Pull You In (Rivers Brothers 3)

"I should have reasoned with Helen to get your another week," Rush said, and I found his borderline—if not outright—fear of the Mallick matriarch charming. He was like a little boy afraid of getting his hand caught in the cookie jar.

I felt like that said good things about Rush, but I had no idea what it said about Helen.

Was she a harsh, hard woman? Would she be nit-picky about the women who joined the lives of the men she saw as adopted children?

Would she weigh and measure and find me wanting?

My ex had a mother, but no other family. And I guess the experience of having her in my life had been somewhat traumatizing. Because she was one of those moms who thought her underachieving, lazy, selfish son walked on water, and no woman would ever be good enough for him.

I didn't keep the house clean enough.

I didn't cook him his favorite foods.

I didn't give him children.

Children he did not want, I might add. But changing that mindset was somehow on me.

How could I convince him to want a child when he was too busy being one himself?

I spent every holiday with my stomach in knots over having to go to her house. Or, worse yet, have her come to mine. And because my mother was a mama bear in her own right, the two of them had gotten nearly into a fistfight one Christmas, making it so we had to split every holiday after into shifts. So I never had someone on my side.

I guess it never occurred to me during my marriage that my husband should have always been on my side.

"What are you thinking?" Rush asked, glancing over at me when we stopped at a red light. "The whole truth, not the half story," he clarified, knowing I had a tendency to sugar-coat things, to tip-toe around the true issues.

"I was just thinking about how my ex's mother used to treat me badly, and how he never said anything to try to stop it."

"We've established he's a dick," Rush agreed. "But I'm figuring this has less to do with him and more to do with you being worried about meeting Helen. I won't lie to you. If she thinks you're not the one, she probably won't be shy in saying that. That said, no one has ever brought someone serious to one of her dinners and had Helen say anything angsty. And beside that, I can't think of a single world where someone would talk shit about my woman in front of me, and I would stand there like a pussy and say nothing. That's not how this works. I know we're new, baby," he went on, giving my thigh another squeeze, "so I get why you don't just know this shit already. But it is my plan to get you to that level of trust in me."

"I trust you," I insisted. I did, too. Possibly more than I trusted anyone except my mother.

Maybe a big part of that was his ability to communicate his needs clearly, never sulking in a bad mood, refusing to tell me what was on his mind. I always knew where I stood with him. That sense of balance was refreshing. And it made it impossible to feel like the foundations were shaky, never forcing me into a panic mode.

The other part was likely his ability to read me, to accept me with all my many flaws. And even, not to see them as flaws at all.

"Never had to fight my own brain day in and day out, baby," he'd told me one night in bed. "That's got to be the most gangsta shit ever."

"It's going to be loud," he warned me again as we pulled up to the house, a sprawling home on lush green grounds, a few straggling yellow and red leaves littering the driveway and front walk, crunching under our feet as we got out of the car.

I wanted to tell him that it was okay, that I would be fine. But I learned not to make promises I couldn't keep when it came to how a situation was going to impact my mental health.

I hoped it would be fine, that I would find the racket charming and homey. But I also knew there was the potential for it to overwhelm me, to stress me out. I might need to excuse myself to the bathroom or the back porch to take a few calming breaths, get myself back together before I went into the thick of it again.

I figured this family would be understanding.

They'd welcomed Ryan's wife, Dusty, with open arms, never seeming to judge her for her anxiety issues.

"Helen's going to like that you cook," he added, squeezing my hand as we made it to the back door just as it burst open, sending a group of kids flying out, knocking into us as they squealed.