“She’s been talking about you for almost a year,” her mother whispered at the barbecue where I was supposed to be her fake boyfriend. I looked down at Clare — my work rival who’d dragged me here as a decoy — and watched her face go pale. Then she grabbed my hand under the table, looked her ex straight in the eye, and said something that changed everything between us forever.

“She’s been talking about you for almost a year,” her mother whispered at the barbecue where I was supposed to be her fake boyfriend. I looked down at Clare — my work rival who’d dragged me here as a decoy — and watched her face go pale. Then she grabbed my hand under the table, looked her ex straight in the eye, and said something that changed everything between us forever.

She walked back outside with the pie between us like evidence. I followed, because of course I did. Because Clare Bennett had just adjusted my collar and said “for me” in a voice that wasn’t sharp or strategic — and my feet had stopped listening to my brain somewhere around the second kiss.

The backyard hit us like a wave of noise. Kids shrieking. Country music from a portable speaker. Someone’s uncle yelling about a lawn game I couldn’t see. And Tyler was still there, leaning against the cooler with the easy arrogance of a man who assumed the story would always bend toward him.

Clare’s hand found mine under the table before I even sat down.

I felt her fingers lace through mine, warm and steady, and I realized she wasn’t performing anymore. She was holding on because she needed to. Because the truth of what had just happened in that kitchen was still settling around us like smoke.

“Ethan,” she said quietly. “Can we talk after this?”

I squeezed her hand. “We’re talking now.”

She looked at me sideways. “I meant without a pie between us.”

“Then yes.”

Her grandmother Ruth shuffled past and paused. “If you two are going to pretend,” she said, “you should know you’re both terrible at it.”

Clare choked on her lemonade. I looked at the old woman. She winked and kept walking.

Clare buried her face in her hands. “I’m moving to Oregon.”

I leaned close, my mouth near her ear. “For the record, I’m having a very nice time with my fake girlfriend.”

Her hands lowered slowly. I was close enough to see the gold flecks in her green eyes.

“I’m having a nice time, too,” she said.

No joke followed. No insult. No retreat.

Just Clare Bennett, choosing honesty for the second time that day.

Then the first fireworks began popping somewhere beyond the rooftops, and her family cheered. Clare looked toward the sound, but her hand slid across the porch swing and found mine in the darkening space between us. This time, no one was watching.

Clare held my hand through the first round of fireworks. Not for show. Her parents had wandered to the lawn. Paige was corralling cousins with glow sticks. Tyler had disappeared behind a cloud of wounded pride and brisket smoke. No one was looking at the porch swing except maybe Grandma Ruth. And I had accepted that Ruth saw everything, including sins not yet committed.

Clare’s palm fit against mine like an argument ending. A blue firework burst over the rooftops, lighting her face for half a second. She was watching the sky, but I was watching her.

“You’re staring,” she said.

“You’re not looking at me.”

“I don’t need to. I can feel smugness.”

“Not smugness.”

Her eyes slid to mine. “Then what?”

That was dangerous ground. So naturally, I stepped on it.

“Surprise,” I said. “Mostly at what?”

“At you.”

She tried to pull her hand away, but I tightened my fingers just enough to ask her not to. She stayed.

“Careful,” she said. “That sounded sincere.”

“I’ve been sincere at least four times today.”

“Personal record?”

“Holiday spirit.”

Another firework cracked overhead, red light flashing across her smile. For a while, we sat with our shoulders pressed together and let the noise cover the silence. It should have been awkward. We should have been sorting out rules, boundaries, consequences.

Instead, I traced my thumb once over her knuckles.

Clare inhaled softly. That tiny sound went straight through me.

“Is this okay?” I asked.

She looked down at our hands. Then she turned hers over and laced our fingers properly.

“That’s my answer.”

I felt embarrassingly close to a victory.

After the fireworks slowed, Bill announced there was watermelon in the garage fridge. Diane shouted that nobody was allowed to leave without leftovers. And Paige dragged three cousins into a sparkler photo shoot.

Clare stood. “Walk with me.”

“Are we escaping or strolling?”

“Yes.”

She led me through the side gate and around to the front of the house where the noise softened behind the fence. The street glowed with porch lights and paper lanterns. Neighbors sat in driveways. Kids waved sparklers in lazy circles, and the air smelled like smoke, cut grass, and summer heat radiating off the pavement.

Clare kicked off her sandals and carried them in one hand.

“You’re very committed to the bit,” I said.

“What bit?”

“The romantic barefoot walk.”

She glanced over. “If this were romantic, you’d be carrying my shoes.”

I held out my hand. She looked at it, then laughed and gave me the sandals. The sound loosened something in me.

“You’re different away from work,” I said.

“So are you.”

“How?”

“At work, you’re infuriatingly controlled.”

“Thank you.”

“That wasn’t praise.”

“It sounded like praise delivered poorly.”

She bumped my shoulder with hers. “Here, you’re still controlled, but less like a man diffusing a bomb and more like one who might actually enjoy himself.”

“I am enjoying myself.”

Clare’s steps slowed. The street had grown quieter. We’d reached the end of the block where a live oak spread heavy branches over the sidewalk. Gold light from a nearby porch caught in her hair.

“With me?” she asked.

I stopped beside her. There it was again — that unguarded question beneath the polished woman. The part of Clare that didn’t ask unless the answer mattered.

“With you,” I said.

Her throat moved as she swallowed. “I didn’t make up everything,” she said.

I stayed still.

“When my mom asked if I was seeing anyone, I should have said no. But she’d been talking about Tyler again — how nice it was that we were all mature now. And I just…” She looked down the empty street. “I said there was someone at work.”

“Me?”

“Not by name at first. But eventually. Eventually.”

Her smile was small and embarrassed. “You’d done something irritatingly decent.”

“What?”

“You stayed late to help me redo the Benton numbers after my junior coordinator missed a vendor credit. I remember. You didn’t take credit for it.”

“It was your project.”

“It was my disaster.”

She looked at me then. “You made it smaller and never told anyone.”

I hadn’t thought she noticed.

Clare folded her arms, sandals gone, barefoot on the warm sidewalk. “After Tyler, I didn’t trust kindness if it came with an audience. Yours didn’t. That annoyed me.”

“Kindness offended you?”

“From you? Deeply.”

I laughed, but it came out quiet.

She took one step closer. “So, yes,” she said. “I talked about you. I complained mostly, but sometimes I didn’t.”

“What did you say when you weren’t complaining?”

“That you listen.” Her eyes searched mine. “That you make people feel steady. That you have a terrible habit of being right. That when you smile at something, you think no one else noticed. I wanted to know what it was.”

My chest tightened.

“Clare, I—”

She looked away fast. “Too much?”

“No.”

She met my eyes again.

“Not too much,” I said.

The next firework was distant — a low thump of silver behind the houses. I reached for her free hand slowly so she had time to decide. She gave it to me.

“I told myself I disliked you because liking you would complicate everything,” she said. “The promotion. The office. My very convincing image as a reasonable adult.”

Her mouth curved. “Very convincing.”

“But I liked you anyway.”

Her smile faded into something softer. “Past tense?” she asked.

I stepped closer. Close enough that her breath caught. Close enough that all the joking had nowhere to hide.

“No.”

For one suspended second, neither of us moved. Then Clare rose onto her toes and kissed me.

It wasn’t dramatic. No music swelled. No one cheered from behind a hedge. It was soft and careful and so much better than any version my imagination had no business constructing during budget meetings.

Her fingers curled lightly in my shirt. Mine settled at her waist, and she fit there with a sigh that made every competitive instinct I’d ever had feel foolish and small.

When she drew back, she stayed close.

“That was not part of the cover story,” she whispered.

“I’m willing to revise the documentation.”

She laughed against my mouth, and I kissed her again because I was not a saint and because she leaned into me like she wanted me to.

This kiss was less careful. A sparkler hissed somewhere down the street. Clare’s hand slid to the back of my neck, and for a few seconds, the entire world narrowed to warm skin, summer air, and the stunning fact that Clare Bennett kissed like she had been arguing with me for months just to save up momentum.

A car door slammed nearby. We separated, breathing like we’d sprinted.

Across the street, an older man getting out of a truck politely pretended not to see us.

Clare pressed her fingers to her lips, then looked at me with wide eyes.

“We work together,” she said.

“We do.”

“We’re competing for the same promotion.”

“We are.”

“My family thinks we’re practically engaged.”

“I’m still recovering from Ruth’s home ownership timeline.”

She laughed, but nerves flickered beneath it.

I took her hand again. “We don’t have to solve everything tonight.”

“That’s irresponsible.”

“It’s a barbecue. I’m allowed one irresponsible choice.”

“Just one?”

I looked at her mouth, her cheeks colored.

“Brooks,” she warned.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You thought loudly.”

We started back toward the house, her sandals dangling from my fingers, our hands linked between us.

At the gate, Clare stopped. “What happens when we go back in?”

I knew what she meant. Was it fake again? Was it real? Was it something we’d pretend hadn’t happened once the fireworks ended?

I lifted our joined hands and kissed her knuckles.

Her expression changed like I’d answered a question she hadn’t trusted herself to ask.

“We go back in,” I said. “And I sit beside you because I want to, not because you need a decoy.”

Clare was quiet. Then she stepped closer and touched my jaw, thumb brushing once along the edge of my mouth.

“I want that,” she said.

We returned to the backyard, hand in hand.

Paige spotted us immediately, eyes narrowing. “Interesting.”

Clare pointed at her. “No.”

“I said one word. It had punctuation.”

Before Paige could interrogate us, Diane swept in with a stack of containers. “Ethan, honey, do you eat peach cobbler?”

“I do now.”

Clare leaned toward me. “Traitor. Your mother called me honey. I’ve been recruited.”

Diane beamed and disappeared.

For the next half hour, it was easy in a way that frightened me. Clare and I shared cobbler from one bowl because Paige ran out of clean ones. Clare stole the best peach slice. I retaliated by getting whipped cream on her thumb.

She looked at it, then at me.

“Don’t,” she said.

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You were considering it.”

“I absolutely was.”

So she held my gaze and licked the whipped cream off herself. My brain emptied.

Clare smiled serenely. “Problem?”

“You’re a menace.”

“I’ve been telling you that for months.”

By the time Tyler reappeared, I had almost forgotten him. Almost.

He came over while Clare was laughing at something her father said, and his gaze caught on the way her knee rested against mine under the picnic table.

“Wow,” he said. “You two are really selling it.”

Clare’s laughter died. I felt her shift beside me, but before either of us spoke, she slipped her hand onto my thigh under the table. Not hiding. Not clinging. Choosing.

Then she looked at Tyler with a calm I admired.

“We’re not selling anything,” she said.

And when she turned back to me, her hand stayed right where it was.

Tyler looked from Clare to me, waiting for one of us to flinch. Clare did not. Her hand remained on my thigh under the picnic table, warm and steady, while above the table she took a calm sip of lemonade, like she hadn’t just detonated the last excuse between us.

“We’re not selling anything,” she had said. It hung there in the humid evening.

Tyler’s smile thinned. “That was fast.”

Clare set down her cup. “No, Tyler, it really wasn’t.”

Paige, sitting across from us, suddenly became fascinated by her cobbler. Grandma Ruth, two chairs away, did not even pretend.

Tyler’s jaw flexed. “I just think it’s convenient. You show up with a guy from work right when everyone’s asking questions.”

I felt Clare’s fingers tense. I could have answered. I wanted to. But Clare didn’t need me to rescue her.

She turned her hand palm up beneath the table, and I laced my fingers with hers. A quiet offer, not a shield. She squeezed once.

Then she said, “You don’t get to decide what’s real in my life anymore.”

That silenced him. Not dramatically. There was no gasp, no clatter of forks — just Tyler losing the easy confidence of a man who had assumed the story would always bend toward him.

After a moment, he lifted his beer. “Good luck, then.”

“Thanks,” Clare said. “I mean that less than it sounds.”

Paige coughed into her napkin. Tyler walked away.

Clare exhaled like she’d been holding the breath for two years.

I leaned close. “That last part was very diplomatic.”

“I work in client services.”

“Terrifying field.”

Her thumb moved over mine under the table. “Thank you for not jumping in.”

“I figured you had him.”

She looked at me then, and the softness in her expression was almost more intimate than the kisses had been.

“I did,” she said. “But I liked that you were there.”

There were a dozen jokes I could have made. A dozen safer exits.

Instead, I said, “I like being there.”

Her lips parted, then curved. “Careful, Brooks.”

“With what?”

“Making it hard for me to go back to disliking you.”

“That ship exploded around the second kiss.”

“Second?” Paige said loudly from across the table.

Clare closed her eyes. “I’m going to bury you in mom’s herb garden.”

Paige pointed her spoon at me. “You kissed her twice?”

“Technically,” I said, “she kissed me first.”

Clare’s eyes flew open. “Traitor.”

Paige gasped with joy. “I knew it.”

Grandma Ruth leaned over. “Was it a good kiss?”

“Grandma.”

“I’m old, not dead.”

I looked at Clare. Her face was bright red, but she was smiling despite herself. That smile made me want to earn it when no one was watching.

“It was a very good kiss,” I said.

Clare stared at me. Grandma Ruth nodded. “Fine, he can stay.”

After that, the night loosened around us. Tyler left before the last fireworks show, claiming an early morning. No one argued. Diane hugged him politely at the gate, then returned to press an extra container of cobbler into my hands with the fervor of a woman transferring dowry assets.

Clare and I helped gather plates. We worked well together — annoyingly well — moving around the kitchen with the same rhythm we had in conference rooms. Anticipating. Correcting. Trading dry comments over stacks of sticky dishes.

Except now, every brush of her shoulder against mine meant something.

At the sink, she handed me a wet serving spoon.

“You’re enjoying my family.”

“I am deeply afraid of your grandmother, but yes.”

“Ruth likes you. Ruth asked if I had retirement savings. She likes you seriously.”

I dried the spoon and set it down. “What about you?”

Clare’s hands went still in the soapy water. Outside, the family was laughing on the porch. Inside, it was just us. The yellow kitchen light and the low hum of the dishwasher.

“What about me?” she asked.

“Do you like me seriously?”

She looked down. And for once the mighty Clare Bennett had no immediate reply.

I regretted the question for half a second.

Then she pulled her hands from the sink, dried them on a towel, and turned to face me.

“Yes,” she said. One word. No armor.

My chest tightened.

“I like you seriously,” she continued, quieter. “And inconveniently, and probably too much for someone I’m supposed to beat out for a promotion.”

I smiled faintly. “That part is mutual.”

“The promotion or the too much?”

“Yes.”

She huffed a laugh, but it shook at the edges.

“This could get messy,” she said.

“It could.”

“I don’t want to be office gossip.”

“Me neither.”

“I don’t want people thinking I got distracted. Or that I softened. Or that if you get the job, it’s because I was busy making hard eyes over cobbler.”

“For the record, your cobbler eyes were more predatory than romantic.”

“Ethan.”

I stepped closer, not touching her yet. “I don’t want to take anything from you. Not credit. Not space. Not the promotion. If we do this, we do it honestly.”

Her eyes sharpened. There she was. I loved that part of her, too. The challenge. The refusal to let me drift vague when the answer mattered.

“When,” I corrected.

Her expression changed. And that single shift felt like stepping into sunlight.

“When we do this,” I said, “we tell HR if we need to. We don’t hide anything that could hurt either of us. We compete fairly. We don’t make decisions in parking lots after kissing under oak trees.”

“A shame. That was a strong location for decision-making.”

“I’m open to future oak tree discussions.”

Clare smiled. Then she reached for the front of my shirt and tugged me closer. I went willingly.

“Say the important part again,” she said.

I rested my hands at her waist. “Which part?”

“The when.”

The word was barely out before I kissed her. This time there was nothing careful about the way she kissed me back. She rose into it, one hand sliding up my chest, the other curling behind my neck like she’d been waiting all night to do that again.

I backed her gently against the counter, and she made a soft sound that nearly ended my ability to behave in her mother’s kitchen.

I broke the kiss first, forehead resting against hers. “We are in range of your grandmother,” I whispered.

Clare’s breathing was uneven. “That woman has lived through three wars and my teenage years. She’ll survive.”

I laughed, and she smiled against my mouth.

Then she kissed me once more. Slower. Not for anyone else. Not fake. Not accidental.

When we separated, she kept her hands on me.

“I don’t know how to do this,” she admitted. “Date. Trust it.”

The honesty scraped me clean. I brushed my thumb along her cheek.

“Then we’ll go slow.”

“I invited you to a family barbecue and kissed you on a sidewalk within six hours. Slow from this point forward.”

“That sounds like something a man says right before he makes a bad choice.”

“I make excellent choices.”

“You bought a grocery store pie and called it contribution.”

“You told me to.”

“I was testing you.”

“I passed.”

Her smile softened again. “You did,” she said.

We returned outside carrying clean dishes and trying to look respectable. Based on Paige’s face, we failed.

The final fireworks began just after 9:30. Everyone gathered on the lawn with folding chairs and citronella candles. Clare and I stood near the back beneath the oak tree where the shadows were kind.

She leaned against my side, and after a moment, I wrapped my arm around her waist. She didn’t stiffen. She relaxed. That simple trust felt bigger than any kiss.

Colors bloomed overhead — gold, red, blue — lighting the yard in brief flashes. Clare’s head rested against my shoulder. Her family cheered around us. For once, she wasn’t performing confidence. She was simply there, warm and real against me.

“I should probably apologize,” she said.

“For dragging me here?”

“For lying. I didn’t plan for this to happen.”

I looked down at her. “You didn’t lie about the important part.”

Her eyes lifted.

“You wanted me here,” I said. “I wanted to stay.”

A burst of silver lit her face.

“I still want you here,” she said.

So I kissed her temple because anything more would have gotten us arrested by Grandma Ruth’s standards, and held her through the finale.

Later, as we loaded leftovers into Clare’s car, my phone buzzed. A text from our boss, Maryanne.

Need both of you in early Monday. Director decision timeline moved up.

Clare read it over my shoulder. The promotion reality waiting at the curb. Her smile faded, but she didn’t step away.

I turned to her. “We’ll handle it.”

She studied me in the dark, fireworks smoke drifting above us. Then she reached for my hand.

“Yes,” she said. “We will.”

The drive back to my apartment was quieter than the drive there. Not uncomfortable — just full. Clare had one hand on the wheel and the other resting on the console between us. After three minutes of pretending I was a gentleman, I took it.

She glanced over. “Bold.”

“I’ve met your grandmother. I fear nothing now.”

“Ruth asked for your phone number before we left.”

“For emergencies?”

“For pie crust tips and background checks.”

I laughed, and her fingers tightened around mine.

But when we stopped outside my building, reality settled again. Monday. Maryanne. Director of operations. The office where Clare and I had built our rivalry so carefully, neither of us had left room for anything softer.

Clare put the car in park but didn’t unlock the doors.

“If this gets weird,” she said, “I don’t want to lose what we had before.”

“Arguing over subcontractor schedules?”

“Yes.”

“Competitive email timestamps?”

“Absolutely.”

“Mutual irritation hiding unresolved attraction?”

Her mouth curved. “Especially that.”

I turned toward her. “We might lose some of it.”

Her smile faded, so I added, “But maybe we get something better.”

Clare looked at me for a long moment, then leaned across the console and kissed me. It was slower than the others. Less fireworks, more promise. Her hand rose to my jaw, and I felt the faint tremble in her fingers before she steadied herself.

When she pulled back, she whispered, “I’m scared.”

That did something to me. Not because Clare sounded weak. She didn’t. She sounded brave enough to tell the truth.

I covered her hand with mine. “Me, too.”

“You don’t seem scared.”

“I have a calm face. It’s misleading.”

“I hate your calm face.”

“No, you don’t.”

“No,” she admitted, kissing me once more. “I really don’t.”

Monday morning, we arrived separately. Professionally. Clare wore a cream blouse and tailored navy pants. Her hair was pinned back. Her face was composed. To anyone else, she looked like the same Clare Bennett who could make a contractor apologize to a spreadsheet.

But when she passed my desk, she placed a coffee beside my keyboard. Black, two sugars — my order. On the cup she had written: for emotional support. Unfortunately.

I looked up across the office. She pretended not to smile.

Maryanne called us in at 8:30. Our boss was a silver-haired woman with sharp glasses and a sharper instinct for nonsense. She looked at both of us over a folder.

“I’ll make this simple,” she said. “The director role is changing.”

Clare and I exchanged a glance.

Maryanne continued. “Larkin and Vale is opening a second operations track. Hospitality and commercial will split. Clare, I want you leading hospitality operations. Ethan, I want you leading commercial operations.”

For a second, neither of us spoke.

Maryanne arched a brow. “This is usually where people say thank you.”

Clare recovered first. “Thank you.”

“Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”

Maryanne closed the folder. “You both earned it. Separately. Repeatedly. Exhaustingly.”

Clare’s lips twitched.

Then Maryanne leaned back. “Now, is there anything else I should know before I send the announcement?”

Clare and I went still.

Maryanne sighed. “I have eyes. Also, Diane Bennett posted seventeen photos from Saturday’s barbecue. In six of them, Ethan is holding Clare’s shoes.”

Clare shut her eyes.

I said, “In my defense, I was instructed.”

Maryanne removed her glasses. “I don’t care who you date, provided you disclose it properly. Don’t create conflicts of interest, and don’t make me attend an HR seminar before lunch.”

Clare straightened. “We’ll disclose, and we’ll keep it professional.”

I added, “We will.”

Maryanne looked between us. “You two have never kept anything between you professional. You turned budget reviews into competitive theater.”

“That was professional theater,” Clare said.

Maryanne pointed at the door. “Go fill out the form.”

So we did.

Standing outside HR with a clipboard, Clare looked at the relationship disclosure paperwork like it had personally offended her.

“Romance really does come with documentation,” she muttered.

“I told you I’d revise the files.”

She looked up at me, expression softening. “We’re really doing this.”

I took the pen from her hand, signed my name, and gave it back. “When,” I reminded her.

Clare smiled. Then she signed, too.

We did go slow after that. Mostly because Clare insisted that if we became office gossip, she wanted the gossip to be well-paced and structurally sound.

We had our first real date the following Friday at a tiny Italian place with crooked candles and a waiter who called everyone beautiful. Clare wore green. I forgot how to read the menu.

“You’re staring again,” she said.

“I’m off the clock.”

“That doesn’t make it polite.”

“No, but it makes it honest.”

She tried to hide her smile behind her wine glass.

After dinner, we walked along the river, and she told me more about the parts of herself Tyler had made her doubt. I told her about my parents’ divorce, about how calm had become my way of making sure no one noticed when I was falling apart.

Clare listened the way I had once listened to her Benton numbers — with full attention, no performance. Then she took my hand.

“You don’t always have to be steady,” she said.

I looked at our joined hands. “Neither do you.”

She leaned her head against my shoulder. “Terrible. We’re becoming emotionally mature.”

“I’ll sabotage us with a spreadsheet joke.”

“Please do.”

Six months later, Clare’s family invited me back for Christmas. This time, I arrived as her actual boyfriend, carrying a pie I had made myself after three phone consultations with Grandma Ruth. Diane cried anyway. Bill asked me to help with the roast like I had been family for years. Paige gave me a wrapped gift labeled to my favorite formatting error.

Clare found me in the kitchen after dinner standing beneath a sprig of mistletoe that Paige had absolutely placed there on purpose.

She looked up at it, then at me. “This family is subtle as a parade.”

“I can leave if you’re uncomfortable.”

She stepped closer and hooked a finger through my belt loop. “Don’t you dare.”

So I kissed her in the warm kitchen while her family pretended not to watch from three separate doorways.

By the following summer, we were still competing. Not for the same job anymore, but over everything else. Best client satisfaction score. Fastest permit approval. Whose turn it was to choose takeout. Whether my apartment or hers had the better couch. Hers did. I denied it on principle.

On the next Fourth of July, Clare and I went back to her parents’ barbecue together. No lie this time. No emergency boyfriend request. No Tyler by the cooler. No performance. No exit strategy. Just us.

She wore a yellow sundress, and I carried her shoes before she even asked.

At dusk, we ended up on the same porch swing where we had held hands in secret a year earlier. Fireflies blinked over the lawn. Kids chased sparklers. Ruth sat nearby like a tiny floral surveillance system, knitting something suspiciously baby-sized for no reason.

Clare leaned into my side. “Do you ever think about how ridiculous this started?” she asked.

“You mean when my work rival abducted me to a barbecue and promoted me to boyfriend without consent?”

“You could have said no.”

“I could have.”

“Why didn’t you?”

I looked down at her. At the woman who still challenged me in meetings, still stole the best bite of dessert, still reached for my hand when she was nervous and pretended it was for my benefit.

“Because I wanted to see what would happen,” I said.

Her smile softened. And I kissed her once, slow and sure, as fireworks began opening over the rooftops.

“And I’m really glad I did.”

She rested her head against my shoulder, her hand folded in mine while the sky filled with color and her family laughed all around us.

A year earlier, I had arrived as a lie with mustard on my shirt. Now I sat there with Clare tucked against my heart, feeling like every wrong turn had brought me home.

What would you have done if your work rival dragged you to a family barbecue and introduced you as her boyfriend?