Page 133 of The Book Club Boyfriend
Mom sets down her coffee cup, something soft in her expression. “It’s just... you did it.”
“Did what? Gained ten pounds from Chase’s pancake obsession? Because yes, guilty.”
“No.” She shakes her head, smiling. “You proved us wrong. Both of us.”
Dad clears his throat. “What your mother’s trying to say is—we spent so many years showing you all the ways love could fail. How it could make you lose yourself. How it could break you.”
“Super fun childhood memories,” I mutter, but there’s no heat in it anymore.
“But you found a way to have both,” Mom continues. “Your independence, your career, your voice—and him.” She nods at Chase, who’s now making ridiculous faces at Owen. “You built something we couldn’t.”
“We’re proud of you,” Dad adds quietly. “For showing us it’s possible.”
I freeze, Owen now glued to my hip, because my parents don’t do this. We don’t have Hallmark moments. We have sarcasm, carefully maintained boundaries, and the occasional shared meal where no one throws anything.
“I—” I start, then stop because my throat is doing that annoying tight thing.
Chase, because he’s Chase and always knows when I need saving, swoops in and plucks Owen from my arms. “Good thing too, because I already put a deposit down on a puppy, so she’s stuck with me.”
“A WHAT?” I spin toward him.
He grins, all dimples and mischief. “Kidding. Mostly. Seventy-thirty kidding to not kidding.”
“Chase Remington—”
“Sixty-forty?”
“We arenotgetting another dog!”
“Rip needs a friend,” he protests, gesturing to where our dog has now sprawled across my mother’s feet, demanding belly rubs. “Look how lonely he is.”
“He’s literally getting attention from three people right now.”
“Four,” Dad corrects, reaching down to scratch Rip’s ear. “And I wouldn’t mind a grandpuppy. Since actual grandchildren seem to be off the table.”
“DAD.”
Mom laughs—really laughs, the way she didn’t for somany years. “Leave them alone, Richard. They’re young.”
“I’m thirty-five,” I remind her. “Chase is thirty-six. We’re basically ancient.”
“Ancient people who can’t even babysit one infant without chaos,” Chase adds, gesturing to Owen, who has somehow gotten yogurt in his hair despite us not giving him yogurt.
“Where did he even GET yogurt?” I ask.
Chase shrugs. “Babies are magic. Weird, sticky magic.”
And standing there—in my parents’ living room that used to be a battlefield, holding a yogurt-covered baby that isn’t mine, arguing about hypothetical puppies with the man who was supposed to be everything I stood against—I realize something.
My parents were wrong about love making you lose yourself.
But they’re right about one thing.
I did build something they couldn’t.
I built a life where love doesn’t mean sacrifice. Where independence doesn’t mean loneliness. Where you can write romance novels about hockey players and still roast them in real life. Where your dog becomes everyone’s grandchild, and your in-laws become actual family, and somehow, impossibly, it all works.
“Fifty-fifty on the puppy,” Chase whispers in my ear.
