This is… different.
I snatch my hand back like I’ve been burned and force a laugh that sounds only a little strangled.
“Sorry,” I say. “Mashed potato collision. My bad.”
“You’re fine,” he says.
His hand doesn’t jerk away like mine did, but I see the way his fingers curl around the bowl more tightly, tendons briefly cording in his wrist. He keeps his eyes on the potatoes like they’re suddenly fascinating.
So maybe it wasn’t nothing for him either.
Interesting.
Terrifying.
“Y’all gonna fight over spuds or share?” Nash asks, angling his fork toward the bowl like he’s willing to intervene.
“Behave,” Maggie warns.
“You say that like you don’t love this,” Nash says.
“I don’t love cleaning gravy off my ceiling,” she says. “And you’re testing fate.”
He subsides, making a “zip my lips” motion that lasts all of seven seconds before he opens his mouth again.
The conversation flows around me while I get myself under control. I concentrate very hard on cutting my ham into appropriate church potluck-sized bites, on not staring at Dallas’s hand where it rests on the table, on pretending my nerves aren’t fizzing like they’ve been dropped into soda.
“So, Rose.” Boone leans back slightly, looping an arm around the back of her chair. “You talk to Mrs. Chambers today?”
Rose’s face brightens.
“Yeah,” she says. “She called right after lunch. Wants to book me for her son’s algebra next semester. Apparently, word’s gotten around that I’m the ‘math whisperer.’”
“Of course you are,” Nash says. “You helped me pass geometry. That’s practically sainthood.”
“I helped you remember that if you don’t show up to class, you can’t pass the test,” Rose says dryly. “Not the same thing.”
“Semantics,” Nash says. “Point is, I’m not in remedial trig because of you.”
“Trigonometry is your personal hell,” Clay mutters.
“Everything that requires you to sit still for more than ten minutes is his personal hell,” Boone puts in.
“Anyway,” Rose says, but she’s smiling, “I’ve got the Chambers boy, the Ramirez twins, that girl from Lawson Ranch?—”
“Traitor,” Clay stage whispers.
“And three more parents on a waiting list who want me to help their kids next semester,” Rose continues, ignoring him. “I’m pretty much full until May. It’s perfect for right now—a couple afternoons a week at the kitchen table while Wyatt’s still a barnacle. I don’t have to stick him in daycare or jump straight back into the kind of full-time job I had in the city.”
“Proud of you, sweetheart,” Maggie says, and her tone makes my chest ache a little.
Quiet pride. Support. No strings.
“When he’s a little bigger,” Rose says, glancing down at the baby snoozing in his portable seat, “I might talk to Miss Millie over at the school. Maybe take on a full classroom again. I loved parts of what I did before, but this works for this season. Maybe math. Maybe special ed. I don’t know. Just more of this.”
“You’ll be great,” I say before I can stop myself.
All eyes flick to me, like they forgot I can speak, and this is thrilling.
