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“I’m not ungrateful because I don’t wanna live in Charlotte and sell used cars for a man that don’t give a fuck about me. And skipping over how shitty he was so you can placate him is all you seem to want to do these days.”

“Watch your mouth!” she gasped. “You’ve always been so finicky and sensitive, Noah. I don’t know what else you want from us. We’re not apologizing for wanting the best for you. You already ran our credit into the ground when it took you six years to?—”

“Mom!”

That word was enough to shut the woman up. For now.

“I paid you back. Every cent, so what’s the point in throwing it in my face right now?”

Six years for what? What had he paid back?

My nosiness and need to defend him were battling heavily. Luckily, silence won.

Shut up, True. This is not your place.

I recited that in my head at least ten times while I watched Noah diffuse the situation on his own. He spoke evenly, never raising his voice every time she tried to talk over him.

After his mom’s voice rose again, the dressing room attendant reappeared and asked us if everything was okay.

My tongue was heavy in my mouth, weighed down by the urge to curse Noah’s mother out, but I regained control and asked for the dress I was wearing in a size 16. I had on an 18, but it was baggy in some places and I wanted it to fit me like a glove.

When she returned with the size I needed, I disappeared to change into my own clothes. And when I opened the door again, Noah’s mother was gone and he stood there with a closed off expression until he saw me.

“You ready?” he asked, eyeing the mountain of clothes in my arms.

“Yep.”

We left the store with three of the six dresses I tried on and made it out to the parking garage without uttering a word about his mother.

But when he opened the door for me, I placed a hand on his forearm and asked, “Are we gonna talk about that?”

He looked down at the pavement and then back at me. “I don’t want to. Not right now.”

There was an unspoken plea in his words, so I nodded and accepted his help getting in the truck. We stopped for lunch before heading back to Bliss Peak and the only thing on my mind was how heated his mother’s words had been when they were directed at him.

My parents could be nosy. Borderline meddlesome. But there was never a doubt in my mind about how much they adored me. They never raised their voices at me and had never in my life belittled me, let alone in front of a stranger.

I didn’t understand how Noah remained as sweet as he was if he was the product of…that. I still hadn’t met his dad, but if his mother was the parent he preferred, I knew I wasn’t fucking ready.

Two and a half hours later, Noah pulled into the horseshoe driveway in front of the resort instead of taking us straight home and the realization that I was about to see Greyson hit me like a tidal wave.

“I need to grab something. But you can wait in Greyson’s office for me.”

Nerves roiled in my gut. “I can just wait in the car. It’s not that cold.” Itwasfucking cold. The dew on the ground had iced over by the time I snuck out of their house this morning.

“Nah because then you’ll see the surprise. Come on, just five minutes and I’ll come get you.”

Staring straight ahead for a beat, I nodded. “Okay. Five minutes.”

A white cat with a pink collar, purring at Greyson’s feet was not the image I expected when Noah showed me to his office a minute later.

Greyson looked unfazed by the cat while he finished a call at his desk.

“I didn’t know y’all had a cat,” I murmured.

“We don’t.”

“She’s new.”