Normal. Everything was so beautifully, devastatingly normal.
“Hey!” Delaney appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. “You made it! Dinner’s almost…” She stopped, her eyes dropping to our joined hands. Her smile shifted, became knowing. “Oh.”
“Oh?” Trace came up behind her, looking between us. Then he saw our hands too. “Oh.”
“What’s oh?” Booker emerged from the kitchen, beer in hand, followed by Xander.
And then everyone was looking at us.
At our joined hands.
At the way we stood close together, united.
I felt Leigh tense and I pulled her closer, wrapping my arm around her shoulders as I held her against my side. It only took a fraction of a second for me to feel her relax against me.
“Is there something you want to tell us?” Trace asked, but he was smiling. Like he’d been expecting this.
Leigh’s hand tightened on mine. I could feel her trembling against me.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice rougher than I intended. “There is.”
“Living room,” Xander suggested. “This feels like a sitting-down conversation.”
We all moved to the living room. My brothers, their wives, even the kids. Amelia climbed onto Blake’s lap, and Cade settled between Trace and Delaney on the couch, as Gage held Barrett against his chest. Everyone else found spots on chairs or the floor, and suddenly it felt like an intervention.
Or a trial.
Leigh and I stayed standing, still holding hands, facing them all.
“So,” I started, then stopped. How did you tell your family you’d fallen in love with their sister? How did you explain that you’d kept it secret not because you were ashamed but because you were scared?
“We’ve been seeing each other,” Leigh said, her voice steadier than I expected. “Since that first night I arrived.”
“The bar,” Xander said. He already knew, had already worked it out, but everyone else looked surprised.
“Before the family meeting,” I clarified. “The night before. We didn’t know... she didn’t know I was connected to you. I didn’t know she was your sister.”
“And then we found out,” Leigh continued. “And we should have stopped. We should have walked away. But we didn’t.”
Trace leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Why not?”
“Because I…” I stopped, looked at Leigh. “Because I couldn’t.”
“Because it felt right,” Leigh added softly. “Because from that first conversation, before we knew about any complications, it just... fit. And neither of us wanted to lose that.”
“So you kept it a secret while you got to know each other,” Delaney said. She winked at me and I resisted the smile I wanted to give her for trying to help us out.
“We were going to tell you,” I said quickly. “We’ve been planning to. We just wanted to figure out what this was first. Before we made it a family thing.”
“And what is it?” Booker asked. His face was unreadable, just like always, and I couldn’t tell if he was angry or just processing.
Leigh looked up at me, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears. I squeezed her hand, trying to give her strength.
“We’re in love,” she said simply.
The words hung in the air.
Cade broke the silence. “So you’re Uncle Dex’s girlfriend?”
