Page 71 of How To Not Need You

“What’s for dinner?”

I look down at her. Her blue eyes are wide and serious, her missing front tooth creating a small gap in her smile that makes her look even more adorable.

My body in this moment must be in shock. I should be panicking. I should be texting Harper. I should be calculating exactly how many boundaries I’ve crossed in the past twenty-four hours and whether any of them can be uncrossed before Jake gets home and finds me still here, which at this rate seems inevitable. But instead, as I stare into Tilly’s beautiful blue eyes, I relax.

I hear myself say, “What do you feel like?”

Tilly considers this. “Pancakes.”

“It’s dinnertime.”

“Pancakes are for any time.” She says this with absolute conviction. “That’s what Dad says.”

Of course he does. Jake, professional enabler of small human whims.

I open my mouth to argue. “How about we go out instead?”

Her entire face lights up. She releases my sweater and pumps both fists in the air with a victory shriek that would wake the dead, then spins on her heel and bolts for the living room, presumably to inform Hades of this development despite the fact that Hades has shown zero interest in what she has been telling him since I’ve met him.

The Anchor is the kind of place that has given up pretending to be anything other than a pub that tolerates children because the alternative is going out of business in a town where everyone has kids. The menus are laminated, which is code for “we expect spills,” and the carpet in the play area has seen things no carpet should ever have to witness. I hate it.

Harper is already in a booth by the window when we walk in, one hand around a glass of red wine, the other absently tracing the rim while she watches Leo attempt to scale a plastic slide that seems to have been designed by someone who thought that bright colours are mandatory for children's play equipment. She looks up when the bell above the door jingles, and the smile that breaks across her face is so smug I consider turning around and leaving.

“Look who finally emerged from the Reid residence,” she says, lifting her glass in a toast that makes me want to pinch her just a little. “I was beginning to think Jake had locked you away.”

“Very funny.” I slide into the booth opposite her, Tilly wedging herself against my hip, “He got a call from the station. He had to help with the big bush fire near town.”

Harper’s smile dims slightly at that, the worry creasing her brow. “Everyone okay?”

“Don’t know yet. He’ll call when he can.”

She nods and doesn’t push for more information. One of the many reasons Harper Bennett is my favourite human, she knows when to press and when to let things go.

Leo spots Tilly just after we sit down. There is no greeting or polite introduction. Just a nine-year-old boy materialising beside our table, grabbing Tilly’s wrist with one sticky hand, and announcing, “Come on, I invented a new game and you’re the princess.”

Tilly goes willingly. Of course she does. She is pulled from the booth like she’s being rescued from captivity, her small feet barely touching the ground as Leo tows her toward the play area. It’s a cordoned-off corner of the pub sectioned by a low wooden fence that exists mostly to give parents the illusion of containment. The fence is only knee-height to an adult. It is not, and would never be, a barrier for anything.

I watch them disappear into the tangle of plastic climbing frames and foam blocks. Tilly’s golden curls bounce with each step. Leo is already talking, his hands moving in elaborate gestures that suggest the game rules are both extensive and entirely fabricated on the spot.

Harper signals the waiter for another wine without asking if I want one. She knows me well. The woman has known me since my final year of university, which means she has almost a decade’s worth of blackmail material and the emotional intuition of someone who writes romance novels for a living. It’s annoying. It’s also why she’s here when she could be home with Alexander, drinking better wine than I expected the Anchor to stock.

“Thank you,” I say, when the glass appears.

“Don’t mention it. I’m going to need you under the influence so that if I slip into ‘I told you so’ mode you will forgive me.”

Despite my best efforts, a smile breaks through at her comment.

We chat for a while and order when the waiter comes to us. It isn't long before the chips arrive. A basket of them, golden and steaming, placed between us with two small pots of aioli that the menu describes as “house-made” but which I strongly suspect came from a jar. Harper pushes the basket toward me. I take a chip. We have done this a thousand times, sharing food whilst sitting across from each other in whatever venue Seabrook has to offer, has become as familiar as breathing.

Through the low fence, Leo has Tilly by both hands and is explaining something. His dark hair flops over one eye. He keeps pushing it back with his elbow because his hands are occupied with whatever vital information he’s imparting. Tilly nods. Seriously. Like every word out of his mouth is gospel, her blue eyes wide, her entire body leaning forward as though being closer might help her absorb the rules of whatever game involves being a princess and, based on Leo’s dramatic sweeping gestures, possibly dragons.

“She adores him,” Harper says, watching them.

“Leo could convince her that dinosaurs still live and she’d believe him.” I say, part laugh in my tone.

“He gets that from his mother.”

I snort into my wine. Harper’s smile is soft as she watches them. She’s wearing glasses tonight, the wire-framed ones that make her look like the smartest person in any room she walks into, which she usually is. There’s a chip crumb on the collar of her sweater. I don’t point it out because Alexander probably will later, and the image of him brushing it away with that particular fond expression he reserves only for Harper makes my chest ache in a way I’m not prepared to examine.