Page 33 of Home Sweet Home

The question worked how she wanted it to, and West returned his attention to painting the wall. “A little.”

Given how much West had avoided coming home, she assumed he would be missing LA a lot more, but when she looked at him, he didn’t seem fazed at all.

“What about your friends?” Evie asked, her mind on the paparazzi photos she’d seen of West and numerous women online.Who did Freddy say he’s dating? Miranda Ashley?Evie had no idea who that was, but Freddy seemed to, and West hadn’t really confirmed or denied it, even though a part of her really wanted to know for reasons she didn’t understand. “Don’t you miss them?”

“I don’t really have a lot of friends.”

“I have a hard time believing that.” Back in high school, West had been like a magnet, drawing people to him so effortlessly, it had been almost annoying.

“What about your girlfriend?” She’d blurted it before she could stop herself, but once the question had slipped out, the best she could do was pretend to be nonchalant, uninvested in the answer, so she focused her attention on the wall in front of her.

West chuckled. “Don’t have one.”

Evie turned to look at him. “Really?”

“Well, I spend half the year flying all over the country and the other half training all day for the season. Not exactly conducive to a long-term relationship.”

The use of the wordlong-termmade Evie blush. Just because he said he didn’t have a girlfriend didn’t mean he didn’t have women in his life.

“What about you?” West asked, his elbow tapping lightly against her ribs. “There a Mr. Peach?”

Evie raised an eyebrow. “Are you suggesting my theoretical husband would take the nickname you gave me as his last name after our theoretical marriage?”

“It’s a damn good nickname,” he said with a grin that melted her into a puddle of wax. “If I do say so myself.”

“Always so humble. And no, there’s no Mr. Peach. Between Josh and the diner, it’s not like I have much time for anything else.”

She wasn’t sure if she imagined it or not, but West’s eyes seemed to brighten when she said it. Still, whatever had been there was gone as he turned back to his work. She drew her roller across the wall, and they worked in silence for a few minutes, and Evie was grateful for it. It had felt a little bit too much like their relationship before.

“Why—” West started, and when the question finally came, it took him a few seconds to get it out, like he wasn’t quite sure he should. “Why did you stay? After your mom died.”

She shrugged, running her roller along the wall. “For Josh.”

“What about your dad? I know he wasn’t around much. Thought he’d turn up after what happened, at least.”

Evie’s hand stilled at the mention of her dad. “You thought wrong. Declared unfit by the judge.”

“Sorry.” West shook his head. “Shouldn’t have assumed.”

The weeks after her mom’s death had been the hardest of her life, full of thousands of decisions—some tiny, like how to tell Joe, and some monumental, like who would take care of ten-year-old Josh. “It’s okay. It’s just… I haven’t thought about it in a long time. He was off somewhere in his van. Took them days to track him down. When they finally did, he sent in a letter that said he wasn’t interested. Based on his track record, the judge agreed.”

“There was no one else?”

“My dad’s mom lives in one of the trailers off Oak,” Evie said, remembering her grandmother’s glare piercing through Kayla’s car window like an arrow. “But she wasn’t really an option.”

“What about your mom’s family?” West asked.

Evie didn’t know much about her mom’s parents. The little she did know was because she’d once found a photo of the three of them tucked into her mom’s bedroom drawer, and when Evie had asked her mom about them, she’d told her a little. Her strained expression had made it clear that she didn’t like to think about it. “I’ve actually never met them. All I know is they’re out West somewhere, maybe Utah, and that they’re really religious and weren’t too happy when my mom got pregnant at seventeen. They might have been interested in taking Josh, but I wasn’t about to send him halfway across the country to live with people we didn’t know.”

“So they just… handed a kid to you?”

As Evie rolled paint across the wall, she bit her lip. “I was eighteen. We had the house. Once I got the job at Joe’s, it was actually pretty straightforward.”

West had stopped painting and was looking at her, shaking his head like it didn’t make any sense. Everything she’d said was the truth, though, as plain as she could put it. “That’s… a lot.”

“How are you two coming along?” Kayla asked.

Evie put on a smile, packing the bad memories back into their box and tucking it back into its spot in the dusty, neglected corner of her mind. “We were just talking about how much we like this color.”

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