I looked out the window at the dark pine shapes sliding past. “Jude. He’s going to make a scene. I know it.”
Levi was quiet for exactly one beat. Then he let out a sigh. “Fair.”
The house was loud even before we stepped inside. That was the first thing we noticed—that familiar Barrett noise, warm and layered, the sound of many loved ones talking loudly over the clinking of dishes and the sizzle of something in a pan. A child’s laugh echoed from upstairs. The low rumble of what sounded like an argument about sports, or maybe the weather, or possibly both at the same time.
Levi pushed the door open without knocking—no Barrett kid knocked at Dahlia Barrett’s house, that much I knew. The warmth of it hit me immediately. Roast and herbs, and something sweet underneath.
We were three steps into the entryway when Jude appeared in the kitchen doorway.
He looked at Levi. He looked at me. He looked at our hands—specifically, at the ring on my left hand, which Levi was currently doing nothing to conceal.
The look on Jude’s face cycled through surprise, recognition, pure delight, and something I could only describe as the expression of a man who has been waiting for this moment for a very long time and intended to enjoy every second of it.
“MOM,” he bellowed, not breaking eye contact with me. “DAD. ASHER. VI. CADE. LILY. ROSE. HOLLY. GRAM.” A pause for breath. “GET IN HERE.”
“Jude—” Levi started.
“Nope.”
“I was going to?—”
“I know what you were going to do, and it was going to take approximately twenty minutes and involve a speech. You’re welcome. Oh yeah, congratulations.”
The house erupted.
It wasn’t an orderly arrival. It was the Barrett family in full force—Dahlia coming in with a dish towel still over her shoulder, Ben a step behind her, Violet wiping her hands on her jeans, Holly following quickly behind her. Asher ducking under the doorframe with his height, Cade cutting around him with a grin already forming, Lily and Rose arriving together the way they always did—identical twin creepy. And in the back, moving at a pace that was entirely her own and radiating a composure that suggested she had known this moment was coming and had dressed accordingly, Rosemary.
Jude pointed at my left hand with the gravity of a man presenting evidence at a trial. “They’re engaged.”
For one breath, the room was completely silent.
Then Dahlia’s hands flew to her mouth, and she made a sound that was half laugh, half sob, and crossed the room to me before I fully processed it was happening. The hug was warm and immediate, the kind that didn’t require any preamble, and she smelled like floral perfume, and home, and every Sunday dinner I’d ever had here as a kid, and I had to blink fast against the tears forming at the back of my eyes.
“Finally,” she said into my hair, and it came out like a prayer.
Ben Barrett shook Levi’s hand—a grip that said everything that didn’t need to be said aloud—and then pulled him in, briefand solid, before turning to me with that quiet smile Levi had clearly inherited directly from him. “Welcome,” he said simply. Like I’d been expected. Like the seat that belonged to me at the table had always been set and was just waiting for me to fill it.
And then the chaos erupted.
Because somewhere in the middle of the congratulations and the overlapping voices, and at least one child appearing at knee height to investigate the commotion, an argument broke out.
Not a bad argument. A Barrett argument, which was apparently its own distinct category.
“I had October,” Cade said, arms crossed, already aggrieved.
“Yeah, but October of which year?” Lily said.
“This year?—”
“That’s not what you wrote down. You wrote October, no year. That’s been disqualified for two years, and you know it,” Rose said, appearing from behind Violet and glancing up from her phone. “I’ve been maintaining this spreadsheet for years. Don’t even try to start an argument.”
“What—” I looked at Levi.
Levi looked like a man who desperately wanted to be somewhere else.
“There’s a bet,” Violet said cheerfully, settling herself on the couch cross-legged, the way she probably had since she was twelve. “There has been a bet for quite a while.”
“How long,” I asked, “is quite a while?”
