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Linnie sets her hand on Freya’s pregnant belly—baby Bergman-MacCormack number three is due this summer—and pats gently before she presses a kiss. “I’m here,” Linnie tells her mother. “Just talking ’bout feelings with Uncle Viggo.”
But I thought about you. I wished you luck. I felt you wishing me luck, too.
“Under the statutes of the Bergman Family Code, ever since you and I swapped secrets, we are friends.”
A black-and-white Alusky that looks like it’s getting up in years snoozes on a dog bed at the foot of the bookshelf, a bowl of water beside it.
“Lucia’s hit her wall,” his brother Ren says, wrapping an arm around Viggo while a baby strapped to his chest with dark, fluffy hair wails.
Turning, Viggo hugs his brother, then plants a quick, soft kiss to the baby’s forehead, tenderly cupping her head as he does. A weird lump builds in my throat as I watch him. The baby’s cry dims and her eyes slip shut as Viggo swirls his fingers around her head, like a gentle scalp massage. He does it again, then another time. The crying stops. Her eyes flutter, then fall shut. Her mouth drops open for a tiny baby snore. She’s out like a light. Ren shakes his head as another Bergman joins the gathering, Viggo’s brother Oliver. “I tried that just two minutes ago,” Ren says in an indignant
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“Sorry, Ash. I’m a mere mortal. She’s hot. And she’s going to be even hotter driving an Italian vroom-vroom. I can’t say no.”
“Fuck anyone who makes you feel like you’re too much. If they feel that way, they aren’t enough for you.”
my gaze is focused on something else—the dimple at her elbow that I want to nip with my teeth, then chase with my tongue. A dimple that makes me wonder where else there are deep, soft dimples on Tallulah that I could graze my teeth over, lick my way across.
“Let me hug you, Lu?” I bite my lip, tears welling in my eyes. I hate crying. I hate it so much. “Lula,” he says, opening his arms. “Please. You’re killing me, standing there, sad and quiet and hurting. I’ve gotta do something—” I throw myself into his waiting embrace, and his arms wrap around me, tucking me close. My head under his chin, his hand splayed across my back. This is like no other hug I’ve ever had. He’s warm and strong; his shirt is cloud soft, and he smells like pure comfort. My arms twine around his waist. I bury my face in his chest and breathe deeply, trying so hard not to
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bring when I move in.” “Text me when you get home, then, so I’m not worried you’re a blue-haired, cute-as-a-button pancake on the highway.”
“ ‘Iron out the kinks,’ eh? Is he going to help ‘fill your plot holes,’ too?”
He’s the human embodiment of serotonin.”
This might be the most considerate thing anyone has ever done for me. It’s going to spoil me, make me want things like this, even when I’m gone and this is over. And I’m so scared to want anything from anyone. All it’s ever done is hurt me.
“I’m not a big brownie gal.” Viggo blinks like I’ve slapped him. Then he tugs his ball cap low, hiding his eyes. Heat creeps up his cheeks. I’ve embarrassed him.
Ouch
They looked like moose turds, honestly—”
It’s me. I’m the problem.” Viggo grins. “We’re a Swiftie, are we?”
“Tallulah—” Out tumble three very large men, tripping and bumping into each other. It takes a second before I recognize them—Ren, Viggo’s older brother; Oliver, his younger brother; and Seb, his sister Ziggy’s boyfriend.
“Seb, you’re in way too deep now. It’s called honorary Bergman status.” “It’s too early for earnest feelings, Ren,” Seb pleads. “I can’t choke up before noon; it’s a policy I have.” “Come here, you big secret softie,” Ren says, tugging him in for a hug.
“Cute as this cuddle slash tickle fest is, I believe we’ve gotten off topic.”
Seb kisses his fingertips, then brings them to Viggo’s cheek, which Viggo swats away. Ren gently tugs Viggo’s ball cap low and grins, saying, “Turn that frown upside down, brother.”
This woman, what she makes me feel, is so damn confusing. It isn’t butterflies in my stomach, more like ants under my skin. It’s not that light-headed, delirious magic I’ve been holding out for, but instead a tightness in my chest, a knot in my gut.
“Lu, I’m half-Swedish. I cannot allow for a single piece of IKEA furniture in my home to be assembled by some . . . some stranger, when these two hands are perfectly fit, when my genetics are designed to do this.”
“And I will not back down on this either: no fake plants.” Tallulah gasps. “Hey! That’s for my room. It’s the only kind of plant I can keep alive!” “Lula, I got some tough news for you, but you deserve to know the truth—it was never alive to begin with.”
While I consider myself a nonviolent man, I am about to break something.
I frown, remembering Axel, the tallest in our family, saying in his deep, quiet voice, “You should install them standard height. Someone else might want to use these cabinets one day, and they probably won’t be as tall as you.” I hate when my brother’s right.
“I was going to adopt all of them.” Her eyes widen. “All of them?” “Well, there are only five.” “Five!” she yells, leaning forward. “Five,” I confirm.
But you cannot really think adopting two dogs in addition to five kittens is a good idea right now.”
I am staring at her. I feel the beer warming my body, loosening my lips. “Twilight suits you, Lu. That’s all.” Tallulah’s quiet for a second, blinking, before she tips back her whiskey glass and drains it. “I know.” I laugh, hard and right from my belly. “Suits you, too,” she says casually. My laughter abruptly dies away.
“You,” she whispers, leaning in, clutching my jaw between her hands, “are hiding a hot-as-hell bone structure beneath all that beard. It’s a tragedy.”
“I thought about what it would be like to touch you. Kiss you. Taste you. Make you come undone. To have those big, beautiful eyes holding mine while I did it.”
“I also may have been reading a steamy scene when you walked in.” My jaw drops. “Wait. Romance novels do that to you?” “Mm-hmm,” he says, throwing me a glance over his coffee mug.
“Tallulah Jane Clarke. I’ll never know exactly how, emotionally, mentally, the world presents to you, how you experience it, in the same way I’ll never actually physically touch you, no matter how close I might try to get . . . But, that proximity, that touching-yet-not-touching . . .” His fingertips graze down my hand, making me shiver. He turns it over, tracing the lines of my palm, swirling up and down. “That . . . charged, impenetrable space between two people who feel so close—their hearts, their minds, their bodies—yet never truly touch, that place of mystery, that’s real. And I think,
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“Nah. I’m a reader. Not a writer. I just want to enjoy it, not make it my job, beyond pushing books I love on people.”
“That’s Romeo. And that’s Juliet.” My gaze flicks toward Viggo. “You’re kidding me. Those are their names?” “I’m trying not to let it bother me,” he admits. I stifle a laugh. “This is hilarious. The guy whose bookstore is devoted to happily ever after gets two dogs named for the main characters of the most famous tragic love story.” “Pff.” He waves a hand. “Not that. I’ve got a whole section in the store devoted to R and J retellings with happy endings. That doesn’t bother me.” “Then, what does?” He sighs. “They’re brother and sister.”
“Then, hold tight, Lu.” I sink my hand into her bun and tip her head back, earning her gasp. I wrap an arm around her waist and bring her closer. And then I give her everything I have.
her hair, which I yank out of its tie, until it spills, cool water blue around us, turning the world dark and peaceful, nothing but us.
“Sorry. I . . . kind of kiss-tackled you. And then got very carried away.”
Then she gifts me with the softest, sweetest press of her lips to my cheek, before she whispers, warm against my ear, “Best kiss of my whole damn life.”
Tallulah’s responded to my message with a sunshine-yellow heart.
“I just couldn’t break up a big brood of siblings. It didn’t feel right.”
“Yeah, I do. She’s sharp and chilly, but she can also be sweet and warm, when she wants to be.” I frown at the kitten as she nips me. “Sort of like a cat.
“I’m debating getting tiny kitten harnesses so we can all go for walks together.”
“Those . . . butterfly feelings. That sense that I’ve found my best friend, my perfect partner. The puzzle-piece-slipping-into-place click of rightness.”
the white and calico kittens crawl onto my lap, then up my thighs, before they tumble into a ball of play-fighting fur. “Hey, look,” Ollie says. “It’s us.” I laugh.
The fantasy romance section Ziggy lovingly curated and organized.
Jesus Christ, this woman has the most beautiful tits in the world, and I’m never going to touch them.
He 100 percent crocheted those cushion covers.
I’m concerned for that man’s joints. And sleep habits. When does he do all of this?
“C’mon, Lu.” He sets his fingers at the corners of my mouth and gently lifts. “Turn that frown upside down.” “One day,” I tell him, as I clasp his fingers and remove them from my face, “I’m going to write a thriller about a woman who snaps when one more person tells her to smile.”
