I hooked my arm around her and dropped my hand to her ass. “Nothing that your favourite dinner can’t fix,” I murmured.

Laughter escaped her lips. “Good.”

Dustin eyed us as he wiped his hands on a tea towel. “I’ve just gotta go grab my phone. Can you guys watch the potatoes?”

I nodded. “Yeah, buddy.”

After he had left us, Tatum whispered, “Dustin asked me what my favourite things to eat were. He didn’t tell me what he was planning so I just rattled off the things I like the most. Now he thinks that I eat them all together for dinner.”

I chuckled, feeling some of the tension in my shoulders easing. “He has a soft spot for you so I’d expect to be eating that dinner often. I’ve gotta say, I’ve never seen him cook before. Is there an occasion?”

“If you’re asking me why I’m here for dinner, the answer is because Dustin wanted to thank me for helping him ace his interview today.”

The moment sat between us. Things were shifting fast in our relationship, and I had feelings rushing at me that were so foreign I didn’t know what to do with them. I decided at that moment just to give her my honesty. My truth. And she could do with it whatever she chose.

I took a swig of my beer. “I like that you’re here for dinner.”

Her arms tightened around me. “I like it, too,” she said softly and fuck if that didn’t hit me right in the gut.

“We’re here!” Renee’s voice filtered into the kitchen, and I jerked my head up to see her and Marilyn join us.

“The whole fucking family, huh?” I said.

Tatum laughed and moved out of my embrace. “Yeah, Dustin said he wanted to cook for everyone.”

“Hi Tatum,” Renee said, hitting her with a smile. “This is my mum, Marilyn.”

I watched my sister. She and Renee had moved back home just over two weeks ago, against my wishes, but we’d been arguing about it for weeks so I’d given in. She’d been seeing her shrink and doing the work, but she’d retreated. She hadn’t returned to work after time off while she’d been in hospital receiving treatment, and I was concerned that the longer she stayed away, the harder it would be to go back.

She smiled at Tatum. “Hi,” she said hesitantly.

Tatum returned her smile, magnified. I knew she was trying hard here because she didn’t usually smile that brightly. “Hi, Marilyn. It’s lovely to meet you.”

Dustin returned to the kitchen and resumed cooking. Renee and Tatum discussed an assignment Renee was having hell with—a legal studies essay, which was right up Tatum’s alley. Marilyn’s shyness kicked in, but she joined in every now and then. And I watched my family begin to get to know the woman I’d let into my life. It was the oddest fucking night of my life and yet one of the best.

* * *

“Marilyn is so reserved,” Tatum said later that night as she lay next to me, her fingers drawing patterns on my chest. “I couldn’t work out whether she liked me or not.”

I tightened my arm around her. “She liked you.”

She pushed up so she was resting on her elbow. “Really? How could you tell?”

I took in Tatum’s questions, her tone and the expression on her face. Smoothing her hair, I said, “You really want her to like you, don’t you?”

She hesitated for a brief moment before nodding. “Yeah, I do.”

“Why?”

Her eyes darted away from mine, and I saw the vulnerability in her that she didn’t often show the world.

I tilted her chin so she looked at me again. “Don’t hide from me, Vegas.”

She watched me silently. Always thinking. Always trying to figure out if she could trust me with shit. I didn’t blame her, though. Trust was one of the most sacred things you could give another person. “I like your family. Like, a lot. They’re funny and kind, and they make me feel welcome. I always wanted a home filled with laughter and fun, but we never had that. Even when Chris and I were older, the two of us never had that. I was always running around after him, making sure he was still alive and okay. And he was looking out for me, too, but there wasn’t a lot of fun times.”

“What did you have growing up?” She’d not mentioned her parents much, so I wondered how bad it was.

She settled back against me, curled in close, arm draped over my chest. “My mum was an unhappy woman. She was bored and unfulfilled in her life and never really did fun stuff with us as kids. When she was nine, we came home from school one day and she was gone. No note, no nothing. She’d just packed a bag and disappeared. My father was devastated because she was the love of his life and he’d always gone above and beyond to try and make her happy. Nothing he did was ever good enough, though.”

Jesus, even my early childhood had been better than hers. “But she came back?” I recalled that Tatum had mentioned her mother so I figured she’d been in her life later on.

“Yeah, a year after she left, she returned. It was one of the happiest days of my childhood, but I quickly realised happiness doesn’t always last. Our home only grew quieter and sadder as we all tiptoed around trying to keep Mum happy so she never left us again.”

“Your parents stayed together?”

“Yep, until the day Dad died. And Mum was just as unhappy without him, so I hope she figured out it was her all along who’d failed, not him.” She sounded so harsh towards her mother, but I couldn’t blame her.

“You two weren’t close?”

“I tried, I really did. But when someone doesn’t want to do anything to help their own happiness, it’s hard to be around them. That dark place they’re in will eventually crush your joy. I was already running low on that so I decided I had to stay away as much as I could. I probably saw more of her last year while she was dying than I did for years.” She twisted her head to look up at me. “Guilt makes you do shit like that.”

“It doesn’t sound like you had much to feel guilty over.”

“Guilt is a woman’s cross to bear, Nitro. We’re suckers when it comes to feeling guilty over every damn thing. Hell, we’ll even take everyone else’s shit and feel guilty for that, too.”

She laid her head back on my chest and we fell silent. And then I remembered her earlier question about how I knew that Marilyn liked her. “I know Lynny liked you because she asked you how we met. She never asks people stuff if she doesn’t like them. She can’t be bothered to engage if she doesn’t see a point to it. And when she was leaving, she made a point to say goodbye to you. Again, if she wasn’t interested in getting to know you, my sister wouldn’t say goodbye. She doesn’t use manners like most people do.”