Chapter 25
***Zander***
I stared across the dining room table at Aggie for the second night in a row.
Instead of the awkward state of the night before, there was a different type of tension.
Aggie was in the middle of it, unconcerned with the mayhem she’d caused.
She was too proud of herself to care if she started a war.
More likely, she was too elated with herself to even notice that anything was going on.
“When I heard the guys talking about how amazing you did on whatever test you took, I wanted to celebrate you, Aggie.” Jamie smiled down at Aggie, crossing so many different lines that I would’ve needed a notebook to keep up with them. “Beautiful and smart? This woman has it all!”
Aggie pumped her fists in the air, nearly punching Jamie in the face without realizing it, and grinned as wide as she’d been grinning since making Knight’s test look like a kindergarten word search. “Tell me again how fast I finished the test, Zan.”
I raised an eyebrow at her and laughed when her cheeks turned red. “Fine. You finished the test in twenty minutes and you found solutions that neither of us had thought of.”
Knight tore his eyes away from glaring at Jamie to frown at Aggie. “I want to see it myself. I should’ve been there.”
“Oh, come on, Knight. Don’t you believe in our girl?” Jamie leaned down and slung an arm around Aggie’s shoulders. “You’re not the only brain on the block, man.”
Kyrin stood up and braced his fists on the table as he sent a dark look at Jamie. “He believes in our girl just fine. Thank you for the cake, Jamie. Why don’t you head home for the night?”
“I could’ve been there. I should’ve been there. You might’ve missed something, Zan.” Knight, clearly feeling stunned by the way Aggie had made good on her promise of being smarter than all of us, was focusing his glare on me.
Aggie stood up and put her hands on her hips. “What could he have missed, Knight? What would you being there have done? Except for forced you to watch me destroy your work. That clearly would’ve just hurt your feelings. Or your ego. Whichever one it is that’s stopping you from being happy for me.”
“I’m good to stay and celebrate Aggie for a bit longer. She deserves to feel good about what she did.” Jamie was working his way towards a beating if he wasn’t careful.
“You’ve got to get the hell out of here, Jamie, or I’m going to lose my shit.” Knight stood up, his face pinched in anger. “I’m trying to be nice, but if you keep hitting on Aggie, I’m going to fucking snap.”
“Maybe this is another puzzle that you’re not that good at, Knight, because he’s not hitting on me. He’s just being a nice guy. Unlike you.” Aggie stood up and glared up at Knight, unfazed by the anger radiating off him.
“There’s no way, woman. No way you’re that blind.” Kyrin shook his head and looked at me. “Are you sure you did the test right?”
Gracie screamed and in the middle of all the adults fighting in the room, the sound was still jarring.
We all froze and turned to her. She was standing in her chair, her face red from screaming.
“You guys are acting like babies! Why are you fighting? I don’t want you to fight! You’re going to make Aggie leave!”
Jamie slipped out of the room, which made him a lot smarter than I’d previously thought. Everyone else settled in their chairs with varying degrees of shame on their faces.
“Apologize!”
I was starting to regret the book we’d bought Gracie about apologizing. Still, I nodded to my niece. “I’m sorry, Gracie.”
“Not to me! To each other!” She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at all of us. “Or no one eats cake!”
Kyrin laughed but immediately covered it with a cough. “I’m sorry to everyone for shouting.”
I grinned into my fist. “I’m sorry for not having you sit in on the test, Knight. I assure you, it was accurate, but I understand your feelings.”
Aggie and Knight sat in a stare down, neither of them wanting to go first. When Gracie made a sound that bordered on a scream and growl, Aggie sat up.
“I’m sorry for gloating. I already knew I was that good and I should’ve just let it go.
I’m sorry for saying you’re bad at puzzles, Knight.
I know you’re not. Also, sorry for saying you’re not a nice guy. ”
Knight looked at her and finally sighed. “I’m sorry...I wasn’t being very nice.”
Aggie grunted. “You’re basically accusing me of cheating, Knight. There’s no way to cheat at a test like that. You know that.”
Jamie came back into the room like nothing had happened, erasing my previous thoughts about his intelligence. “I’m going home. I was hoping I could speak to you in private for a moment, Aggie.”
Kyrin and Knight pulled a true twin moment by glaring at Jamie and telling him off in unison. “She’s unavailable, Jamie!”
Aggie squeezed her eyes shut and then blew out a breath and stood up. “Of course, we can chat. I wanted to get some ice cream to eat with the cake you made, anyway. It looks delicious, by the way.”
I watched as she moved out of the dining room with our soon-to-be-fired cook and then looked at my brothers. “Well, we’re proving to be great at dinners.”
Gracie sighed dramatically. “I’m only staying for the cake. Everyone’s acting crazy.”
Knight waited for a few minutes, looking at the doorway out of the dining room constantly.
Finally, he stood up like he was going to go after Aggie, but she walked back through the doorway at the same moment and he sat back down.
She smiled at him and walked straight to his side.
He looked up at her with confusion written all over on his face.
She leaned down and whispered something that brought a wide smile to his face. Then, she moved back to her chair and silently started passing out slices of cake. When she realized we were all staring at her, she looked up and played innocent. “What?”
I took my slice of cake. “You’re being strange. And where’s the ice cream?”
She pointed at me with the serving knife. “There’s no ice cream.”
“There’s so much ice cream in the freezer. What are you talking about?” Kyrin was a sweets man. The cake was fine, but he would be the one of us most upset about the missing ice cream.
“There’s no ice cream!” Aggie dropped the knife and groaned. “There might be ice cream. I couldn’t check.”
“Why couldn’t you check, Aggie?” Knight’s smile was still as wide as ever as he reached over and swiped his finger through Aggie’s icing.
She sank back in her chair and groaned. “I might’ve been wrong about one of the things I said earlier.”
Kyrin, still focused on the ice cream, stood up and headed towards the kitchen. “I’ll just get it myself.”
Aggie’s face turned red and she shot out of her chair to block him. “No! I mean...no. So, I may have made a small mess in the kitchen.”
I rested my chin on my fist and smiled. “Oh, yeah?”
“I just...” She pouted. “I can’t even describe it. I can just say that I flailed and things were spilled.”