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Desire and resentment smash inside me, a head-on collision of oppositional emotions.
He wants me so badly, he’s fucking his hand to my name, but he hasn’t even tried to m...
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He looks at me in a way he hasn’t in a very long time. Our eyes hold, and somehow I know we’re remembering the same thing.
I will my eyes not to stare at him. Not the part of him I know so intimately, not his long legs and powerful quads, whiter at the top, tan from mid-thigh down because the man’s a lucky freak of nature who turns golden brown the moment summer comes but has the loveliest alabaster skin in winter. It’s more difficult than it should be.
At this rate, I’ll wake up with a nice wine hangover. Tomorrow’s going to suck. But my husband came home. It was going to suck, anyway.
I spend a lot of time wishing there was some silver bullet that would make anxiety vanish from my life for good.
Freya’s always made me feel like my fixer impulses that shape our life are something she admires about me. She’s never made me doubt she loves me for who I am. And I love her for it.
But even though she’s accepting, empathic—so, so empathic—there’s a limit to what I’m willing to place on her shoulders.
Freya holds the world in her heart. All I’m doing is shielding her from the worst of it, compartmentalizing, so she has someone to lean into when we’re together. I thought I was doing a good job.
There’s a guy, grinning at her with unmasked interest. A fiery burst of fear and worry and possessiveness burns through me.
I’m not a jealous man. Freya’s my partner, not my possession. That said, when an asshole is staring down the neckline of my wife’s dress, and my wife is not—as the past would dictate—either “accidentally” dumping her drink on his expensive-looking boots or giving him her Mrs. Freeze eyes, I feel justified in my response.
I set a hand on her back, sighing with relief when she doesn’t arch away from it. In fact, I could swear she even leans in. Just a little. It feels monumental.
George, this is my husband, Aiden MacCormack.” Hah. So there, George. I’m her husband.
The oldest of her siblings, Freya loves them fiercely, protectively. The moment she catches a whiff of shit thrown their way, she’s in mama-bear mode.
Her mouth quirks, and my heart skips a beat. Freya just almost-smiled for me. It feels like the first drop of rain in a drought.
I have a good sense for chemistry, which is, of course, why I’m a good matchmaker.
That’s how Ryder and Willa got their start together—I made them project partners when they were students in my business mathematics class.
I may have gone a little overboard on that, but t...
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“I wish I had siblings.” “Not going to lie,” Ren says, taking a drink of his own, “I don’t know what I’d do without a big family. And I’m really glad Frankie wants a houseful.”
I remember how I felt two months into being with Freya, like she was air and sunlight, water and life, like if I lost her, I’d just stop existing. And I’ve never stopped seeing her that way.
I just got better at worrying about losing her—so worried, it started robbing me of the hours I used to devote to soaking her up, basking in her joy, her passion and laughter and kisses.
“Yeah. She’s the best.” “Who me?” Freya says, inserting herself and sweeping up her drink. “Aw, brother. You’re too sweet.”
“Isn’t there a proverb along the lines of ‘people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’? Deal with your own life before you start trying to orchestrate mine.” My smile fades. She has told him.
I’m not concerned from a fertility standpoint. I know things take time and conception is quick for some, not for others. I just want it so badly, it hurts.
It’s an ache that never leaves my chest, with every mom I see, whether pregnant or with children in arms or running ahead of her, the nagging question in the back of my head, When will it be me?
Even though she came to us through Willa, Ryder’s girlfriend, and Willa isn’t here, it wouldn’t have been strange for Rooney to attend anyway. She’s become so ingrained in the family it feels weird when she doesn’t come to Bergman functions.
Aiden’s an unapologetic matchmaker, and in the decade we’ve been together, his tendencies have started to rub off on me. I see pairings and chemistry, couples and possibility, all the time now. Unlike Aiden, though, I have the common sense to leave people alone, for the most part, to figure it out themselves.
Our reflections are like the start of a joke—a blonde, a redhead, and a brunette.
“You take the pill, right?” Frankie laughs emptily. “Yes. But I’m still paranoid that by sheer force of giant ginger will, Ren is going to knock me up.
she’s just a teenager, I’m almost twice her age, and because of that, we’ve never been close, even though I love her and couldn’t get enough of her as a baby.
Maybe I’ll work until forty. After that, I’m making Ren my cabana man and buying an island for all these kids we’re apparently having, since the guy already has a minivan to hold them. You’re all welcome any time.”
I hold a hand over my stomach, hating that I know for certain it’s empty.
Fika is ingrained in us. In Sweden, business pauses, life rests, and just briefly, you have coffee and a treat with friends or coworkers around you. It’s about resetting and connecting, refreshing
And in Mom’s house, shit gets dealt with over fika.
“A family vacation,” he says. My parents are floored. Thankful. Thrilled. And I had no idea this was coming.
Blissfully happy. An entire week in close quarters with Aiden, and I’ll have to act like everything’s fine to maintain that bliss, even though he and I are falling apart.
“Well, don’t come, then.” “I can’t not come, you asshole. That would hurt Mom and Dad.” He gives me a faint grin and sips his beer. “Guess you’re going to Hawaii, then.”
I’m late. Really fucking late, without a clear excuse for Freya as to why. But like hell was I going to tell her I’m running massively behind because I shit myself.
Of course she’s not answering. She doesn’t want to talk to me. I don’t want to talk to me, either.
Suddenly there’s a scuffle, then two men are on top of me, their faces unreadable in the darkness.
The other guy’s at my legs now, knocking me down, and I’m bodily hoisted across the lawn. A van door slides open before I’m shoved inside, despite trying damn hard to fight against it.
“Would it have been so hard to say, ‘Hey, Aiden, we need to talk to you’?”
“Viggo and I may have gone a little physically overboard, but we all agreed you’d need to be strongly coerced.”
“You scared the shit out of me. Jesus, guys. This isn’t a Liam Neeson action movie.”
I didn’t ask to be abducted by my brothers-in-law. What is this even about?”
“Welcome to your first Bergman Brothers Summit, Aiden. You’re in for a wild ride.”
“Listen, Aiden. Believe it or not,” Viggo says, “we don’t want to know the details about your love life with our sister.” The five of them shudder.
“We just need the big picture.” “The big picture of what?” I ask. Axel rubs the bridge of his nose. “Of how Mr. Matchmaker Romance, who brims with confidence and knowledge in this area and has kept our sister seemingly happy for over a decade, managed to bomb it so badly.”
“Basically,” Oliver translates, “you don’t have your head up your ass.” “Correction,” Viggo says. “You struck us as such. Clearly your head is way up your ass.
“It doesn’t affect you.” “There you’re wrong,” Ryder says. “Anything that affects you and Freya, affects us. We’re family.”
