Chapter 1

Hanna

I braced myself for a family onslaught before knocking on the door of my childhood home. Everything looked the same in the dim evening light typical of an overcast Seattle day, but somehow it felt different. Or maybe I felt different. My insides jittered when the door swung open.

“So, have you met any men yet?” My mother didn’t miss a beat. She was forever asking the same damn question. Part of me wanted to laugh because I could have been a random delivery guy standing at her door, but somehow she still recognized my knock although I’d been away at Stanford since last summer break.

“Geez, Mom. I haven’t even made it through the door yet.”

“Oh, now, come on. You can tell me.”

She beamed at me, and I tried to focus on her joy. Instead, the lines on her face, the pained limp as she stood back to welcome me in, and the brittle gray hair shrouding her expression kicked the middle of my chest. Something inside me grew dark at the sight. A familiar urgency nipped at the edges of my thoughts, making my heart race and my hands shake. Time was my enemy.

“There’s my girl.” The deep, booming voice slashed at my growing anxiety, thankfully.

“Hi, Daddy.” I smiled. My father wrapped me in his arms, standing between my mother and me. The understanding smile he gave me was his way of telling me not to listen to Mom.

“Top of your class. I’m so proud of you, honey,” he murmured in my ear.

“Thanks, Dad.”

“You know, I had your brother a month before I turned twenty-one,” my mother said.

“Sweetheart,” my father warned.

“Well, she’s not getting any younger, honey.”

Well, thanks, Mom. I wasn’t getting any peace, either, not since she felt free to feed the beastly fears already pushing me to desperate measures.

“She’s also one of the smartest girls in her class.”

“The smartest.” I wanted credit for all my hard work.

“Well, tell her to use those smarts to find herself someone to settle down with,” my mother said.

“Mom, seriously. I can’t even drink yet.”

“I just know how much you want to be a mother, Hanna.” She sighed. “And I want that for you. I want you to fall in love and have a house full of children. I see all the books you try to hide from us. I know you aren’t reading those for school.”

She was right. I wanted a child right now more than anything, but not for the reasons she thought. Yes, I wanted someone to dedicate themselves to me. I wanted the full Norman Rockwell, white-picket-fence lifestyle, a house with a yard and a strong, brassy man who would come inside, sweating and panting, for lemonade before I handed him a glass. But those desires didn’t mean anything. They were just fantasies I let myself indulge in while I read.

I didn’t have time to find and build the right relationship with someone, but that wasn’t going to keep me from starting a family. This was the part my parents wouldn’t understand, not even Mom.

“You know we love you, honey, and we are so proud of you,” my father said.

“Thanks.” I smiled, but it was more of a reflex. The number of times he’d spoken those words was staggering. Most people would kill to hear them from their parents, so it was tough to admit they often felt like a noose tightening around my throat.

My dad was wonderful, and he only wanted the best for me. Stanford was challenging. You really had to stand out if you didn’t already have connections. That was why he had pushed me so hard, always putting something extra in my schedule or making me take a harder class. In the end, it had paid off. Not only had I gotten into Stanford, but I’d developed a work ethic that had gotten me to the top of my class. Next year I’d be awarded my degree with Distinction, the highest honor Stanford bestowed.

Yeah, something to be proud of, but how would his feelings change by the end of my visit? Just wondering made my heart hurt, because I was bound to disappoint him. The whole family, too, because I was taking control of my life this summer, no matter the risk to my familial relationships.

“Honey! Wanna help me set the table?”

“Coming, Dad!”

I wasn’t sure if it was the West Coast culture or just the modern times, but a woman couldn’t pronounce motherhood as her primary goal in life without enormous backlash from all directions. My parents did great with my dad working one job and my mom being a stay-at-home mom, yet Dad rejected even the thought of me following that path. My brother, Marcus, would be even worse if I so much as hinted at it. It was a career or the psych ward in their book, because you had to be crazy to abandon a traditional career or to be a single parent with one.

Mom was a different story, though. I watched her shuffle around the stove putting finishing touches on my favorite, pot roast with garlic mashed potatoes. Despite the marriage pressures, she loved me, and she lit up with it every time I saw her. It would kill her to know how jealous I’d been as a child, how I’d watched videos and seen pictures of Marcus doing so many fun things with Mom and Dad. He’d gotten the best of them. It wasn’t their fault I’d been born so late in their lives, eleven years after Marcus, but I refused to let that happen to my children. I had a plan, and the lack of the right man in my life wouldn’t end it. I just needed a right-now man.

“So, have you called Stacey? She’s called here four times in the past two days lookin’ for ya,” my dad said.

“Not yet. I’ll call her after we set the table.”

“Why don’t I just tell your mother you set it.” He winked.

I threw my arms around him before I ran up the stairs. Stacey was my best friend and everything I wanted to be. She’d married her perfect man two years ago, and right off the bat, they had tried for a baby. Things hadn’t gone the way she’d wanted, though, and staying pregnant had proven difficult. I flew in when they lost their first baby and stayed up night after night letting her cry. She had called me, ecstatic and petrified, when they were pregnant again. I’d told her that this was going be it. She was finally going to be a mom.

Then she knocked on my dorm room two months later with tears in her eyes. She’d lost weight, she wasn’t sleeping, and they had lost their second child.

I used to tell her how much I wanted her life, how much I wanted a husband and the potential for children. Now it was hard. Every time I brought up kids, it hurt her deeply. When I’d been home last, she had mentioned they might start trying again. I’d never heard anything else about it, and I hadn’t pressed.

“Hey, Stace.”

“Hanna, you’re home! Finally, dear Jesus. When can I see you? Can I come over now? We have so much to catch up on.”

“Well, we’re about to have dinner. Then I’m sure Mom wants to berate me more for not being pregnant already, so what about lunch tomorrow?”

She fell silent a second too long. Damn my mouth sometimes.

“Don’t let your mother pressure you into something like that, Hanna,” Stacey said, her voice soft.

“Stace, you know that’s not what she’s doing . . .”

“You still want a baby?”

Her lack of emotion worried me, and, as usual, it was a difficult subject to discuss with her. I shamelessly used avoidance. “So, lunch tomorrow?”

“Hanna. Are you seeing someone?”

“Well . . . not right this second,” I said.

“Then what’s the point of having a child?”

“Are we not doing lunch tomorrow?”

“Just answer the question.”

“Stace, look. Yes, I want a child, and yes, I want to date. But you know as well as I do that having a baby is about so much more for me than just being a mother.”

She sighed, and I wanted so much to go back to making lunch plans. I wanted to look forward to throwing my arms around my best friend and holding her close. I wanted to look forward to all the sex stories we would share with each other after promising to never speak about them again. I wanted to look forward to ordering two desserts instead of just one.

“You know I love you unconditionally,” Stacey said.

“And that’s why you’re my best friend.” I smiled because she’d basically declared a truce. I could probably expect another round in person, but for now I didn’t have to explain myself or hide my plans for this summer.

“So, yes, lunch tomorrow,” she said. “Any particular place?”

“Do you really have to ask?”

“Small Caesar salad with a full-sized chipotle salmon panini—”

“—with two orders of strawberry cheesecake on the patio,” we both said in unison.

“I can’t wait to see you, Stace.”

“I’ve missed you, too, Hanna.”

I hung up just as Mom yelled up the steps. “Hanna! You have guests!”

“Where is our Hanna?” A voice called out through the house.

“Mr. and Mrs. Marx!”

I flew down the stairs and ran straight into their arms. Mr. Marx picked me up and swung me around. Mrs. Marx wanted me to spin so she could get a good look at me before she started doting on everything about me.

“Oh my god, you’ve grown so much! I swear, you change every single time we see you. Are you growing your hair out?”

“Yes, I am.” I smiled.

“Well, it looks beautiful.”

Marcus and I had grown up beside the Marx family. Their son, Kason, and Marcus had been best friends growing up, and they’d kept in touch even after Kason had left town and gotten rich. I’d been the nerdy girl with braces and glasses who’d had a massive crush on my brother’s best friend. It was so cliché that remembering it made me queasy.

“So,” my father said in a booming voice, “do the two of you want to stay for dinner? We have more pot roast and whipped potatoes than we know what to do with.”

Dinner started off relatively predictably. Dad went on about me acing all my classes and being at the top of my class. Mom smiled and told them how well I was doing with swimming and how they wanted me to be the head of the team this year. Mr. Marx was all too happy to share his own swimming experiences from college.

I’d heard the story of how he single-handedly won their state conference when half the team got sick the day before a million times. Still, it never got old. He smiled and laughed every single time. Plus, his smile reminded me of Kason.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you. Kason’s coming home for an entire month.”

“I haven’t seen Kason in years.” Mom said some other things, but I caught none of the next several seconds of conversation.

Kason. My blood flashed cold and then hot at the mention of his name. My practically lifelong crush had started early, when he’d been a tall, lanky kid, and had only grown, my schoolgirl love not seeing our twelve-year age difference. He’d always been handsome, but something had changed and his muscles became more defined each time he came home. His broad shoulders rounded out in sinewy muscles, and I hadn’t been able to keep my eyes off him.

I hadn’t seen him since the day I’d left for college. He’d come to the party my parents had hosted in my honor. Before I’d gotten in my car, Kason had stopped me for a hug—or more of an embrace. You’re gonna do wonderful, Hanna, he’d said softly in my ear. I’d never forget how it had felt to be in his arms, how his breath in my ear had made my spine shiver and how ecstatic I’d been when his hands had hit the small of my back. If I had thought I’d kicked my trivial middle school crush, that moment shattered the bubble I’d created for myself.

I still remembered his jet-black hair and how it had smelled the day before I’d left town. I remembered how his light blue eyes had seemed almost sad that I was leaving for college. Maybe it had just been my imagination, but I could’ve sworn his hands had pressed a little too deeply into my skin.

“So, when is Kason coming back?” I asked, hoping they hadn’t already said when.

“Tomorrow.”

I shoved my fork into my food and picked it up while my mother shot me a curious glance. Kason Marx was coming home tomorrow, and he would be here for an entire month. Of course he would come back during the summer I was here.

“Wow. Tomorrow.”

“Yeah! We’re so excited. You guys should definitely come over tomorrow evening.”

“Yeah. My wife here’s cooking a spread, and we’ll have enough to feed a crowd.”

“Don’t I understand that,” my father said with a laugh.

“Will you come on over, Hanna?” Mr. Marx asked.

“Well, I’ve got plans with Stacey tomorrow for lunch, but I don’t see why not.”

“Perfect! We’ll plan for all of you to be there.” Mrs. Marx smiled.

I tried to smile back, but my mind drifted to Kason. I would see him tomorrow, and my thoughts would be all about his hands and his lips on my body. How the heck could I focus on finding my right-now man with Kason anywhere near me?