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“Shit.” He gave Ivy an incredulous look. “I didn’t even see that.”
She smiled, small and mysterious, and when my dad held out his fist as she passed his chair, she tapped it with her own.
I stood before I knew what I was doing. Ivy glanced up in surprise when I tugged her around to face me, as I cradled her jaw in my hands and kissed her soundly on the lips to the sounds of my family whistling and yelling.
Little moments that felt big.
I pressed my forehead to hers. “Sorry,” I said against her mouth. “But I had to do that.”
She sagged against my chest. “Liar.”
Ivy gave me a secret smile and wandered back into the kitchen again. My dad sighed, settling his hands on his chest. When I glanced down at him, he winked.
“’Bout time,” he said quietly. “You and your brothers take so damn long to figure everything out.” He waved my mom over. “I’m ready for bed now. That’s about enough excitement for one day, I think.”
Chapter 32
Ivy
By the time we got back to Cameron’s house, the full moon was high above the trees, giving enough muted yellow light that we didn’t need a flashlight for our walk back.
Even though Tim and Sheila had gone to bed hours before, the siblings stayed up. A couple of bottles of wine were opened—split between Adaline, Greer, and me. Lydia decided not to drink, because she said Isla would wake her up at dawn. Poppy had a beer with her brothers.
I beat Erik in a surprisingly aggressive game of chess, followed by a swift match against Ian—who also lost—because he rarely took the time to think through all his possible moves, or mine.
Cameron watched from across the room, his eyes steady and heated on mine through the whole evening. The way he looked at me had me feeling a slow, deliberate thread unspooling just below my belly button.
A winding tension that yanked my skin tighter every time I thought about the way he kissed me in front of his family. The way he looked at me when no one else paid attention.
It wasn’t simply sexual tension either.
Everything about this weekend—the date he took me on, meeting the rest of his family—was forward motion. Momentum that didn’t seem like it could be easily stopped.
Cameron preceded me into the house, and Neville greeted us with a loud meow. I scooped him up and kissed the top of his head. “Do you feel ignored?” I asked. He bumped his face against mine, and I laughed.
Off to the corner, I saw a pile of dirt and a stray leaf that looked like it had already gone ten rounds with some small, clawed being.
“Neville,” I sighed. “Enough with the plants already.”
He squirmed in my arms, and I set him down. He pounced on the leaf and flipped to his back.
“Where’s the broom?” I asked.
“I’ll take care of it,” he said. “You go get ready for bed. I know you’re tired.”
“No, I can do it. Your plants would’ve been perfectly safe if it wasn’t for him.”
He dropped a kiss on top of my head. “I’ll take that trade to have you here.”
My heart squeezed at the simple gesture after a not-very-simple day.
No matter what happened, Cameron never made me feel like an inconvenience. Nothing about this imposed on him, and it only served to reinforce that feeling that he couldn’t possibly be real.
But I knew he was. He wasn’t putting on an act to impress me—because the way he treated me was an extension of the way he treated his entire family. To his core, he was selfless and caring, and it was incredible to witness the way he anchored that family with ease, even if he didn’t see it that way.
As he toed his shoes off and tossed his phone onto the kitchen counter, Cameron watched me pluck the leaf from the cat’s grasp. He perched his hip against the island and wiped a hand over his mouth.
He looked exhausted.
