I had to swallow. Press my lips together. Blink because my eyes started burning all of a sudden, and I didn’t know what to do. Flicking my gaze up, my hand went to his—to that hand I held every chance I had—, and I asked him before I could think twice about it. “Who is they?”

Lucas Ripley leaned down and brushed his mouth over mine, then pulled back, his free hand going to my cheek. “Your mom’s family, baby. If you want to meet them, you’ve got a grandma and an aunt staying at a hotel, right now, a couple miles away that would really love to see you tomorrow.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah.” His thumb brushed my cheek again. “You all right with that?” he asked softly, with tenderness in that rough voice. “You okay with making the family just a little bigger by meeting them?”

You’d have figured he would have gotten used to my hugs over the years, but he hadn’t. He still sighed into my neck like it was something new, and wrapped his arms around me as tight as ever when I threw my arms around him suddenly. Squeezing him tightly. Squeezing him like he meant the world to me and had made my life ten times better by just existing. By just being the person that he was.

I was seriously the luckiest person in the world.