Page 92 of Knocked Up By the Silver Foxes

My father’s expression flickers, recalibrating.

“But I’m not opposed to the conversation itself,” Killian continues. “Let’s schedule something properly. While you’re both in town.” He glances at Evelyn. “Why don’t you pick a day that works against our calendar and get the Millers on the books. Next week, perhaps.”

I stare at him.

I genuinely cannot process the sentence that just came out of his mouth. Thirty seconds ago he told security to remove these two people from the property, and I just spent my own breath telling them exactly why they don’t belong in my life, and now he’s standing here scheduling a meeting with them like none of that happened, like I didn’t just say any of it out loud.

Evelyn’s smile turns into something far more satisfied. “Of course, Killian. I’ll take care of it.”

My mother looks like she’s just been handed a gift she wasn’t expecting to receive twice in one night.

Sophia’s gone rigid beside me, jaw tight, a look on her face that says she’s about three words away from saying something nobody in this room is prepared for.

Maddox isn’t saying anything at all. He’s just staring at Killian with an expression I’ve never seen on him before, flat and hard, the easy charm completely gone.

“Asher,” Monica says, sliding into the space the silence has left open, her voice pitched for the room rather than for him specifically. “It’s been ages. Dance with me?”

Asher blinks, visibly thrown, his attention still half on me, on the conversation that just happened, on whatever’s written across my face right now. “I— sure. One dance.” He looks at me. “I’ll be right back.”

He doesn’t look like a man who wants to be dancing with anyone right now. He looks like a man who got asked a question in the middle of something else and answered it on reflex before his brain caught up.

Killian’s already turning, offering Evelyn his arm like it’s the most natural gesture in the world, my mother and father falling in step beside them, and the four of them move off through the parting crowd together, Evelyn’s hand settled into the crook of his elbow, her hips moving with the particular satisfaction of a woman who got exactly what she came for. She glances back once over her shoulder.

The smirk she gives me could curdle milk.

I watch them go. I can’t make myself stop watching them go.

Monica’s already got both arms looped loosely around Asher’s neck on the dance floor, closer than the song requires, closer than I’m comfortable with from fifteen feet away, her body angled into his in a way that has nothing to do with the quartet’s tempo. She catches my eye over his shoulder and gives me a wink, slow and deliberately nasty, before leaning up to say something directly against his ear that makes him tilt his head slightly to hear her.

Maddox’s arm comes around me before I even realize I’ve gone still.

He pulls me into his side, solid and warm, and I let him, because I genuinely don’t know what to do with my own hands right now.

Sophia’s watching the exact same scene I am, Killian’s retreating back, Evelyn’s arm linked through his, Monica’s mouth at Asher’s ear, and when she finally speaks her voice comes out flat with disbelief.

“What the fuck just happened?”

I don’t have an answer for her.

33

HARPER

Iwake up before either of them does, which happens more mornings than not. My body never quite unlearned getting up before anyone needed me to.

Maddox’s chest rises and falls under my cheek, his arm tucked under my shoulders. Asher’s wrapped around me from behind, his breath warm against my neck. I’m boxed in, completely surrounded, and I lie there a minute enjoying it, the simple fact of being wanted enough that two grown men negotiate in their sleep over who gets to be closer to me.

The only thing missing is Killian.

I let myself remember instead, just for a second. The way he looks asleep, which I’ve only actually seen a handful of times because the man apparently runs on willpower and spite rather than rest, his face unguarded in a way it never is awake, dark lashes resting against his cheekbones, the hard line of his jaw gone soft, lips parted just slightly around nothing. I told him once, half teasing, that I liked watching him sleep, and he opened one eye and told me, dead serious, that it was a little creepy, and I laughed so hard I nearly fell off the bed while he pulled me back against his chest like the comment hadn’t landed at all.

The memory still makes me smile, warm and a little stupid, lying here without him.

Then it makes my chest hurt, because he’s not actually here, and some mornings now I don’t know why.

I let myself feel that for exactly one breath. I think about Midsummer, my parents and Evelyn closing around him like he’d been waiting his whole life for it. How perfect he and Evelyn looked walking off together, not their ages, just how she carries herself, like she got issued an instruction manual at birth the rest of us never received.

Next to her I feel like a frumpy penguin. Hair always slightly wrong, always a step behind on some social cue everyone else already knows.