Chapter 6 #2
She turned her head just enough to look at me. “Show-off.”
“You keep pretending you can reach things.”
“You keep pretending you’re useful.”
“I brought tacos and emotional support height.”
“Fine. You may stay.”
“Generous.”
“Temporary.”
“Liar.”
Her mouth parted on a laugh, but it caught when her eyes dipped to mine. For half a second, the tiny kitchen forgot how to hold space between us.
Four Sundays ago, she would’ve stepped away immediately, but now she stayed long enough for my pulse to notice.
Then her phone buzzed on the counter, and the warmth drained from her face so quickly I looked down before I could stop myself.
Luke DNA
The name was listed with stop signs next to the DNA and I assumed it was for do not answer. Bliss flipped the phone over so fast it nearly slid off the counter and something inside me went very, very still.
“You good?” I asked.
“Yeah.” Too quick. Too bright. “Probably spam.”
I looked at the phone, but didn’t call her on it. Not yet. Instead, I opened the taco bag. “Eat.”
She blinked. “That was bossy.”
“You get mean when you’re hungry.”
“I am adorable when hungry.”
“You threatened me with a potato peeler last week.”
“You insulted my chopping symmetry.”
“Because it was uneven.”
She gasped like I’d wounded her, and the moment shifted back onto safer ground. For now.
We ate tacos over her kitchen counter like we had all the time in the world.
She told me Daniel had texted seven times about charcoal, lighter fluid, and whether I was “the kind of guy who ate onions,” which apparently meant he was trying.
I told her onions were not a personality test. She said in the Bennett house they were absolutely a personality test and I had better answer correctly.
After we ate, we made the potatoes. That was how Sundays went now.
Bliss washed, I dried. She cut, I seasoned.
She told me I used too much garlic. I told her there was no such thing.
She accused me of being corrupted by wealth.
I told her garlic was classless and therefore belonged to everyone.
She laughed hard enough to tip sideways into the counter, and I had to look away because wanting her was getting less theoretical every time she smiled at me without armor.
The project sat in the corner of every Sunday like an excuse we both kept pretending to need.
Her notebook came with us sometimes. She asked me questions while we packed food, while we walked to her Jeep, while we sat in the driveway before going inside her father’s house. Some were easy. Favorite rink. Worst habit. Best teammate. First time I knew hockey was more than something I did.
Some were not.
What scares you most about being drafted? What does pressure feel like when everybody thinks you were built for it? Who are you when no one expects anything from you?
She asked like she wasn’t trying to cut me open. Somehow that made the blade go deeper.
And every time I answered honestly, she looked at me like I had handed her something fragile and she knew exactly how to hold it.
Which was why I kept coming back early and why I knew her taco order, or why I noticed the phone. Which was why I was already watching before we ever got to her father’s house.
Daniel Bennett’s backyard sounded like war by the time we arrived.
Children shrieking. Men arguing. Something metal clanging near the garage. A dog barking like it had also been invited to debate the grill situation. The smell of smoke drifted over the fence, heavy and ominous, followed by Daniel’s voice booming, “It is not burned. It’s called flavor.”
Bliss paused beside me on the driveway and closed her eyes. “Every week. Every single week.”
I took the foil pan from her hands. “He’s consistent.”
“He’s a menace.”
“Genetic.”
She pointed at me. “Careful.”
The front door opened before we reached it, and Katie came flying out in pink rain boots and a princess dress, despite the fact that the sky was clear.
“Cade!” I braced half a second before she slammed into my leg.
Bliss snorted. “She likes you better than me now.”
Katie looked up at me with serious brown eyes. “Did you bring good food?”
Bliss gasped. “Betrayal.”
I looked down at the kid. “Tacos were already handled.”
Katie nodded solemnly, like I had fulfilled a sacred duty. “Grandpa burned hot dogs.”
“I heard that,” Daniel yelled from the backyard.
“You were supposed to,” Katie yelled back.
Bliss covered her mouth, laughing, and the sound hit the driveway bright enough to make the whole day change shape.
This was the part I hadn’t expected.
The Bennett family was chaos, but it wasn’t careless.
It moved around Bliss like weather around a landmark.
Loud. Messy. Constant. Her brothers shoved each other, insulted each other, stole food off each other’s plates, threatened murder over card games, and argued about hockey, football, construction, parenting, and whether Daniel’s grill needed to be retired with military honors.
But every few minutes, someone checked where Bliss was without looking like they were checking.
Ryker did it from the deck, arms crossed, eyes flicking from Bliss to me to the street and back again.
Knox did it from the patio table, where he sat with one ankle crossed over his knee like a man who knew every exit and expected them to disappoint him.
Lyon did it while chasing his son away from the sprinkler.
Emmitt and Kellen did it by yelling her name every time they wanted her opinion, as if forcing her into arguments was the same as making sure she stayed close.
Daniel did it the most.
He looked at her like someone who had already lost one woman he loved and had been quietly terrified ever since.
The first Sunday, they had treated me like a hostage situation with bad intentions.
By the second, Daniel started calling me Mercer.
By the third, Lyon’s son had fallen asleep against my side during a Tigers game, and nobody commented on it because apparently Bennett acceptance came through children using you as furniture.
Today, Daniel saw me walk through the side gate with the foil pan and lifted his tongs. “Mercer. You bring extra food again?”
“Already prepared, sir.”
“I accept that.”
Bliss stopped dead. “Dad.”
“What?” Daniel shrugged. “He’s learning.”
“He is enabling disrespect toward your grill.”
“My grill is an institution.”
“Your grill is evidence,” Knox called from the table.
Daniel pointed the tongs at him. “Nobody asked the police.”
“Usually for the best,” Ryker muttered.
The yard unfolded around us in early October warmth, golden and noisy.
Folding chairs scattered across the lawn.
Paper plates stacked near the sliding door.
Condiments lined up like a bad decision.
Smoke rolled off the grill while Daniel stood over it with total confidence and almost no justification.
Somewhere near the fence, Emmitt and Kellen were arguing about whether a person could technically jump from the garage roof onto the trampoline without going through if they committed hard enough.
“No,” Bliss shouted without looking.
“We didn’t ask you,” Kellen yelled back.
“You were about to.”
Emmitt pointed at me. “Mercer, hypothetical.”
“No,” I said.
Bliss smiled smugly. “See? Project subject has sense.”
“I’m not sure I like being used as legal precedent.”
“Too late. You’re part of the system now.”
Part of the system. She said it lightly, already moving toward the patio with the potatoes while Katie dragged me by the hand to inspect a chalk drawing on the driveway. But the words stayed with me.
Part of the system. That was the problem because I was starting to want it.
Not the noise exactly, though even that had become less abrasive than I expected.
I wanted the way Bliss relaxed in pieces here.
Not completely. Never completely. But more.
She rolled her eyes at her brothers, kissed her dad’s cheek, let the kids hang off her, stole a roll from Ryker’s plate, and laughed when Daniel told the same story twice with different details and the confidence of a man who considered accuracy optional.
I stood at the edge of it, holding a paper plate and watching her exist inside all that love with one hand still occasionally finding her pocket.
Then the side gate opened. No one else reacted at first because they expected it.
Daniel called, “Luke, you want a burger?”
Bliss went still.
That was how I knew.
Not because she screamed. Not because she backed away. Not because anything visible happened to the average eye. She simply stopped being the version of herself she had been two seconds earlier.
Her smile stayed but her body changed. Shoulders just a little higher. Chin just a little tighter. Fingers sliding into her pocket, curling hard around whatever she had brought with her today.
I looked toward the gate. Luke Dempsey stepped into the backyard like he belonged there.
Former hockey player. Local favorite. In his thirties, blond, easy grin, athletic build starting to soften in a way he probably hated.
He had the kind of face people trusted if they didn’t know better.
The kind of charm that made older men slap his shoulder and younger women laugh too loudly.
His eyes moved over the yard, over Daniel, over the brothers, over me.
Then Bliss and they lingered there a fraction too long. My grip tightened around the paper plate.
Luke smiled wider. “Bug.”
I didn’t like that.
Daniel called her Bug. Her brothers sometimes said it when they were being annoying. Luke saying it sounded different. Too familiar. Too claimed.
Bliss’s smile brightened another watt, which by now I understood meant nothing good. “Hey, Luke.”
He crossed the yard easily, accepting Daniel’s handshake, Ryker’s nod, Knox’s cool glance. Everyone treated him like part of the place. Like an old chair no one questioned anymore because it had always been in the room.