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I roll my eyes. “You didn’t ask.”

Ivy’s looking at me like she wants to fuck me, and I’m pretty sure she likes how I treat my mom. But also, she needs a day or two to heal after what we did last night for the first time.

Fuck, I’m getting hard just thinking about it.

“Yes, we’re more than happy to help,” Ivy says.

My mom beams as she studies my wife. “I want to know everything about my gorgeous daughter-in-law. How long have you two known each other?”

Ivy opens her mouth to answer, and rather than wait for some lie or half-truth to come out, I jump in first and keep it vague.

“Long enough.”

My mom rolls her eyes. “You’ve always been so secretive with your love life, honey. Are you going to come back here and throw any kind of party?”

I shake my head. “I’m sorry you weren’t there for the wedding. It was really just a spur-of-the-moment thing and probably for the best since we kept paparazzi down that way.” I reach over and grab Ivy’s hand.

“Yes, of course,” she agrees. “I’m sad I missed it, but I’m still waiting on those pictures from you,” she scolds her son. “Are you guys hungry? I can order some pizza.”

“Yeah, I think we’re both probably hungry. Does pizza sound okay?” I ask, and Ivy nods.

“Sounds perfect,” she says.

“Pepperoni?” my mom asks.

Ivy nods. “Whatever you get will be great.”

“Ugh,” my mom says. “I just love this girl already.”

I don’t know what causes me to say it—maybe it’s because we’re kind of faking it a little bit in front of my mom, or maybe it’s because it’s genuinely how I’m starting to feel about her—but the words fall out of my mouth before I can stop them. “Me too.”

My mom sighs as she leaves the room to order the pizza.

And when I glance over at Ivy, her face has gone pale.

“You okay?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “Did you just...” She trails off.

I’m not sure if I should admit what I just said or if I should pretend it was for my mother’s benefit. But when it comes to women, I have tended to err on the side of caution my entire life. Something about Ivy is making me want to play things a little differently.

Maybe it’s being here in the home where I was raised. Or maybe it’s just after the last twenty-four hours we’ve shared. But suddenly I feel like I want to be honest with her.

“Was that for your mom’s benefit?” she asks quietly, her voice low as we hear my mom greeting the pizza place from the landline in the kitchen. Yep, we still have a landline here in Minnesota.

I shake my head, and I keep my voice low too when I say, “It wasn’t for her. It was for me. For you. It was the truth. After the last few weeks together...” I shake my head as I trail off. “I don’t know, Ivy. I’m fucking falling for you. And it was supposed to be no feelings involved. Simple. Clean break after a year. I don’t want that anymore.”

“Yeah. I don’t want that either,” she whispers. “And I’m falling for you too.”

Fuck.

I know that feelings are only going to complicate things, and that’s why I’ve been careful to avoid them for so long.

But maybe I found the one person I’m supposed to have feelings for, and maybe we’ll figure out a way to make this work.

We’re enjoying pizza an hour later from my favorite place as my mom recounts story after story of my childhood, peppering in questions about Ivy along the way. She even dragged out the old picture albums, and we all laughed together at my awkward phase when I was twelve to fourteen and my height hadn’t quite caught up to my weight.

It was also the years of braces and a really, really bad haircut.