Page 90 of Knocked Up By the Silver Foxes

I pull back enough to look at him.

I did mean it. I’ve thought about almost nothing else for two weeks, turned it over so many times I’ve worn smooth edges into it, and the fact that he’s standing here giving me an exit before I’ve even asked for one makes something in my chest twist hard.

I mean it about him.

And though I haven’t said it to either of the other two, I feel it for them too, the same word, the same weight, sitting quietly under everything I do during the day and everything I don’t say at night.

“Maddox—”

“There’s our sweet pea.”

Every muscle in my body locks at once as the cortisol in my body runs rampant and rings an alarm that I swear I can hear screeching.

What the fuck are they doing here?

32

HARPER

The blaring sound of the alarm in my head is so loud it feels real.

That’s what it sounds like inside my skull, immediate and deafening, some ancient alarm system I didn’t know I still had wired into me going off all at once. My pulse jumps so hard I feel it in my throat. My palms go damp where they’re resting against Maddox’s chest. The room narrows, the edges of it blurring slightly, every other sound, the quartet, the chatter, Raph’s mix, all of it dropping into the background like someone turned the volume down on everything except that one voice.

I know that voice. I’ve known that voice my entire life, known the particular cadence of it, the way it always sounds slightly too pleased with itself, and I turn toward it already knowing what I’m going to see and somehow still not prepared for it.

My father. My mother beside him.

He’s in a navy suit that’s trying very hard to look like Killian’s and missing by exactly the margin you’d expect, the fabric a shade too shiny under the lights, the fit a half size off in the shoulders, a watch on his wrist that’s loud in a way that real money never bothers being. My mother’s in a cocktail dress the color of a bruise, too much jewelry stacked on both wrists, her hair freshly done in a style that belongs at a luncheon two seasons ago. Both of them dressed exactly right and somehow still wrong, expensive enough to pass at a glance, not expensive enough to actually belong, smiling at me like they have every reason to be standing in this room.

This isn’t a nightmare. I’m not going to wake up.

My hands have started to shake. I press them flat against my own thighs and will them still, and they don’t fully cooperate, the tremor running fine and constant under my skin the way it does after too much caffeine or not enough sleep, except it’s neither of those things, it’s just fear wearing the same costume adrenaline always wears.

“I heard you had a little something to do with this get-together, sweet pea,” my father says, looking around the boutique like he’s appraising it for resale value.

My mother tilts her head, soft and concerned in the specific way she’s always been soft and concerned right before she says something designed to cut. “I’m sure you would’ve done much better if you’d had more time. You obviously had to whip this together as best you could, considering your… extracurricular activities.”

Maddox goes rigid beside me.

“Excuse me?” he says, and there’s nothing casual left in his voice at all.

“And you’d be?” my father asks, looking him over with the same appraising glance he gave the room.

“Maddox St. James,” Maddox says, not offering a hand. “Who invited you?”

“We’re her parents,” my mother says, like that answers anything.

“That wasn’t the question.”

Asher’s there within seconds, drawn over by whatever’s showing on my face, and he steps in close on my other side without a word, his hand finding the small of my back.

“Harper.” His voice is quiet, just for me. “You okay?”

I don’t trust my voice enough to answer that yet. My legs feel disconnected from the rest of me, like I’m watching myself stand here from somewhere a few feet to the left, the floor not quite solid under my heels. Fight or flight, except there’s nowhere to run that wouldn’t make this so much worse, so my body’s settling for the third option, which is apparently shaking quietly and hoping nobody notices.

“Well,” my mother says, looking between the two men flanking me with an expression I recognize, the one she used to wear when she was deciding exactly how much damage a sentence could do before she said it. “Isn’t this cozy.”

“Evelyn,” someone says behind us, delighted, and I don’t have to turn around to know who’s arrived.