Page 78 of Forget Me Not

She looks so unsure, like she’s worried I’ll run the other way.

“Little bird, you owe me.”

We have dinner at the inn, and it’s more like a family reunion than just parents catching up with their eldest daughter. I’ll admit, I wasn’t prepared for Gran and Pap to join, but I definitely wasn’t ready for how well I just seemed to . . . fit in with their little family.

It’s a fucking joke. These things never work out.

I can see it in the way Sarra watches how Nova and I interact. She thinks there’s something here that isn’t. She wants what’s best for her daughter and to her, I’m it right now.

Pap’s eyes follow me, watching me like a hawk. I know what he’s thinking. He warned me away from her once and I didn’t listen. Now, I’m getting sucked in.

I hate myself for putting that thought into their heads. I hate myself for not leaving when I should have.

What the hell am I doing? I leave for Alaska in a month. Nova’s too fucking sweet for someone like me and she’s definitely too sweet for no-attachment sex.

I should get up and walk away while I can. Before things get out of hand any more than they already have.

So, of course, my dumbass agrees to go back to the cottage with them to sit around the fire pit in the back yard.

The Fischer’s really are the nicest fucking people I’ve ever met. They treat me how I expect they treat everyone else. Part of the family. It explains a lot about Nova, even if she won’t let me in to those dark parts of her mind. I can see her father in the way she tries to befriend everyone she meets. Like when I first arrived. I can see her mother in her maternal instinct to take care of everyone. It should be a good thing, seeing all the qualities she pulled from each of her parents.

Unfortunately, it solidifies in my mind that someday, I’m going to end up like my dad. I’ve been running from it my whole life, but I knew, eventually, it would catch up with me.

Seems it’s finally here.

Men like me don’t deserve good women like Nova. We’re assholes. We swear too much and we fuck too hard. We’re not sentimental and affection is just a ploy to pull her in and keep her wanting more.

That’s who I am, right? Just like Dad?

You don’t wake up a monster one day. You’re born into it. Bred for it. My father was just the stepping stone to a long line of assholes who didn’t deserve the women who loved them.

I can’t be that man.

Not to her.

“And then,” Will exclaims animatedly, telling another story of Nova when she was a kid. I like these stories. The ones she wouldn’t tell me with a gun to her head. It gives me that tiniest glimpse into the side of her I don’t know. “She brings the thing home.”

“Got blood everywhere,” Sarra chimes.

“It was hurt,” Nova argues, talking of the opossum she rescued when she was twelve, whom they were forced to keep as a pet after it lost it’s leg to a car. “I couldn’t leave it there.”

“My little tenderheart,” Sarra smiles, patting Nova on the leg and Nova rolls her eyes.

“I just have compassion, right Sir Creamsicle?”

Sir Creamsicle Von Sweets. And Toast. Girl’s got a way with names. Nova pets the head of the huge orange cat purring in her lap while Toast lays at her feet, shooting passive aggressive glances at his mother for not giving him her undivided attention.

I feel it, Toast. I really do.

“She’s adopted every feral animal on the island,” I say, tipping my beer back at Nova who catches on, shooting me a look.

She’s been too fucking far away all day. As nice as her parents are, I need to feel her, taste her. Just fucking touch her without Will and Sarra getting the wrong idea about where this is going. Judging by the heated look she’s giving me, she feels the same.

Blood rushes to my cock remembering the way I had her moaning my name on the boat last night. Fuck, what I wouldn’t give to have her in my bed, just the two of us, the open water, and not a single fucking scrap of fabric between us.

“I can see that,” Will says, completely oblivious as he nods at Creamsicle and Toast.

“Well, I’m beat.” Sarra stands, yawning at the night sky.

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