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The scowl faded. “I know, sweetie.” She reached over, patted Raven’s hand. “But I like my own bed.”
Raven had anewbed.
It felt…weird.
So, she got Pat wanting hers.
But she shook that off, especially when Pat refocused. “Coleisadorable. All of the kiddos are. But”—she fixed Raven with a look—“that’s not who we’re talking about, and you know it.”
Her gaze went to Connor, who was playing with the kids and looking good doing it.
This being after he’d calmed her down,beforewhich he’d spent hours putting her furniture together,afterhe’d answered a text that had taken her hours to get the courage to send.
An olive branch.
But it felt like she was diving headfirst out of a plane, hitting free fall.
She’d told him everything—and the only other person in her life that kneweverythingwas the saucy, little old lady hoovering strawberries and chocolate spread and sitting next to her (on one of the new stools Connor had put together).
She’d told Connor everything, and he’d called her a friend.
Had said he wanted to go on a date—
“Yeah.Him,” Pat said, making Raven jump and tear her gaze away. “He saved you from a fire. That’s a romantic ending, already written, edited, and published.”
Pat wrote romance novels for a living, so that sort of comment didn’t surprise Raven.
What had—initially—was the fact that the books Auntie Pat wrote weren’t lovey, sappy, fade-to-black novels, but spicy and hot and emotional andriveting. She’d gotten to read a draft of the Pat’s soon-to-be-released book and the afternoon she’d spent devouring it (literally unable to move on with her life until she’d reached the end) had been life-changing.
But that didn’t mean she suddenly started believing thatherlife was going to have a romance novel worthy ending.
Fiction.
Her life.
They didn’t mix.
Her upbringing was too fantastical, too brutal for a story that had a happy ending.
“You know that nothing is going to happen between us,” she said when Aunt Pat got tired of waiting and nudged Raven’s leg.
“Why not?”
She twisted, staring at the woman who’d become hers in a way that defied her past, her walls, her carefully constructed barriers.
Just like Kim, Maggie, and Frankie, just like Misty and Soph, they’d barreled right in and made themselves at home.
Just like…
She glanced up and felt something unlock in her chest.
Just like all the Jacksons.
They’dbarged in too. They’d made themselves at home in her heart—by loving her friends, by welcoming her, by being there for her in a way that wasn’t toxic or intense or something that sucked her dry instead of filling her up.
But did Ravengiveenough? To anyone?
They’d done so much for her. They’dalldone it—her friends, Connor, the rest of the Jacksons, and now Pat.
