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She looked at me with love in her eyes.
“You’re not going to overwhelm him,” she said. “A person like that? It’s not that they prefer to be alone. It’s that they’re not sure how to be around people. People like that are starving for people. Starving for human touch. Starving to be included.” She looked at me thoughtfully. “I know that you don’t want to hear this, but Saint doesn’t just take after your daddy name-wise. He’s a lot like him personality-wise. Daddy was very used to being alone. But he did let someone in… and look where that got him.”
She tweaked my cheek, causing me to roll my eyes.
“With three awful kids?” I teased.
She snorted. “Y’all aren’t awful. Nico’s kids are awful.”
I laughed then.
Nico was my uncle and my mom’s brother and his kids were awful. But they’d all grown up to be great people, despite their attitudes when they were small.
“Booth and Bourne are really good now,” I pointed out.
She rolled her eyes. “If you say so, baby. If you say so.”
I walked over and pressed my nose to the glass door that separated the kitchen from the back porch and stared at the four men on the back deck.
“I should’ve taken lip-reading classes,” I said, making the window condensation puff up around where my mouth was. “Saint looks nervous. Dad, Connor, and Clayton look pissy. Like they get when you’re lecturing them about picking up their trash instead of just throwing it on the ground wherever they happen to be standing.”
Mom snorted. “They still haven’t quite gotten the hang of that. Just yesterday your dad got a package in the mail. It had a plastic bag around the box because they thought it might rain. So when he gets inside, he rips the plastic wrap off, throws it on the ground, then slices his knife across the packaging tape. When he pulls out this thing that he’s ordered, all the packing peanuts went flying. And instead of picking any of it up, he literally left it all there so he could go hide the present underneath the tree. I left it, thinking that he’d come back, but he never did. I cleaned it up last night before I went to bed. But saying that, I’ll take a whole lot more from your father than I will from your brothers. Because I’m raising your brothers not to be douchebags like their father.”
I giggled as I pulled back, then wrote ‘hi’ in the condensation on the glass.
Saint’s eyes flicked to the window and his lips twitched.
Dad looked over his shoulder and narrowed his eyes.
He turned back around and said something to Saint who immediately started to nod his head.
“I think they’re talking about me,” I admitted. “I feel bad because I didn’t get Saint very many presents. I was kind of mad at him, I’ll admit. But I got him something yesterday. But I left it at home.”
“What?” she asked as she ripped open a bag of Lay’s potato chips and pulled out a handful.
I held my hand open for one and she dropped it inside before coming up to stand beside me.
“I’ll bet that he’s asking your father for your hand in marriage.”
I gasped and turned. “You really think that?”
• • •SAINT“Are you sure that you want to marry that?” Connor asked, sounding amused. “She’s weird.”
I looked at where Carolina was now blowing on the window to make a massive spot so she could write in the condensation.
“What’s she writing?” I asked. “I don’t have my glasses on.”
I’d left them inside when we’d opened presents and had forgotten to put them back on.
“It says ‘did he say yes?’” Michael said. “I’ve changed my mind. You can have her. But you have to fix her.”
Clayton and Connor started to laugh.
I, on the other hand, felt elation pour through me at having his permission.
There were a lot of things that I felt like I didn’t do right in life.
If I could start over, I would definitely have pursued Carolina a long time ago. A year ago, to be exact.
“I knew the moment that y’all saw each other that night that she was pulled over by that motherfucker who wasn’t a cop that she had feelings for you. My baby girl has a good head on her shoulders. I just hope that you know that there are no takebacks,” Michael said.
My eyes met his.
“I wouldn’t ever give her back, even if you wanted her,” I told him bluntly.
Michael’s smile was fierce. “If I wanted her, I think that I could get her to choose me.”
“I’ll bet if I open that door right now, she’ll come to me first,” I countered.
“Ohhh,” Connor said as he walked to the door. “Let’s see.”
He opened the door, and whatever Carolina had been writing was smudged as her canvas was taken away.
