Page 235 of Twins for Three Bad Boys

“I’m talking about a home,” Rex corrected.

Fletcher didn’t speak right away, but I could see it in the way his jaw shifted, the way his attention turned inward.

Running it through.

We’d all been thinking it.

Maybe not all at once. Maybe not clearly.

But it was there.

Us moving in together. All of us, as a family.

“You got something in mind?” Fletcher asked finally.

Rex’s mouth curved slightly. “Actually… maybe… now that all my work is closer to home, I’ve had the time to look around, but I want us all to decide together for sure…”

It took time.

And it took work.

Not just the practical kind, though there was plenty of that. Calls. Viewings. Numbers that didn’t always line up the way we wanted them to. Compromises that had to be made and ones that didn’t.

But the harder part wasn’t the logistics.

It was making sure we were all aligned.

That none of us were stepping into a life the others weren’t ready for, because this wasn’t just a house, it was everything that came with it.

Commitment.

Permanence.

A future that didn’t leave room for easy exits.

We didn’t say all of that out loud every time we met up to talk about it.

Didn’t need to.

It was there in the way Fletcher asked questions about space and layout, and whether there was room to build something properly instead of just making do. In the way Rex talked about distance from town, about quiet, about having enough land that it became something we could grow into instead of out of. In the way I kept circling back to one thing.

Safety.

A place that could hold everything June needed without asking her to shrink to fit it.

We found it three weeks in.

Out on the outskirts of Redwood Run, far enough from the center that it was its own pocket of space, but close enough that we weren’t cut off from anything that mattered.

Big. Wide front porch. Enough land around it that the trees weren’t crowding in. Windows that let in light without making you feel exposed.

It needed work.

The kind of place that could become more with the right hands on it.

Fletcher walked through it first, slow and methodical, eyes tracking every detail. “Structure’s good,” he said. “Bones are solid.”

Rex stepped out onto the back porch and whistled low. “Hell of a view.”