Chapter EIGHTEEN-ARLISS

“Okay, that was something I never needed to see in a million years,” I mutter to Kian, my voice light but tinged with the kind of shell shock that only comes from catching your grandfather getting busy in his underwear with a woman wearing a brassiere that looks like it could stop bullets.

We’re back in my room, finishing up packing a few things. Not everything—just enough for me to stay at Kian’s cabin for the night.

Give Gramps some space.

Let him play house with Melody, his brand-new fiancée, apparently.

Still reeling from that, by the way.

There’d been tea, cucumber sandwiches, and a very awkward but oddly sweet conversation.

Melody asked me to call her by her first name, and my grandpa—bless his seventy-four-year-old, orthotic-wearing, card-playing heart—looked about as smug as a man in love and a bathrobe could possibly get.

He even patted her hand like we were at some vintage black-and-white movie where the guy has to light a cigarette to seem cool.