Mine goes to the one in my pocket.
A second later, my phone buzzes with an alert from the security system. Last year, after Barry Wise showed up at my house, I added another camera to the front of it. Now I don’t need to answer the door if I don’t want to, and I open the app to see who is at the porch.
The screen shows that it’s Sebastien. His brown hair is mussed from the motorcycle helmet tucked under his arm, his expression unusually serious. As I watch, his hand lifts toward the camera like he knows I can see him.
Because he does.
Haven looks at me. “Who is it?”
“Bas.”
She sets the knife down, then immediately picks it back up again.
“What’s the matter, sweetheart? You expect him to attack you over the strawberries?”
Haven sticks her tongue out at me. “Screw you. I’m just deciding whether I want to stay down here or not.”
That wipes the teasing smile right off my face.
Because that’s the thing. No one comes into this house without Haven’s permission. Not Adrian. Not Dallas. Bas is the only exception, and even then, that’s only because Haven decided he was tolerable.
These days, she’s friendly enough to him, and she stopped hiding whenever he’s around. If she’s eager to bolt midway through preparing breakfast…
“It’s your choice, Haven.” I move closer, stopping at the edge of the counter instead of crowding her. “You want to be here for whatever he has to say?”
Haven watches me for a long moment, weighing the question. She does that now. Takes time. Decides. I fucking love it, even when the answer doesn’t go my way.
Finally, she shakes her head. “No.”
“You sure?”
She nods. “I’ll be upstairs.”
“Door locked?”
Her eyebrow arches. “Probably.”
“You know I got a key.”
A small smile curves her lips. “Yeah, babe. I know.”
She passes me on her way out of the kitchen, and I catch her hand before she gets too far. Not to stop her. Not anymore. This time, I just want to bring her knuckles to my mouth. Her fingers flex against mine, twitching, but she lets me kiss them.
“Love you,” I murmur.
She rolls her eyes. Then, after a slight pause, she whispers, “I know that, too.”
What a brat.
God, I really fucking love this woman.
Unfortunately, I also have a fondness for my old friends—my brothers—and if Bas is at my door this early in the morning, some sort of shit’s gone down.
I’ve purposely withdrawn from the Order over this past year. I had to. I don’t know how exactly Adrian managed to convince Jack to let it go, to let Haven stay with me, but he never pushed it after Wise disappeared. After Father Francis married us, I sent in the wedding license, then passed a message along to Adrian to have the Order ledgers updated to say that Connor Heyward has married—and Claimed—Haven Smith.
I checked the website religiously until it updated there, too. According to the Order, she’s mine. That means Adrian can’t have her, and if I need to go one step further and make a blood oath, I will. That wasn’t necessary. So long as I kept Haven as my responsibility—and we both made tithes to the Order to shut the King up—he was happy to look the other way.
Still, Dallas’s old man is as corrupt as they come. I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him, and though I’ve decided the best way to stay off of Jack Collins’s radar is to stay in my house and out of Order biz, whenever one of my boys needs me, I’m there for them.
