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I turn and look at him. “How do you know what I laid out.”

“I don’t. But your face just told me I’m right.”

I hate that he can do that. I do it to people for a living and I hate that he can do it to me over a center console.

“Okay,” I say, because if I’m going to be read like a paperback I’d rather control the narrative. “Let me prepare you.”

“I’m prepared.” He says it to the windshield, one hand draped over the top of the wheel, the picture of a man who has never once been unprepared for anything.

“You are not prepared.” I turn in my seat to face him properly. “Harper is a lot. In the best way. But a lot. She will ask you everything. Where you’re from, your intentions, your blood type. She has no filter and no shame and she loves hard and fast, so just let her.”

“Okay.”

“Ivy is sweet. Gentle. She’ll be quieter, and she watches everyone, and if she goes cautious on you it’s not personal, she loves me and she’s careful with the people I bring around. Win Ivy over slow.”

“Ivy, slow. Got it.”

“Gray you already know, sort of. He leads worship. You’ve watched him run a Sunday a hundred times, so you’ve got the serious version down, the intense worship-leader thing. Underneath it he’s the funniest person at the table.”

“He hasn’t been up on stage in a few weeks, though,” Luke says. “Paternity leave, right? He and his wife just had a baby.”

“Yes, you’ll finally meet Ivy too. And Micah you already know, even if you haven’t put it together. He ran the kids’ ministry at New Chapter before him and Harper moved to Ashen Mills. He’s probably checked Bo into children’s church more times than either of us could count.” I shift in my seat. “He still won’t say much tonight. He’ll sit there being calm and pleasant and you’ll forget he’s there, and then two hours in he’ll say one sentence that reorganizes the entire evening. He’s the reason I’m dating you, technically. He gave me the wrong number.”

“So I owe Micah everything.” Luke reaches across the console without looking, laces his fingers through mine, and lifts my hand to his mouth. He kisses the back of it, slow, eyes still on the road. “Everything,” he says again, softer, against my knuckles.

I look out my window so he can’t see what that does to my face.

“So. Harper and Micah are the ones who moved. Ashen Mills.”

“An hour and a half. Yes.”

“And Gray and Ivy are here. They’ve got the baby. Charlie.”

“Charlie. Three months old now.”

“And Charlie’s the only kid in the group.”

Something goes tight in me, small and quick, and I look out the window. “Yes.”

If Luke notices, he doesn’t say. He just pulls onto the road, and I sit with the thing I’ve been sitting with all week, the thing I haven’t examined too closely because examining it means admitting it.

I never told them about Bo.

Three months of the best thing that’s happened to me, and I’ve told Ivy and Harper about the wrong number and the coffee and the firefighter and the church, and I have never once mentioned that he comes with a ten-year-old. It didn’t feel like a lie. It felt like keeping the most breakable thing off the table where Harper couldn’t pick it up and turn it over and ask it questions.

Tonight it’s going to be on the table. You can’t sit a man down with your two best friends for two hours and keep a whole child in your pocket.

I just don’t know yet what I’m so afraid they’ll see.

They’re already there when we walk in.

Harper sees me first and squeals. Then she sees Luke and goes still, and she leans into Micah and says, at a volume she believes is a whisper and is not, “See. I told you. He’s hot.”

Micah nods. Once. Grave, like he’s confirming a lab result.

“We can hear you,” I say.

“I know,” Harper says, already sliding out of the booth. “I wanted you to.”