AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I wanted to flip him the bird, but I’d better not with so many kids around. “Would you mind telling your husband to mind his own business, Auden?”
Auden grinned. “It’s not like he’s wrong.”
Fir’s cheeks were red, so I ignored him for a bit, not wanting to embarrass him. Luckily, Tiago and Cas joined us, and with that, conversations flowed easily.
“You guys didn’t want to go on a honeymoon?” my brother asked Keaton.
He shrugged. “Kinda hard to get away with four kids, and they’re too young to be left alone for more than a few hours.”
That made sense. They were all teenagers. Gabe seemed pretty mature, but I knew Byron, Keaton’s oldest, had had some trouble this year. Probably not wise to leave him without parental supervision.
“Tricia offered to babysit,” Auden said. “But we felt that was a lot to ask of her.”
Tricia was his ex-wife and another former classmate of ours. “You two set a high standard for how ex-spouses should work together,” I said.
Auden nodded. “We got lucky that we got divorced before we started hating each other. She is a little miffed, though, that she got engaged first, but I tied the knot again before she did. But she’s the one who wanted an extravagant wedding, so that takes more time to plan.”
Keaton leaned in and kissed his husband. “I loved our wedding. It was perfect.”
“So are you.” Auden gave him another kiss.
Whereas I would’ve made some sarcastic remark before, I now stayed silent, watching them with a soft feeling inside me. Seeing them together did something to me. The same when I observed Tiago and Cas, who were so clearly besotted. It wasn’t that they constantly kissed or touched each other. No, it was the way they looked at each other, the softness in my brother’s eyes when he talked about Cas, how Cas was so protective of Tiago, even though he was twenty years younger than Tiago.
I’d always thought of love as something big and grand, like the romantic gestures in movies. But love wasn’t like that at all. It showed in a million little things, in touches and looks, in whispered words when no one was watching, and in acts of love few would notice. Love was, in many ways, invisible…until you started paying attention to it. Then it became visible with a clarity that made you wonder why you’d never seen it before.
No, I didn’t want the dramatic, over-the-top love, the kind that felt more like keeping up outward appearances than anything else. That kind smelled fake and left a bad taste in my mouth. But this kind? The soft, tender love that showed itself in all these small gestures? That was a whole different story. The question was if it was for me, though. Was I even capable of loving someone like that? I had no clue. And why did I keep looking at Fir when I wondered about love?
The kids came back, and suddenly, six teenagers were sitting at the table. Talk about a new experience.
“You’re a real-life supermodel, right?” Dani looked at me with wide-eyed admiration. “What’s it like, traveling all over the world?”
“It’s exciting, but it can be exhausting too. You see amazing places and meet a lot of cool people, but you also miss out on things…like a home.”
“You didn’t have a home?” Violet asked.
“We had apartments, but they never felt like a real home, if that makes sense.”
Dani nodded. “Kinda like it took a little while before Grandpa and Grandma’s house felt like home for us when we moved there.”
“Exactly.”
“Did you miss Forestville when you were gone? Dad said you haven’t been back a lot until recently,” Violet asked.
I made eye contact with Auden, who nodded as if to encourage me to tell the truth. “I did whatever I had to to make sure I didn’t miss it,” I said softly. “Leaving here was hard. There’s something special about this town that no amount of glitz and glamour can replace. So I forced myself to forget about it.”
“But you’re back now,” Josiah said.
“I am.”
“Back to stay?”
“I just bought a house, so yeah, I guess so.”
“What house did you buy?” Gabe asked.
“Ms. Carol’s house,” Fir said before I could respond. “She’s moving to Arizona.”
“That’s around the corner from us,” Josiah said.
