AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It’s the color of her eyes,” Raven whispered. “I wanted…something tangible after what had happened, something to remember her by.”
“And she gave it to you?”
Pat had given Raven a lot.
“With a fight,” she admitted, lips tipping up, thinking about all the things Aunt Pat had given her, not the least of which was that small piece of ocean-battered glass.
Connor laughed.
“What else did she give you?”
“Nosiness, good food, copious amounts of unwanted advice, and sticking power.”
No cigarette burns. No asking for money. Hell, Pat hadn’t asked foranything.
Something she’d been on the defensive for more than once, waiting for the shoe to drop, waiting for the relationship to change. But it hadn’t.
In fact, Aunt Pat had given.
A whole hell of a lot.
“Sounds like a good woman,” Connor said.
She was that. At minimum, Aunt Pat was good.
As for the rest of it?
“Somehow, she became family,” Raven murmured.
Connor smoothed back her hair. “I’m glad for you.”
“You say that now,” she said. “But you haven’t met her yet.”
“Will I?”
She grinned. “Pat told me she’d come up when I was settled.” A beat as she glanced up at hazel eyes gone dark as the sky turned to night. “Which means she’s coming tomorrow.”
Sixteen
Connor
Normally, he would have avoided this interaction like the plague.
Spending time with Raven without the full barrier of his family?
A recipe for him to be relegated to the corner, licking his wounds, trying to pretend his feelings weren’t hurt.
Instead, he was building chairs.
And Raven was unpacking the food she’d ordered from the grocery store.
Nothing homemade—her specialty wasn’t cooking up elaborate meals like Kim, like his mother—but the woman sure could transform a fruit and cheese tray into some pretty charcuterie board.
“Shaar-koo-ter-ee,” he muttered, knowing it was mildly pathetic that he’d only learned how to say that word properly in recent months.
But hell, it was cheese and meat and some healthy stuff thrown in.
Who could complain about the tricky name?
