Page 106 of Even if It Hurts

By the time I finished, she was shaking as her own tears fell unchecked. But her voice was just as bitter and harsh as before. “Do you know what it’s like to watch the man you love deteriorate because your daughter refuses to let him rest?”

“Dad could rest if he wanted to,” I claimed even as an ember of that guilt flared. “And I told y’all who would be better suited to take over. Give Wren a chance, or don’t. But I’m done letting y’all dictate my life. I’m done listening to you and the McCoys talk to me the way y’all have been.” I brushed at the next tears that fell, then spread my arms, indicating my room. “Now, unless you don’t plan on letting me take my things, I have to pack.”

She left with a muffled, “I’m calling your daddy,” but he didn’t show until I was putting the last box in my SUV as Wren watched with Kaia from the porch.

For over a minute, he just stood there. Hands on his hips and mouth mashed into a tight line as he stared at me. And just whenI started saying something to break the uncomfortable tension building between us, he pushed out a disappointed sigh and turned for the house, waving me off as he did.

“Good talk,” Wren said once the door slammed shut behind him, looking as if she might actually mean that when we both knew she didn’t.

“Right,” I mumbled as I turned and shut the trunk.

I’d been riding a high throughout the morning and early afternoon while we’d shopped, but the short trip here had ripped all the excitement for the future away, leaving me exhausted in such an unexpected way.

“Come on,” Wren said, shocking me a little when her lighthearted voice came from directly beside me.

Looking over, an affectionate laugh left me when I took in both her and Kaia’s smiling faces aimed right at me, their cheeks squished together.

“Let’s drop all this off at your new place, then go get lunch because I’mstarvingand need fuel to shop,” Wren suggested, the words a little warped from the squished cheek.

“Shop—um, I . . . I’m done. We got everything I needed.”

She snorted, her eyes rolling as she lifted Kaia a little before bringing her back to rub the tips of their noses together. “We shopped foryou. Now it’s time for me to spoil my new, first, most favorite niece.”

I nearly choked. “Wren, you—I’m not—you can’t call her that.”

Wren just gave me a sly smile as she headed for the rear passenger door to put Kaia in her car seat. “Correct me if I’m wrong,” she began, “but you and tall, dark, and terrifying are definitelywaypast theI think I like youstage and are fully strapped into thewe’re doing this foreverride.”

I stared at her as I struggled to think around the words that just wouldn’t come, all the while, my conversation with Asher the night before played in my mind like the sweetest answer.

“What happens when I fall in love with you?”

“I buy you a ring,”he’d said in that hushed way of speaking that always managed to mesmerize me, gentle yet full of authority.“I ask if you’ll help me raise Kaia. Then I ask you to spend the rest of your life with me. That’s what happens.”

But what Wren was saying . . .

“You still can’t call her that,” I chastised. “Shehadparents. She’s Asher’sniece. It’s an extremely new and sensitive thing, and I am hernanny.”

Wren rolled her eyes dramatically. “I’ve seen you with her for half a day, and I can already tell you, you aren’t hernanny. She’s yours, which makes her my niece. End of.”

“Not.”

“Sorry, what was that?” Wren asked as she left the straps for me to do and went to get into the passenger seat. “Can’t hear you. Hungry. Need to spoil a baby.”

Frustration and worry about what Asher would think if he heard Wren saying any of those things bubbled up inside me, but before I could comment on it again, my phone chimed from my back pocket.

“We don’t listen to Wren,” I whispered to Kaia’s smiling face, then slid my phone out. My heart took off in that familiar, chaotic rhythm even as my body went still when I saw who messaged me because I was stupidly worrying he’d overheard everything.

But when I opened the messages, every worry was replaced with awe as that irritable man once again surprised me and stole another piece of my heart.

The Jerk

For Kaia?

Honesty Miss Pearson.

Below the messages was a link for a house listing.

I scrolled through pictures of the gorgeous Huntley farmhouse that I’d only ever seen from the outside, then hurried to respond.

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