Sharon had a feeling Patrick and Lexie would be disappearing for a bit during the next large gathering at the Standish household.

Unfortunately, the fun was over and now it was time to face her family. It was only a two-and-a-half-hour drive, maybe more depending on traffic, but as far as Sharon was concerned that wasn’t nearly long enough. She sighed as she got into the car, already feeling the dread that accompanied every trip home building in her chest.

“Hey, chin up,” Jake said cheerfully as he slid into the driver’s seat and started the car. “It’s going to be fine.”

“I would love to not be able to say ‘I told you so’ at the end of this weekend, but I know better than that.”

Jake shot her a sidelong look, pulling out of the parking lot and heading toward the highway. His lips quirked. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you about the power of positive thinking?”

She scowled at him. She was supposed to be the annoying one, not the other way around. Then again, her family did tend to mess with her equilibrium like nothing else in her life. A moment later, her sense of humor returned, if only a little.

“Later, I’m going to remind you that you said that,” she retorted.

He snorted and shook his head.

“They’re your family,” he said insistently, and Sharon rolled her eyes, knowing that the statement meant something entirely different to her than it did to him. This was why she’d stopped trying to explain to him. He clearly thought she was exaggerating every time she tried to tell him what they were like. “It’s a wedding. We’ll have fun.”

Shaking her head, Sharon reached over to turn up the music. She didn’t want to get into it again.

They’d had a good week together and it felt more like he was her boyfriend than her fuck buddy. They hadn’t explicitly talked about it, but he just didn’t get her family issues. To him, family loved each other unconditionally and, no matter how they got along, would come together if they needed to in order to support each other. He had no idea what it was like to live with parents whose love was conditional, he couldn’t even imagine it.

Not that she’d tried too hard, if she was honest. Getting herself worked up before she had to face her family wouldn’t help anything and she figured he probably wouldn’t believe it till he saw it himself.

If then.

She still remembered one of her exes insisting that her parents’ manipulations and criticisms were just their expression of love and that she needed to learn to accept that.