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She shuddered dramatically. “Please God, give me a girl. I cannot handle a third boy. The laundry alone…”
I snorted. “You say that now, but if it’s another boy, he’s going to own you by day three.”
She scrubbed at her cheeks. “Probably.”
I hugged her again, this time purely out of joy. There was a tiny ache somewhere deep in my chest, but it wasn’t the kind that hollowed me out anymore. It was just…there. Part of the landscape.
Evie pulled back, sniffing, and I handed her a napkin from the nearest table.
A shadow fell across us.
“Hey,” came a low, familiar voice. “Everything okay over here?”
My heart did that stupid lurch thing it always did when it recognized him before my brain caught up.
I looked up.
Zarek stood a few feet away, a beer bottle loose in his hand, shoulders filling out a dark T-shirt that fit a little too well. His jaw was still bruised, faint yellow-green shadows under the stubble, but his eyes were clear as they moved from Evie’s blotchy face to mine.
“We’re good,” I said, forcing my voice not to wobble. “Evie’s just being dramatic.”
Evie elbowed me lightly. “I’m pregnant,” she blurted, then winced. “That’s not how I meant to say that.”
Zarek’s expression shifted—surprise, then something warm and soft that used to be reserved for me when I told him good news.
“Congratulations,” he said quietly.
He leaned in and gave Evie a careful hug, mindful of the cup still in her hand, the space between them. One big hand went to the back of her head for a second, protective and gentle, before he let her go.
“Thanks,” she whispered. “Don’t tell the boys yet. I want to do something fun.”
“Your secret’s safe,” he said.
He stepped back, took a sip of his beer, and for a moment, the three of us stood there in the middle of the backyard—my sister glowing and teary, my husband-not-husband looking like every good memory I’d ever had, me in my stupid orange dress trying to keep my heart from cracking open.
He looked at me then—really looked—eyes traveling from my sandals up to my face. A flicker of something—surprise, appreciation, and was that desire?—crossed his features so fast anyone else would’ve missed it.
I didn’t.
The beer bottle tipped toward me in a small, wordless toast.
I lifted my chin, met his gaze, and smiled.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Evie looking between us. “I better make sure Aiden is supervising his sons before they climb to the top of the tree,” she said as she hurried away.
She left us standing there, looking at one another.
“You look beautiful.”
My mind short-circuited. Say something!
“I made potato salad.”
“Of course you did,” he murmured, voice low.
Yeah, I’m brilliant.
Chapter Fourteen
