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“God,” Thoreau whispered. “God, Fi.”
“After that I walked out with the clothes I had on my back. I kept going until I ran into the only person who had any idea about what I was going through.” She wiped her cheeks and laughed. “The school librarian, Aisha. She had a full-time job and she was going to college. But even with all that on her plate, she made the time to take care of me. She let me stay with her until I could be emancipated, and after that I never saw my parents again.”
Wyatt held her tighter. Jesus. All this time, he’d imagined her as a happy, giggling girl in pigtails, her hands, face and most of her bedroom wall covered in finger paint. Basically, his cousin’s daughter Penny with darker hair. He’d had no idea things had been that bad, or that she’d been out in the world alone for so long.
He knew a lot about the life she’d experienced since she left that motel room. That she’d hiked through Europe. Spent one summer in a yurt full of people for a friend’s social experiment. She’d been to the Grand Canyon and snorkeled around the Great Barrier Reef. Fiona had managed to get her degrees and fill every break between semesters with more adventures than most people had in a lifetime.
And now she was here. With Thoreau and a guy who’d never gone much farther than Spring Break in Cancun.
It was a physical ache in his chest, thinking about everything that could have happened, all the things that could have stopped her from finding her way to him.
To them.
Her sigh sounded more like a sob. “Aren’t you glad you wanted to hear my story?”
“Yes,” Thoreau answered fiercely. “And we want more, when you’re ready, Fiona. We want all of it. Nothing you could say will change the way we feel about you.”
“You think so?” There was a bitter tinge to her voice and Thoreau didn’t like it either.
“Don’t think we don’t know exactly who you are now, Fi. We do. The details of how you came to be the amazing woman you are won’t change that.”
“He’s right.” Wyatt’s voice was even more raspy than usual from the emotion coursing through him. “I’m not saying I don’t want to find your parents and knock their heads together for what they did to you and your sister, but I’m proud of you for getting away from that. For taking care of yourself.”
“I didn’t tell you before because it’s not who I am anymore. I went through years of therapy and got a master’s in the subject just to make sure I wasn’t like them. That I’d never be like them.”
Wyatt shook his head against her neck. “You don’t feel sorry for Owen’s husband Jeremy, do you?”
“Of course not. But he’s famous and wealthy and married to his best friend. He seems pretty happy.”
“His parents were a fucking mess. They kicked him out for being gay when he was a kid, but he had Owen and Aunt Ellen to come to.”
“I never knew that,” Thoreau said.
Fiona shook her head. “Neither did I.”
“But you both know about Jake.”
He knew they did. Jake had only been a few years old, on the street with his mother, when Seamus gave them a place to sleep for the night. After Jake’s mother died trying to get them out of a bad situation, Seamus adopted him as his own. Their relationship was one of the purest Wyatt had ever witnessed. Absolute and unconditional love. They couldn’t be any closer if they were related by blood.
“I’m just saying, I think sometimes maybe the people we choose,” he said, trying to find the way to express what he was feeling. “The people who find us when we’re lost or drifting or invisible can become their own kind of family. Your librarian. Jeremy and Owen. Jake and Seamus. The three of us.”
Fiona leaned back to look up into Wyatt’s face, and then behind him at Thoreau. “The three of us?”
Heat flooded Wyatt’s face. “I just meant… Fuck, I’m just saying—”
“We got you, Finn,” Thoreau said with a broad smile, which was tinged with both relief and humor. “You like us.”
“You make good beer. That’s all you’re getting right now.”
Fiona’s smile was softer, but still uncertain.
“This sharing experiment took a wrong turn,” she joked weakly. “And here I was hoping you were trying to take advantage.”
“You know how I love to experiment,” Thoreau said, humor more evident in his voice. “And take advantage. But I suppose we could always go back to talking about Wyatt’s favorite sock.”
Wyatt growled against her and she laughed. “I really want to hear about that sock now.”
“Sock puppet,” he said, lifting his head to glare at Thoreau as he admitted his deepest shame. “It was a damn doll some girl from school made me in second grade, and I slept with it for a while, okay? Noah doesn’t even know about it, so you both need to take that to the grave.”
