Page 36 of Just Watch Me

I tugged him to my bed. “That can be arranged.”

EPILOGUE

Eight months later

I hung my keys on the hook next to the door and smiled at theGoonieskeychain. “That went surprisingly well.”

Sky laughed and leaned in to kiss my cheek. “Why do you sound so surprised? Did you expect your mom to feed me dog food or something?”

I shot him a withering glare as he pulled my jacket from my arms and hung it on our coat rack. “Why, it couldn’t be all the calls from my parents asking me how I’d let some vagabond nomad ferry their baby away to the swamps of Florida to get eaten by a gator.”

Sky wrapped his arms around my waist. “I have a job, so technically I think that excludes me from the vagabond category. To be fair, I thought they’d put a hit on me when you told them you weren’t going home for Christmas because you wanted to do that Caribbean cruise.”

I draped my arms over his shoulders because I couldn’t not. They were perfect shoulders, especially since his other shoulder bore a tattoo of our favorite Florida beach with a sunny sky, palm trees, and serene water. “Me too. I kind of thought they’d hate you forever because they blame you for my leaving.”

“But you’re back.”

I grinned at him. “We’reback.”

He grabbed my hand and pulled me out to the balcony of our downtown Portland condo. “We are. All in all, I think the whole meet-the-parents thing went well.”

I hadn’t intended to stay away from my parents for that long, but keeping my distance for a while had been the best way to send the message that I was my own person and would make my own decisions. It seemed to have worked because they were easing up on the overprotectiveness. So far.

Since moving back to Portland last week, I’d seen my parents once before that night. I hadn’t wanted to subject Sky to the reunion in case it went south, but my parents had been surprisingly mature. We’d underestimated each other for a long time.

Taking Sky to meet them had gone much better than I’d expected, but I should have realized they would be happy he’d not only moved back with me, but that we’d put down roots by buying the condo. The past couple of months had been a whirlwind of trying to finalize the sale from Florida and moving in quickly once we got back to the city.

It was still hard to wrap my mind around the fact that Skylar wanted to settle down with me. Well, in his special way.Ourspecial way. A compromise. Portland as our home base half the year and rent it on Airbnb the other half as we lived in a new city. While I was thrilled to be back in Portland, I couldn’t wait to spend six months in New Orleans later that year.

After getting a taste of living in Orlando, I understood Sky’s desire to explore more places. I loved working remotely, and being in Portland half the year made it easy for the company to agree to the remote thing as a permanent part of my job.

Sky still teased me relentlessly over my insistence on separate apartments in Orlando. Despite us having spent every night together since I joined him in Orlando last July, save for a couple of short trips he’d needed to take for work, I still stood by my decision. We may not have needed separate spaces to retreat to when things got intense, but it had been a nice safety net at the beginning. I wasn’t even mad about wasting the rent money because it was a good lesson for me to know when I needed extra security. It had also been good practice for me to ask for what I wanted and trust that Sky would give it to me. He would give me the world if he could.

I leaned against the railing and sighed as Sky pressed his chest to my back and wrapped his arms around me. The sun was setting, and the sky had a pink hue to it. Mount Hood and Mount Saint Helens were fully visible in the clear March sky. Two dragon boats full of people passed on the Willamette River below.

He kissed my neck. “It feels nice to be back here.”

“I’m glad. I was worried you might freak out a little when we closed on the place.” Between my recent promotion to game design team lead and Skylar opening his own consulting firm, we’d had enough money to make the condo happen.

I knew he was great at his job, but I hadn’t realized how fantastic his reputation was in the digital entertainment industry. With him working for himself and expenses being low, his income was much higher than working for someone else. Plus, he got to make his own travel schedule. It suited us perfectly.

My gorgeous boyfriend hummed thoughtfully. “I think it’s grounded me to have a home base. Before meeting you and your corny clipart PowerPoint”—we both laughed at the memory—“I assumed I could only have one or the other, a home or freedom. You showed me I can have both. Yougaveme both, J.”

I smiled and turned in his arms. “And you showed me I can have a home no matter where I am, that home can be a person, that I can explore and still be safe. Be okay.” I choked up a little at the end. Seeing my parents open up to Sky at dinner had shifted something in me.

For months, I’d been on the defensive with them. I had mentally prepared myself that they would never accept him because my loving him meant, in their minds, being away from home—fromtheirhome. But something had firmly changed, and I couldn’t be more grateful for it. Maybe they just needed to meet him in person, more than our regular FaceTime chats, to trust that I would be okay with him.

“I still can’t believe how nice my parents were tonight,” I admitted.

Sky chuckled awkwardly. “About that.”

The way the pink reflected off him and the window of our kitchen, our new home together, took my breath away.

“I may have had a conversation with your mom while I helped her make dinner.”

That explained why they’d both been beaming when they brought dinner to the table. “Must have been some conversation. Did you promise to put me in a bubble?”

It wasn’t that my parents hated Sky. They begrudgingly liked him because he was impossible not to like. For my parents, no matter who it was, any partner who didn’t immediately want to buy a house in my hometown was someone to be wary of. My parents weren’t bad people, but they had bad boundaries. I was relieved it was getting better, though, slowly.

---