Dinner passed in a blur. I couldn’t taste the food or follow the conversation. Every time her stepmom laughed or asked me a question, I sat rigid, terrified I’d slip—or that someone else would sense the tension.
My wife still thinks I just get “a little shy” around her stepmom and teases me about it sometimes.
But the truth? I’ve kept a careful, polite distance ever since that night—not because I still care, but because one wrong look, one careless word, could blow up everything I’ve built with the woman I love.
And that’s a risk I’ll never take.
