Within seconds, the porch filled with bodies and voices.
Sage blinked once.
Law had his own damn basketball team and hadn’t even needed to recruit.
He filed the information away automatically—faces, posture, height, the easy way they all moved around each other like this happened every time Law came home.
One of the men laughed and pointed toward the driveway. “Look who finally decided to show up.”
A woman beside him leaned against the rail with a grin.
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
Another voice came from the doorway.
“Are you boys planning to stand out there all afternoon?”
Sage’s gaze shifted.
Law’s mother stepped onto the porch. She was smaller than the others, but the space moved around her the second she appeared. Dark hair threaded with silver pulled loosely back, sharp eyes that looked like they missed very little. Her voice carried a slight Tennessee drawl, warm but unmistakably used to being listened to.
“Or are you coming inside at some point?”
Beside her, an older man stepped forward. Taller. Straight-backed in a way that had nothing to do with age and everything to do with habit. Broad shoulders, gray hair cut short, expression calm but watchful. The kind of man who had probably spent a lifetime assessing rooms the same way Sage did.
Law’s father.
Another detail filed away.
“Give them a minute,” the man said easily.
Then he nodded toward the yard behind the house.
“Tents are set up out back.”
Sage glanced past the porch toward the property again.
Barbecue smoke drifting somewhere beyond the trees.
Voices.
Movement.
A full house.
Law caught Sage’s hand before he could think about it.
“Come meet my family,” he murmured, already pulling him toward the steps.
Sage let himself be dragged along, still a little too bemused to protest.
That tight warmth in his chest didn’t go away.
By early evening, the heat had finally started to break.
Law stepped out onto the back porch, and the first thing that hit him was the smell—charcoal, smoked meat, something sweet underneath it. Sugar glaze, maybe. It pulled straight through his chest before anything else had a chance to.
For a second, it wasn’t this night.
