Page 62 of Flare Up
“It so pretty.” She looked up at him. “You love it here.”
“I do. It’s good for me to reconnect with home every once in a while. And not just my family.”
“What brought you to Boston? For somebody who loves this so much, it seems like a weird choice.”
“The lure of the big city, I guess. Sometimes you don’t fully appreciate where you’re from until you’ve been somewhere else. And the challenge.”
“I feel like you want to come back someday. Maybe when the challenges have been met?”
He shrugged. “It’s all pretty and idyllic until you remember there’s only one place in town that delivers and their pizza sucks. But you’re right, I guess. I don’t think that far ahead as a rule, but I think I had a fuzzy idea of retiring here someday. Way in the future.”
“When the kids are grown?” she said lightly.
When he looked at her, his gaze was so intense, she shivered. “Kids, huh?”
They’d talked about kids the first time around. Not in a specific I want to have children with you way, but enough to know they both wanted to be parents someday. “Yeah, kids. You’d be a great dad. And you’d teach them all sorts of things and bring them to visit their grandparents on the weekends. And they’d snowmobile and...do all the other stuff you guys do up here.”
“Or maybe they’ll curl up in a chair with a book like their mother.”
He said it with so much affection, her eyes welled up a little. And not only the acceptance that reading books was as okay as romping around in the woods, but that she would be the mother of his children. Saying it out loud was a big thing to her. “I’m guessing a little of both.”
“Go out and raise a little hell, and then go home and read by the fire?”
“Something like that.”
“Don’t cry out here. Your eyes will freeze shut when you blink.”
Her gasp made him laugh and she punched him playfully in the stomach. “That is not funny.”
“It kind of was.” He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “You really need to get outside more.”
“I don’t hate this.”
“Maybe we’ll do it again.”
“When it’s warmer?”
He laughed so hard she got offended and stepped away. “I hate to break it to you, but this is warm for sledding. If it got any warmer, we’d be mudding. It’s better if it’s just a little colder, actually.”
“That’s easy to say when you’re a guy who can pee on a tree.”
Grant wasn’t surprised his mom managed to pull him aside while Wren was packing up her bag for the journey home. She was his mother, so she was always going to have an opinion on Grant’s life—even his love life—but she was too good a person to make comments in front of Wren or within her earshot.
“Grant, can you give me a hand with something in the garage before you go?”
It was a code he’d heard more than a few times in his life, no matter if she was talking to him, his brother or his dad. There was always something in the garage that needed tending to when she had something on her mind.
He just hoped he hadn’t been totally wrong about the vibe in the house. He’d known his mom would act right because that’s who she was, but he’d actually thought it had gone even better than that. His mom had been slightly cool at first, but he thought she’d warmed up to Wren by the time they went snowmobiling.
Just the idea of having to pick a side shook him up. He knew there were families with a lot of conflict when it came to in-laws, but he never wanted to be in a position to have to choose Wren or his mother. The idea hurt too much to even think about.
Just as he suspected, as soon as the door between the kitchen and the garage had closed behind them, she walked over and leaned against her car, folding her arms.
“I’m glad you brought Wren home this weekend,” she said. “I was so worried about you after she left. You weren’t yourself at all. And then, when you told me she was back, I had all different worries. And a lot of questions, of course.”
“We’re taking it slow, Mom. She didn’t cast a spell on me that made me forget everything that happened.” He shrugged. “You know how much she hurt me. But I think shutting her out when I found her again would have hurt me more than the risk of maybe being hurt again. I have to try.”
“I can see why. Seeing you together this weekend makes me feel a lot better.” She smiled. “Your dad and I were talking about it while you were out sledding, and we both think you suit each other. Even with what happened between you, she makes you happy.”
