Their potential reaction wasn’t the reason I felt like throwing up the microwave popcorn and Twizzlers I’d had an hour ago for a working dinner. It was twofold—not only was going back home a big, uneasy deal but this would be Holden’s first time ever in my childhood home. Though he’d frequently given me a ride home from school, I’d never once invited him inside.

My parents’ lives hadn’t been easy, and that showed in the trailer where they’d lived since before I was born. They’d grown up in Kentucky, been high school sweethearts, and wound up pregnant with me before they’d graduated. My mom’s parents had kicked her out, and my dad’s hadn’t been supportive either, insisting he choose between my mom and them. He’d chosen us, and they’d left Kentucky to make their own future.

It was bad luck that had them settling in Dragonfly Lake thirty-five years ago—their car had broken down in Dragonfly as they’d been on their way farther south, and they’d been stuck here. My dad, who was the type of person who could repair just about anything, got a job working at Skeeter’s Auto Repair Shop to pay off their repair bill. That was the beginning of a life beholden to multiple jobs between them, and they never seemed to get ahead. But the one thing they had between them was honest-to-God lasting love. That alone had seemed to get them through hard times.

My stomach tightened, because my situation with Holden was the opposite in every way.

I reminded myself that I’d chosen this. To go through with a marriage of convenience, yes, but also, I’d decided long ago to put my energy into my career instead of a long-term relationship. My most important relationship was with my job, intentionally, because I never again wanted to go without lunch or shoes that fit or a furnace that worked. I also was determined to ease my parents’ lives as they got older.

I’d long ago set out to help my parents out however they would let me. We had a standing monthly date in Nashville, where I treated them to everything—from a fine dinner to a hotel room, lunch, a show, sometimes even shopping when I could get away with it, though they were proud and didn’t like to accept anything they considered “excessive.”

My biggest victory had been an SUV when their fifteen-year-old truck had died. Even then, they hadn’t let me buy it outright for them, but they’d accepted a big enough down payment from me that they could manage the monthly payments.