Page 75 of Breakaway Hearts

“Sorry, sorry,” she says with a laugh. “You know I’m joking.”

“Are you?” Reese drawls. He comes up behind me, pressing his hips against my lower back as he reaches into the cabinet above my head to grab the salad bowl. The cucumber I’m slicing slips out of my hand and into the sink.

“Careful there, Callie.” My mom tsks. “Don’t distract her, Reese! She’s holding a knife, after all.”

“What do you think, Firefly?” Reese takes a step away, and I release a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “Should we start on those babies?”

My mom lets out a little screech of joy, and Reese shoots her a wink. I want to bury my head in the sand like an ostrich and die, but that’s not really an option at the moment, so instead, I focus all my energy on slamming my knife into the bell peppers and imagining that they’re this conversation.

“How are your parents? Are they doing alright?” my mom asks Reese while they tend to the garlic bread.

My ears perk up at her question, and I resist the temptation to turn to look over at Reese. He’s not leaning into me anymore, but I can imagine his body tensing. I tap my toe backward slightly in the small kitchen and press my foot against his. He presses back.

“Yeah.” He nods. “They’re alright. You know how it is.” He laughs, but it’s clipped and stilted. “I’m not entirely sure where my mom is at the moment. She texted me a few weeks ago, something about finding the love of her life and going off to a new place. She’s like that every few months or so. Likes adventure, that one.”

“Mm.” My mom purses her lips. “I remember meeting your mom when I picked Callie up from Bear Creek Camp. She seemed like such a free spirit.”

“That’s a good way to describe her,” Reese says, and his laugh is more genuine now. “My dad, he’s in Arizona now. Moved there with his wife.”

“I didn’t know he got remarried!”

I press harder against Reese’s foot. I know he doesn’t love to talk about this stuff.

“Yeah, it’s pretty recent.” He rubs the back of his neck. “His wife is a lot younger than him. Like, just a few years older than Callie. I don’t talk to him much. Nothing against him or my mom. I just… I don’t think I’ll ever have the kind of relationship with them that you have with Callie.”

My mom pops the garlic bread in the oven, which has five minutes left for the lasagna.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

I wince. My mom is one of the kindest people in the world, and I love her to death. But I swear, she can’t read the room. Reese doesn’t have bad blood with his parents, but it should be abundantly clear to her that he feels uncomfortable talking about this. It’s hard to talk about your parents in a good way when they didn’t do a good job raising you.

“Mom,” I say, measuring out some honey for the dressing. “We don’t have to talk about this.”

“It was just a question, honey.”

“It’s alright.” Reese puts a hand on my lower back and presses his lips against my neck. “Thank you, though,” he murmurs in my ear, making me swallow hard.

He turns back to my mom, and I can hear his soft inhale and exhale before he speaks.

“I envy the relationship you two have. But I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this. My parents are just people. People who make mistakes, people who love each other and hurt each other. And I guess as a child, you really idolize them. But as an adult, I can look at them and realize that if I didn’t know them and if they weren’t my parents, I wouldn’t necessarily want to be friends with them. I wouldn’t hate them. Idon’thate them. I just don’t have anything in common with them, and I don’t really want to.” He chuckles. “I feel like I’m rambling. Am I making sense?”

My mom makes an empathetic noise, and I turn around from my salad prep to see her looking pensive.

“Complete sense,” she tells him. “I’m sorry. That’s hard.”

“It’s okay.” He flips on his charming, easy grin, immediately lightening the mood in the kitchen. “There were some rough spots with them in the past, but I’m happy. Really happy. Especially with your daughter in my life. I feel like I’ve built myself a new family, and I’ve never been happier than now.”

Heat floods my face as I whisk the salad dressing together, even though I know Reese is just saying it for show. I can’t help but want it to be real, though. I want him to see me as his family.

“Look at that,” my mom says while wiping her eyes. “You’re making Callie blush.”

“Am I now?” Reese turns around and touches my cheek with his thumb. “Would you look at that?”

The oven beeps just then, signaling my chance to escape.Thank god. Even if dinner will give my mom ample opportunity to mortify me in front of Reese, at least I’ll be well-fed and hopefully a little wine drunk while it happens.

Reese dons oven mitts, which is somehow equal parts masculine, domestic, and painfully sexy. I also hate what the sight of that does to my body. For some reason, I imagine him in nothing but an apron, cooking eggs for me for breakfast. My stomach turns over, and I know the only thing we would be eating in that situation would be each other.

I shake my head and carry the salad bowl into the dining room.

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