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“Anyway. We can go to dinner in Mapleton. I’ll make us a reservation.”
“That’s...fancy.” She wrinkled her nose as if fancy was something foreign and concerning. He liked it. “Very fancy.”
“Well, why not? It sounds fun. Fancy. You deserve it. Especially after the day you’ve had.”
“That’s sweet.” She somehow madesweetsound suspicious.
“Do you have any...?”
“I have cookie dough in the fridge,” she said.
He grinned and went to grab a cookie sheet, putting the oven on the appropriate temperature, which he knew, because Charity often brought cookie dough to him, much to his delight.
He put spoonfuls of dough onto the sheet, and as soon as the oven was preheated he put it in there and set the timer.
“I might have Byron out to visit soon,” she said.
“You might?”
They kept their Bryon talk minimal and he preferred it that way. He had shared Charity with her father ever since he’d known her—that was fair enough.
When she’d gotten involved with Byron he hadn’t liked it. He didn’t like the idea that she had someone in her life who was that important to her, and he knew that wasn’t especially fair but it was the truth.
“I am,” she clarified. “I’m just waiting for him to give me exact dates.”
“Oh. Well. Sounds good.”
“It should be.”
“Are you looking forward to it?” He didn’t harass her about Byron, because he figured his issues with the guy were his issues. But for some reason, with him looking for a wife, and Byron coming to visit, maybe her marrying this guy seemed a lot morereal.
It didn’t sit right with him.
He told himself then and there it was because she didn’t seem excited. He wasn’t a huge fan of all-consuming love—thought it was dangerous, in fact. But it seemed like you ought to want to be with the man you were planning on getting hitched to.
“Yes,” she said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I just can never tell when it comes to him. If you’re all that excited.”
“It isn’t that kind of relationship. I really like him. I can talk to him the way that I did my dad. About all kinds of things. He’s so interested in science and... He’s very interesting. I enjoy talking to him.”
He didn’t say anything about passion, because he wasn’t going to go bring that up. There were certain things they deliberately didn’t talk about. Hell, for all he knew, she got super freaky with Doctor Tweed whenever they saw each other, or whenever they talked over video call.
The idea made him frown. Deeply.
He did not care for that. Not in the least. He would thank himself to never go pondering that again. He could see why it made sense for Charity to be with a guy like that. In a lot of ways, he could see that people might look at them and think they were alike. That they were the same. Because there was something sort of quiet and measured about him. Maybe a little bit old-fashioned, like Charity herself often seemed. But Charity had spark. Spirit. She was funny.
She wasn’t reallyold-fashioned; she was just every inchherself.
Sure, he might give her a little bit of a hard time about her language, and sure, some of that was because she wanted to please her dad, who haddefinitelybeen old-fashioned.
But she was her; down to her bones, she defied description. She was his. That was all.
He didn’t know what you called that. Beyond certainty.
Family, he supposed, in the way that other people saw it. He had often thought that. That he and Charity were like family. They had met that day, and they had been inseparable ever since. He had taken care of her; she had taken care of him.
But it was even more powerful because they had chosen it. He hadn’t chosen to be born to a psychotic bastard who used his own wife and children as a punching bag. He hadn’t chosen any of that. But he had chosen her.
