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She’s bright and buoyant, skipping across the yard in flat shoes. “It was your dad! He had the lights up when I got home. I did help him with the firepit.”
This is crazy. They’re both acting like it’s totally sane, but no, I remember the last ten years, so I know my dad has not done one goddamned thing to clean up this place in all of that time.
And now, he’s throwing fucking garden parties.
With Theo.
This is a bona fide miracle. And my patron saint…doesn’t even seem to realize it.
Theo just grins. “I told you it could be pretty out here.”
“A hell of a lot prettier than I thought.”
I happen to be looking at her when I say that, and she happens to see it.
“You better not be saying that aboutme.”
I know she’s fucking with me, but I shake my head anyway. “Sorry, but no. Ialwaysthought you were hot.”
“You did not.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you were a dick to me!”
“I was a dick to everyone.”
“Me even more.”
I come close to her. It’s the night that makes it feel menacing—the candlelight flickering in the yard. “Maybe I just talked to you more.”
Theo gazes up at me. Back then, when I’d get close enough to look into those big blue eyes, she’d shiver away from me. Turn and run.
This Theo is a little more rugged. She says, “You should go to therapy, Sully. It helped me a lot.”
Oof. Bullet to the heart, what a sniper.
She winks at me as she brushes past. Her hand drags down my arm, her fingernails raking lightly on my skin.
Every inch of me is on fire.
I’m not going to make it until the end of the week…
18
THEO
Iwish we weren’t going out with Angus.
For one thing, I don’t want to leave Merrick alone. He ate dinner with us every night this week.
Sullivan’s trying to convince me that I don’t need to cook anything for his dad.
“He won’t expect it, hecanactually survive on his own, he’s done it before, poorly, but you saw, he’s alive…” Sullivan smiles at me. “It’s already been the best week of his life when it comes to food, so it’s okay to take a night off.”
He argues his hardest when he knows it’s something I’m determined to do.
In this case, I already did it. The dinner’s warming in the oven.
