I squeezed my eyes shut for only a second or two. “Might have or did?”

“Definitely did.”

“What did he say?”

“Mostly, he asked if you were okay. He was worried. It was really sweet. He really cares about you, you know,” she said as if she were telling me something I didn’t already know.

“I know he does.” I did know. Or at least, I thought I did. I always thought I understood just how much I’d been denying my feelings for him my whole life, but I truly had no idea until the night I’d let myself fall into bed with him. Self-realization was a funny thing when you thought you were already pretty self-aware.

She hopped off the counter, and I wanted to shout in celebration while simultaneously wiping down where she’d just been perched. Instead, I stayed put as she made her way over to me, kicked off her shoes, and sat down.

Oh, sure, now, she took her shoes off.

“So”—she paused as she adjusted to get comfortable, causing my body to bounce on the cushions—“have you changed your mind yet?”

I gave her a confused look. “About what?”

“About James, dummy,” she said like I was the stupidest person on the planet.

“What about him?” I needed her to clarify what she meant exactly.

“About giving up on him. Walking away from him. Have you decided to fight for the right thing yet?”

The right thing. Her accusation stung.

“I wish it were that easy.”

She tsked me, her disappointment apparent. “It is that easy. You choose him over your brain-dead dad. You choose the guy who would stand beside you instead of the one who kicked you to the curb. You make a choice, Julia. And you choose James the same way he’s so obviously chosen you.”

To be honest, it was one of the topics I’d been thinking about all day. I’d been trying to figure out how to keep my family winery and be with James, too. Was it even possible? If I gave my dad an ultimatum, would he really disown me? And, if he did, would James’s family even accept me, or would we both be ostracized from those we loved because we wanted to be together? How far would our families go to punish the two of us for having feelings for each other and wanting to see where this led?

“I don’t know how to choose him. At least, not yet.”

A small smile curved her lips as she asked, “But you want to?”

My heart kicked up a notch as I finally said the words out loud for the first time, “I do.”

Three hard knocks at the front door made us both jump before our eyes locked on each other.

“Who is it?” I whisper-shouted.

Jeanine shrugged her shoulders. “How would I know?” she whisper-shouted back and moved to get up from the couch.