“How many women have you been with, do you think?”

He drew back, snorting. “What the hell kind of question is that?”

“I mean, you’ve spent a really long time just kind of...being good to everybody. And going out of town to hook up and whatever. I know you haven’t had relationships...”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I mean... I hook up. I have since high school. I don’t count them.”

She nodded. “All right. Same. But like...those things were different than this. But all those guys I sort of knew, but I didn’t know, you know?”

“I expect that has something to do with it,” he said.

“I thought I understood sex but this feels like a totally different thing.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Because it is.”

Then they set about to eating their food, and she had to agree with him. This was different. Like a different thing entirely.

So yeah, maybe they didn’t have to try to see it through to the inevitable conclusion. Maybe all they had to do was be in the moment.

She really, really liked the moment.

In fact, she liked it more than any other moment she’d ever been in in all of her life.

And that was something to hang on to.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THEY WEREN’T ALL that careful over the next few weeks. If people in the family other than Rose had figured out something was going on, Sammy wouldn’t be all that surprised.

It was impossible for her to keep from giving Ryder lingering looks during the day. Impossible to keep from sharing secret smiles with him. There were so many secret things to smile about. Truly, she felt like she was in some kind of weird haze of bliss she hadn’t known was possible.

If her moment of insanity regarding pregnancy had led here, then she was happy to have had her small psychotic break.

It was well worth it.

And today she was engaging in one of her favorite pastimes. In fact, she might have called it one of her top two favorite pastimes until she had discovered sex with Ryder. But today was canning day. A day that she and Iris looked forward to every year. They would make all kinds of things. Jam and preserved lemons. Pickles and peppers.

It was a lot of work, but it was fun. And today they had managed to enlist the help of Rose and Pansy. She was happy to see Pansy—who she had seen a bit less of since her relationship with West had gotten started.

She understood.

It was normal to separate often to make your own thing. It was. Exceedingly and wonderfully normal.

And she was working very hard at not resenting it at all. Because she didn’t have any call to. Pansy had a right to a normal life.

Anyway, Sammy didn’t need normal. Not as long as she had Ryder.

“I want spicy pickles this year,” Rose announced when they had everything set out in front of them.