Page 161 of Triplet Babies for my Ex's Best Friend

Ethan finally steps in, lifting Captain with the long-suffering patience of a man who’s done this a thousand times. “There. Crisis handled.”

Captain immediately licks his jaw.

“For now,” I say.

Ethan sets him outside the tile airport perimeter. “Good enough.”

I straighten, brushing my hands down my dress automatically, even though there’s nothing to fix. It’s not the gala dress, thank goodness. I don’t think I could survive wearing that under normal social pressure, let alone… whatever tonight is.

This is simpler. Still nice. Still a little outside my usual aesthetic, but manageable.

Ethan notices anyway.

He always notices.

His gaze flicks over me, quick but not careless, and that makes my stomach do that annoying, traitorous flip.

“Ready?” he asks.

I nod. “As I’ll ever be.”

Which is a lie, but a convincing one.

We move through the rest of the evening prep in that same strange, easy rhythm we’ve somehow built over the past few weeks.

Dinner’s prepped. Table set. Wine breathing like it’s about to deliver a TED Talk. Flowers arranged in a way that suggests Ethan did, in fact, listen to me.

We get Oliver ready for bed together, which still feels surreal. He insists on showing me the finished airport before he’ll even consider brushing his teeth.

“It has three runways now,” Oliver tells me proudly.

“Wow. International airport level.”

“And a tower.” He points at a stack of blue magnetic tiles. “That’s air traffic troll.”

“Control,” Ethan corrects automatically.

“That too.”

I grin.

“And Captain isn’t allowed anymore,” Oliver adds.

Captain chooses that exact moment to steal a tile and sprint away with it.

Oliver sighs dramatically. “He never follows the rules.”

“Honestly,” I murmur, “same.”

Ethan watches the whole exchange with that quiet softness he doesn’t seem to realize he has.

We get Oliver into bed eventually, after a story that turns into two stories and a brief debate about whether planes have feelings.

“They do if you name them,” Oliver insists.

I look at Ethan. “Honestly, that feels true.”

Ethan tucks the blanket around Oliver with a quiet huff of laughter. “You two are impossible.”