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“Cameron?” Alicia blinked, clearly caught a little off guard. “Well, I suppose if he’s insisting, then yes. We should go.”

“Yeah?” I frowned up at her. “You heard the part where I said my whole family is going, right? I wasn’t exaggerating either. They really will all be there.”

“I heard you,” she said with a spark of genuine excitement lighting her eyes. “I’d love to go. I haven’t been to a real fall carnival for years and it’ll be good to catch up with the Westwood kids.”

“It will?”

“Yes.” Her smile slowly faded as she watched me strangling the choke valve with my bare hands. “Why? Do you not want to go? You look like they’re asking you to march into a battle you don’t believe in rather than just wanting you to go eat some carnival food and maybe go on a few rides.”

I blew out a long, heavy breath, the weight of the Thayer family legacy pressing down on my chest like a rhinoceros. Cool autumn air bit at my bare forearms now that I’d stopped moving for so long, the breeze rustling the dry grass as silence fell between us. I watched it move for a beat before I shrugged and looked back up at her.

“Truth? I’m just having a hard time navigating this new era with my family right now,” I admitted, the confession tearing out of me before I could stop it.

That was the absolute truth, though. Ever since the lawyers had dropped the news about my father’s release, I’d been struggling with that same, suffocating sensation that the world was about to rearrange itself again, like it had when he’d first been arrested.

Soon, Court Thayer would walk free and the social and financial structure of our family would be hit by yet another massive, catastrophic ripple effect. Yet, no one seemed willing to actually sit down and talk about it. They were all just floating through galas and dinners, smiling and pretending it was a perfectly normal, predictable thing that would have always eventually happened. Like this was a logical next step that wouldn’t blow us out of the water all over again.

It was driving me insane.

Alicia studied my face, her hazel gaze sweeping across my features like she was trying to figure me out. On the other hand, she was entirely unaware of the fact that my father was about to get out. She probably just saw a grumpy dude overthinking a family outing.

“It’s not another gala, Holden,” she said gently, like she’d come to the conclusion that my trouble with my family lay with their affinity for stuffy events rather than their nonchalance over Court’s impending freedom. “This is a Halloween carnival. There will be a few oversized pumpkins, some rides, fried food if we’re lucky, and maybe a few kids in costume, but that’s it.”

She made it sound so simple that the words cut through my existential dread and I ran a hand through my hair, exhaling a deep, slow breath. “Yeah, you’re right. Nothing to navigate there except the food trucks.”

“And maybe a house of mirrors,” she suggested excitedly, like she hoped there might actually be one. “Leave the dead grass alone and go wash your hands. We have a carnival to prepare for and don’t worry, okay? It’ll be fun.”

She flashed me another brilliant smile, seriously seeming disproportionately eager to spend the afternoon with my family, and then disappeared back into the house. Hell, she practically danced her way up the stairs before the screen door clicked shut behind her.

I sighed, but the longer I stood in the overgrown yard, realizing I definitely wasn’t going to get around to fixing the lawnmower or mowing the grass today, the more certain I became that I’d been wrong about her. From the beginning, I’d completely misread Alicia. She wasn’t an obstacle, a transaction, or a gold digger. She certainly wasn’t a weak, timid little mouse and there was absolutely no way we would ever cohabitate without me being hyper-aware of her presence.

I just wasn’t sure where that left me. So far, I’d figured out all the things she wasn’t and I was willing to admit I’d gotten her all wrong, but as for the rest of it? I was stumped. All I knew was that I was even more curious about my wife now than I’d ever been before—and that was actually starting to feel like a good thing.

CHAPTER 24

ALICIA

One thing I was starting to learn about the Thayers was that when they said they were doing something together, they really did mean they were doing it together. When Holden had told me his brother’s wife wanted us to go to the festival with them all, I’d jumped at the opportunity to get to know them better—and to attend a proper Halloween festival for the first time in forever.

What I hadn’t realized was that we’d also be getting there together. Ryan—the middle brother, if I remembered correctly from the hasty introductions that’d been made at the gala—and his wife, Maggie, sat in the back seat of Holden’s car, and she hadn’t stopped talking the entire forty minutes we’d been on the road.

I loved it.

I hadn’t expected people like the Thayers to be so loud and normal when they were together as a family, but Ryan and Holden had spent most of the drive bickering while Maggie spoke to me in one long stream of consciousness, almost without taking a single breath.

“We found out we were pregnant just over a month ago, but I was eight weeks along by then,” she was saying, her eyes wide and brimming with excitement. “Can you believe that? I always thought I’d somehow magically know the moment there was a baby conceived, but nope. For eight whole weeks, I had no clue.”

“I knew,” Ryan suddenly interjected mid-argument with Holden about something to do with Egypt. He smiled when he met my gaze in the rearview and slid a hand to her mostly still-flat belly. “She’s been glowing from day one.”

Her eyes rolled, but a loving smile spread on her lips as she covered his hand in her own. “I wasn’t glowing. I was ready to flush you down the drain when you looked at me wrong, which you were doing all the time. God, are we almost there yet? I’m starving.”

“Her metabolic system is operating at the speed of light,” Ryan said knowingly, laughing when she shot him a glare. “What? It’s true, but you’re eating for t⁠—”

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence, Ryan Thayer,” she threatened, her expression suddenly completely serious. Until she winked at me when he sighed.

Even so, the moment Holden pulled the car into the muddy parking lot of the festival grounds, Maggie practically kicked her door open, grabbed Ryan by the front of his jacket, and dragged him toward the bright neon lights of the food trucks. Ryan gave us a half-wave, stumbling to catch up as he called to us over his shoulder. “We’ll find you guys later!”

Holden turned off the engine and leaned back in his seat. “Well, I suppose that means we’ve got some time to breathe before the others track us down. He was wrong about the Sphinx, by the way. It’s totally worth seeing.”