56. Renee

Weston is different here.

Here, in this house with his mother and his sister, he’s not the same grumpy S.O.B. he usually shows to the world. He’s sweet, he’s funny, he smiles for no reason, he hugs like he’s born to do it.

I have to keep pinching myself to make sure I’m not dreaming.

When I’m at least ninety-eight percent lasagna by body weight, I groan and push back from the table. “I’m physically incapable of eating another bite,” I complain. “I’m gonna have to run a marathon every day this week to make up for what you just did to me.”

Caroline grins. “You aren’t my first victim and you won’t be my last.”

“At least I’m not alone in my misery.”

Weston, on the other hand, has crushed an entire tray of the stuff all by himself and looks like he could go for another. “Gonna go to the bathroom,” he announces, standing.

“Same.” Molly stands and leaves behind him.

I sigh and try to breathe levelly while they’re gone so I don’t regurgitate their mom’s pasta back on my plate.

Caroline’s voice snaps me out of my food coma. “Don’t let his prickly exterior fool you, Renee. He’s a good man.”

I look over at her. She’s got her fingers laced and tucked under her chin as she regards me with a twinkle in her eye. “Yeah,” I say softly. “I can see that. Most of the time.”

She laughs. “I know what you mean. But don’t let him run you off with his moods. I don’t think you really need that advice, though. You don’t seem like the kind of woman who’ll let him push you out of the way.”

“I’m really not.”

“I can see that.” She purses her lips before she adds, “He spoils us rotten. Me and his sister both. Ever since my husband died, Weston has been everything for us. But he’s… protective. Of us. Of himself.”

“I would never do anything to come between you all.” I don’t know that I need to defend myself, if that’s what this even is, but I want her to know that I don’t have designs on taking him away.

Caroline shakes her head. “That’s not what I’m saying, sweetheart. I’m saying… don’t let him. Nothing good comes from keeping your heart locked away forever. The safest place for a ship is at port, right? But that’s not where ships belong.”

Before I can answer, Weston comes to the dining room and slumps into his seat. Molly is half a minute behind him. “So, Moll,” he says, “how’s work?”

She snorts. “Nursing is not for the faint of heart, I’ll tell you that much. You know that joke about how, if everyone you meet is an asshole, then it probably means you’re the asshole? That does not apply to hospitals. Everyone you meet in a hospital is an asshole.” She launches into a long, gruesome story about one of the ungrateful patients she cared for over the weekend who got into a mishap involving a glowstick being placed in an orifice where it did not belong. “… And, therefore,” she finishes, “he was a grade-A asshole. He reminded me of you, actually.” She backhands Weston’s chest with a mischievous grin.

“Ha ha ha. If I’m an asshole, it’s because you made me that way.”

We’re all chuckling when the sound of my vibrating phone cuts through. I check it, blanche, and immediately put it on Do Not Disturb. But the second call coming right on the heels of the first bypasses the filter, so it starts buzzing again in my hand. I shove it under my leg.

“You can take it if you need to,” his mother offers. “My feelings won’t be hurt, I promise.”

“No. It was nothing. No one.”

No one who matters, at least. I don’t know why she won’t give up. But she wouldn’t be Satan’s Mistress if she wasn’t persistent.

“My husband was forever on the phone during dinner. ‘I’m going to eat thousands of dinners,’ he used to say, ‘but one ignored business call could be the difference between steak and bologna. And I prefer steak, my love.’” She smiles with a contagious kind of fondness.

Weston clears his throat. “That’s enough, Mom. You’re gonna scare Renee off.” I make a mental note that unless Weston is the one to bring it up, we shouldn’t talk about his father. He glances at me. “You’ve never told me about your family.”

I gulp. “We’re… estranged.”

That’s the grown-up word for it. But it’s more than that. More to the point, though, I don’t want to talk about it in this place where family is everything and they’re all so happy.

Weston nods like he understands, although coming from all of this, there’s no freaking way he could get it. You don’t know how hot fire is until you walk through hell yourself.

Another vibration rings out, but this time, it’s his phone, not mine. He pulls it out of his pocket and glances at it. “It’s my agent. I’ll be right back.”

As soon as he’s out of earshot, his mother, Caroline, looks at me, smiles. “I’m not going to ask you about your family. I can see what they did. What they denied you.”

“Oh, jeez, Ma,” says Molly, rolling her eyes. “Go easy on the poor girl.”

Caroline ignores her. “You picked a good man in Weston. All that love your family didn’t give you, he has inside him.” She pats my hand. “He might be gruff, he is definitely bristly, but he hasn’t brought a woman home in… a long time. That says something about how he feels for you. Just in case there was any doubt in that department.”

I nod like I understand, like I have the capacity to understand love or that I somehow think I deserve it. If there’s one thing that growing up in my family has taught me, it’s that people don’t “deserve” love.

Isure as hell don’t.

But I smile at her because, whether he deserves it or not, Weston is loved in a way that is whole and honest and familial. Even if he doesn’t act like that toward me or toward anyone who isn’t in this room—except maybe Hunter—his mother’s right: he has the capacity to love.

Weston comes back to the table smiling, but there’s a grumpy undercurrent that wasn’t there before. I don’t ask and he doesn’t tell, and after a few minutes, he’s back to being the happy guy he seems to be only in this house. He jokes with his sister, laughs with his mom, and holds my hand under the table.

It’s the nicest dinner I’ve had in a while.

I wish it would last forever.