Page 148
I’ve spent ten years hiding this. Ten years of arriving at the farm as one thing and being another underneath, and every single one of those years I told myself that if we could just keep the door shut, everything would be manageable. Nobody had to know. Nobody had to have an opinion.
Now the door is wide open.
Which means I am about to walk into a house full of people who all know that I have been sleeping with Griffin Hall for a decade.
I make a small, involuntary noise.
“Babe.”
Finn’s hand comes off the gear stick and lands on my thigh, warm through my jeans.
“What are you thinking about?”
I exhale.
“I’m about to meet my future in-laws.”
He looks at me for a full second before he starts laughing.
He laughs so hard he has to slow the car down.
“It’s not funny,” I say
“Foster—”
“It’s not.”
“You’ve known my parents for twenty-five years.”
“I know.”
“You’ve eaten Christmas dinner in their kitchen almost as many times as I have.”
“That’s exactly the problem.” I turn to look at him properly. “For twenty-five years I’ve been Bastian’s bandmate. The one who sits at the end of the table, who eats his food quietly and helps with the dishes. That guy has a very neat, very safe place in your family. Now I’m walking in as the guy who has been secretly banging their youngest son for ten years and is planning to marry him. Those two are not the same guy, Finn.”
He’s still laughing, but he squeezes my thigh.
“Fox.”
“What if Bastian has changed his mind and beats the shit out of me?”
“Bastian is not going to beat the shit out of you.”
“He said he would.”
“He said that if you hurt me, he would. Are you planning to hurt me?”
“No.”
“Then you’re safe.”
“What if your parents don’t like us together?”
Finn’s mouth softens. His thumb strokes across my thigh.
“Fox, they are going to like us together. They love you. They love me. It’s not complicated.”
“It feels complicated.”
