Page 75 of Forgiving Her First Love

“You got a bad case of fomo, don’t you?” Logan scraped the pureed yam from her cheek and pushed it toward her mouth again.

She made a face of disgust and turned her face away, then held out her hand toward the counter. “Ta? Ta?”

“Oh, that’s my bad, leaving those where you can see them.” Emma noticed the clear box of blueberries she had removed from the fridge in her search for something else. “All right. A few of these, then you eat your dinner.”

She washed a small handful and brought them to Storm’s tray.

“How’s Sophie?” she asked while she was close enough to speak softly.

“It’s going to be a constant adjustment.” Logan shrugged philosophically. “She”—He glanced at the back of Biyen’s head—“She’s thinking about leaving,” he whispered.

Emma’s eyes almost fell out of her head.

“Don’t…” He motioned toward Biyen.

“No, I know.” She chewed the corner of her mouth, as filled with consternation as he was. “What about…” She searched his eyes, still speaking under her breath. “Are you two…?”

“I’m not sure.” It said a lot about how much Emma had become like a sister to him, when he found himself saying, “I don’t want to push her because…” He shrugged to indicate his past mistakes. “But I really want to push her.”

Em’s mouth quirked with sympathy.

“Ta?” Storm’s blue hand opened and closed while she looked to the fridge.

“You’re not going to eat anything else, are you?” Emma stroked Storm’s hair and started to lean down to kiss it, but stopped to look at the smear of orange in her palm. She made a face, then said wryly, “I’ve picked up worse off you, though, haven’t I?”

She went to wash more blueberries.

*

Sophie had the oven preheated when Logan and Biyen got back. Nolan had gone to have a beer with friends so she left Logan making a salad and said to Biyen, “Let’s go for a walk.”

“Am I in trouble?” Biyen asked as they started toward the beach.

“No. Am I?”

He giggled. “No. But I thought you might be mad that I keep coming home from camping.”

“You can always come home to me. I’ll never be mad about that.”

“Is this our home, though?” he asked with a worried pull of his brow. “Isn’t it Gramps’s house? Like, what happens now?”

“Oh, bud. I didn’t realize you were worried about that. I should have explained.” She was starting to think Nolan had actually thought he was reassuring Biyen when he told him he could live with him. Nolan wasn’t canny enough to be passive-aggressive or tough enough to be aggressive-aggressive. He was water, always looking for the path of least resistance.

“Gramps and I made wills after you and I came to live with him. He made sure the house will become mine. There’s a bunch of government stuff like probate and taxes and title transfer that I will complain about for ages, but this is definitely our home unless we decide to live somewhere else.”

“Do you want to?” His anxious gaze came up to hers.

“I don’t know.” They reached the beach and stepped down from the grass. Sophie moved to sit on a weathered log. “What do you think of that idea?”

“I don’t know.” He dropped to his knees and began pushing his hands around in the dry, coarse sand. “Would we live with Logan?”

“Logan doesn’t have a house at the moment, so that would be tricky. Also, Logan and I have a lot of things to work out before I would want to live with him.”

“He told me that you used to be mad at him and then he apologized.” He drew a circle all the way around himself. “Couldn’t Dad apologize, then you not be mad at him?”

“He could.” He fucking well could and good luck waiting for that particular corner of hell to freeze over. The man had seen absolutely nothing wrong with telling Biyen he wanted to live here with them and putting it on her to tell Biyen that it was never going to happen. “I’m not really mad at your dad. We think differently and that makes it hard to spend a lot of time together. It’s like how you and Immy and Cooper got along really well, right away, but you don’t always want to play with JayJay, even though he’s right here and wants to play anytime.”

“JayJay only wants to play video games. I like to go outside.”

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