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I met Zoey’s eyes over Oz’s shoulder and gave her a wink too. Once I pulled away, I called out to Wade, who was standing next to Zoey with the baby. “Hand my fiancé that boy to give him something else to coo about or we’ll be listening to fabric talk all night.”
Oz turned around in search of his favorite newborn. “Atti-boy. Come to Uncle Ozzie.” He reached out his arms for the sleeping bundle. Just then, my mom and dad came around the corner.
“What’s taking you so long? Get back here and let us pop open the champagne!” My mom rushed to me and gave me a quick hug and peck on the cheek, barely looking at me long enough for a quick congrats before getting her hands on Oz.
“My boys,” she cooed, embracing Atticus and Oz in one giant hug. I noticed her eyes overflowing as she gazed at the newest additions to her family. Since reuniting with me at New Year’s, my family had spent almost as much time in Haven as back home in Wisconsin. I knew they still had this irrational fear that something would happen to me and I’d be stolen from their lives again, but they were finally coming to grips with the realization that I was really safe now. Something I myself had only recently started to accept. I’d only recently been able to stop looking over my shoulder, even knowing Barton was dead and his cartel disbanded. The aftermath of the events in the maintenance shed had been a unique form of hell. For starters, all of us involved had been sequestered from one another so that we could give independent accounts of what had happened in that shed.
I’d spent nearly two days meeting with what had seemed like every government agency out there as I’d recounted Megan’s and Peter’s deaths and the three years I’d spent running. Only when all the questions had been answered had I been allowed to see Oz again. By then, pure chaos had erupted as news had broken that a famous model had been involved in a brutal attack by a corrupt government agent. We’d dodged reporters for weeks until we’d been forced to sit down with several news channels to try and lay the issue to rest. Oz had used the opportunity to announce his retirement from the modeling world, which had brought a whole new slew of reporters and paparazzi to our door. But as tough as those days and weeks had been, I’d had my family by my side. And more importantly, I’d had the man of my dreams with me to shoulder the strain of it all. And each night as we’d put another stress-filled day behind us, it had just been him and me planning our future.
A future in Haven.
“Son, get back here and show this boy how to flip a burger,” my dad said as we all rounded the corner and saw Lucky struggling at the grill. “Apparently the kid’s only used to Portobello burgers or something. Needs us Midwesterners to show him a thing or two about meat.”
Xander and Bennett snickered from the other side of the grill, while I caught Lucky shooting them the bird where my dad couldn’t see it.
“Ask Zach to help him. I don’t know the first thing about grilling. Always seem to burn stuff when I try,” I admitted.
Zach came over to the grill to help Lucky and leaned in behind him to reach for the spatula. Lucky’s entire body froze up, which caused Zach to freeze too. No one else around us seemed to notice, but Zach cleared his throat and carefully stepped back, mumbling something about going into the cabin for more cheese slices.
Despite the stack of cheese slices sitting on the table next to him.
I turned back to Lucky and saw his face drop.
Ever since everything that had happened with Barton, I’d noticed Lucky had stars in his eyes whenever my brother came around. I wrote it off to a little hero worship at first, but admittedly, I was beginning to wonder if it wasn’t something just a bit more.
“Lucky, would you mind going inside to grab me…” I scrambled to think of something that wouldn’t already be out here. “Some cocktail sauce?”
The teenager turned and blinked at me in confusion. “Cocktail sauce? Like for shrimp?”
I was an idiot.
“Yeah. I think there’s some in the fridge. My mom likes it on her…” I looked around at the food all over the folding tables. “Potato chips.”
Lucky didn’t even stop to question me, just shot forward into the house behind my brother. I knew Zach well enough to know that he’d see Lucky’s behavior for what it was and hopefully let the teenager down easy. Xander had shared with me that Lucky had ended up nursing a broken heart for quite a while the previous year after a boy he’d liked apparently hadn’t returned his feelings. The last thing I wanted was for him to get hung up on my thirty-year-old brother, especially since Zach would likely be coming out to Haven on a regular basis to visit. I hoped Zach would use the privacy of the kitchen to let Lucky down easy before his crush became something that would be harder to bounce back from. As it was, Lucky was already in therapy dealing with everything we’d gone through, and he didn’t need the added burden of unreturned feelings on top of that.
