfe has to lift his tattoo gun off of Sterne’s ribs so the shaking of their bodies doesn’t ruin the art Sterne is having permanently bestowed upon his skin.

They look happy. Like a cute little family. Dad, daughter, uncle.

I’m going to mess it up.

My hand clenches on my bag as a tear pricks my eye.

“It’s okay,” I repeat. “It’s all okay.” Or maybe it’s not. I don’t know.

And that’s the problem, isn’t it? Idon’tknow. I don’t know how to interact with Amia like this, in person. I don’t know how to slot myself into their lives in a way that adds to the experience. I don’t know what will happen if I flub it up. With Wolfe, that’s fine. He’s a grown man. He can handle it if I make a few mistakes along the way. Amia, though? Amia is a child. She does not deserve to have some stupid woman in her life messing things up, purposefully or through sheer incompetence. She’s already had enough trauma where it regards the womanly figures in her life. I can’t add to that. Ican’t.

But Idon’t knowhow not to.

I’ve never had even a passing example of what a good, older woman looks like. Not in such a proximity. I’ve witnessed plenty of strong, smart, kind, generous, amazing women from afar, but never up close—never in the sort of relationship I’ll have with Amia if I choose to walk through the glass door and take hold of it.

How am I supposed to be what she needs? How, when I’ve only ever had my dad to look to for an example of what an adult is? How, when the best I’ve got to offer is what I’ve learned via a man who’s more like a child, fictional characters that think kidnapping is perfectly reasonable and romantic, and far-off observances of real-life women?

I’m not going to be good enough for her. I’mnotgood enough for her now, and I never will be, and it’s freezing my blood and my bones and my feet. I can’t walk in there and offer her the less-than-nothing I have to give. I can’t walk away, and miss out on all of the beauty being a part of their little family would bring to my life.