Page 119 of Betting on the Brainiac

I stop and turn.

“You don’t need to pay back the trust.”

I shake my head. “I definitely do. No strings. Maybe they look benevolent to you, but they’re not.”

“I do have a condition,” he says. “But only one. And if you agree, I’ll tell the lawyers to release the entire thing to you now.”

“Gordon, we can’t—”

“It’s okay, Mom,” I say. “No deal, Dad.”

Before I can turn away again, he says, “Monthly dinners. That’s it. That’s the condition.”

I study him before I answer. “Why?”

He looks down at his pant leg and brushes at nonexistent lint. “Doesn’t matter.”

Disappointing but not surprising. “No, Dad.”

Oliver stops me as I turn away, resting a hand on my shoulder. “He took a baby step,” he says quietly.

I take a deep breath, eyes closed, and tell myself to act, not react. “No mandatory dinners,” I say.

There is a long silence as my parents exchange looks. My dad gives a slight nod, and my mom sighs.

“We agree,” she says. “You get your trust, no strings.”

Why does that, in its own weird way, feel like love? I shift my gaze to my dad.

He nods. “No strings.”

“Thank you. I will not be coming to mandatory monthly dinners.” They nod, and my mom looks sad. “I’ll come to dinner because I want to.”

She straightens, and my dad meets my eyes.

“I don’t know how often that will be,” I warn them. “But I hope that will be more and more often.”

Katie is grinning again. My mom gives a barely perceptible sniffle.

My dad nods. “We accept.”

“Good. See you maybe soon,” I say, and this time Oliver and I walk out.

He seems to sense that I’m not ready to talk on the drive home. After a simple “You did good, Madi,” we drive in quiet all the way back to the Grove.

We walk to his condo, and he opens the door for me, ushering me inside before he shuts it and leans back against it.

“I read an article that says it takes men an average of eighty-eight days to fall in love. That’s a little less than three months.”

My heart starts to pound. “Fascinating.”

“We’ve known each other almost three months.”

“We have.”

He pushes away from the door to walk over and stand in front of me. “The data is wrong though.”

He’s so close I have to look up to meet his eyes.

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