Chapter Forty-Six
ARCHER
Jack has added you to a new group chat.
Jack has renamed the group chat: Stop Banging My Sister.
Jack: Just leaving this here …
Sawyer: For the record, I have never banged your sister.
Jack: I know. You’re here for moral support.
Me: You can’t complain now that I’m your brother-in-law.
Jack: You know what you did …
Sawyer: *sighs into my beer* What did he do this time?
Jack: Yesterday, we went shopping together. I thought, why not? It’ll be nice to buy baby clothes and spend time as a family.
Jack: The first store—FIRST STORE—we walk into, and Archer’s sneaking off to pay for sexy lingerie.
Sawyer: For himself?
Me: I would look good in a thong. For sure.
From the couch on the other side of Jon and Felicity’s living room, Jack narrows his eyes at me before he gets back to typing.
Jack: I just ate.
Jack: No, Sawyer, for my sister. He snuck off to pay for sexy lingerie FOR MY SISTER while he thought I wasn’t looking.
Sawyer: Which begs the question, why were you looking?
Jack: It was an unfortunate moment. Anyway, that isn’t the worst part or the point.
“Does anyone plan on sitting back around the table for the dessert I made, or should I throw it all at you instead?” Coach—or Jon, as I now call him out of rink time—props his hands on his hips as he scans the room with narrowed eyes.
Looking at Jon, dressed in a blue striped apron with Morgan’s Marvelous Meals stamped across the front, I’m slowly figuring out why Jack has consistently refuted that he’s turning into his stepdad.
He absolutely is.
Throwing my brother-in-law a grin, I type out my next message without looking, my eyes on him the whole time.
Me: What was the worst part of the shopping trip, Jack?
Sawyer: I don’t want to know. I also just ate.
Jack: I don’t have any hard evidence—thank Christ—but in another store, I’m fairly certain he took Darcy into a dressing room, claiming he was helping her try on dresses, and then … you know … while she was wearing said lingerie.
Sort of correct.
Sawyer: All I want to do is make a joke about hard evidence. But I have a teenage boy and I’m in my mid-thirties. I shouldn’t be this way.
Me: Very perceptive, Morgan. Although it wasn’t my idea. Your baby sister likes me to fuck her brains out in risky places. What can I say? I don’t make the rules. I simply follow them like a good boy.
Jack: …
Sawyer: You’re regretting starting this conversation, aren’t you?
Jack: I’m regretting a lot of things right now.
I laugh at the way he holds his cell out in front of him, head sagging between his shoulders.
“Are you tormenting my brother again?” Darcy comes to sit across my lap.
I look up into her pretty eyes. She’s curled her hair into waves today, and I loop one around my finger as they cascade down her glittery pink bodycon dress. The yellow diamond earrings I bought her for Christmas match her engagement ring perfectly. She looks fucking breathtaking.
“Making up for lost time,” I reply, setting a tender kiss to her shoulder.
“Listen, while I get that all of us were young and in love at some point, I’ll have none of that petting in my place, thank you very much,” Jon announces, pointing at us with a spatula. “You’re still on probation with me, remember?”
Mom snickers from across the table. She’s been talking to Felicity, Darcy, and Kendra all day, and honestly, witnessing her beaming smile as she girl-talks with my new family is definitely the greatest gift I could’ve wished for this holiday period.
“Can I offer my coach a little advice?” I lean back in my chair to look at Jon, one palm resting on Emily as Darcy starts up talking with the girls again.
Jon spins on his heel as Jack plops down next to me, stealing a honey-roasted parsnip from my plate. As if he didn’t already eat a whole-ass turkey.
“Don’t push it, Archer,” Jon warns, showing me his back before he sets a pan on the stove in front of him.
I decide to push it because … it’s me.
“The turkey was delicious and everything,” I say, smirking around my beer glass as I lift it to my lips. “Although I’d have added champagne to the broth and cooked away the alcohol in the final stretch. I find it helps to keep the meat moist.”
Darcy makes a retching sound from above me. Any mention of meat, and she’s heaving. Just like me when I saw the nut roast she planned to eat.
Jon pauses his movements around the kitchen, narrowing his eyes at me.
You cannot tell me Jack and Jon aren’t the same person.
He quirks a brow, wiping his spare hand over his apron. “Are you telling me you can actually cook, Archer?”
I shrug and set another kiss on my wife’s shoulder. “I’ll tell you what I told Jensen one time in practice: if you, me, and him had a cook-off, I’m confident I’d blow you both out of the water.”
Darcy joins the conversation, tipping her head at me.
“I can confirm the boy can cook. I’ve had some of the best meals ever from the comfort of his bed.
Like the other morning,” she starts, and I loop my arm around her waist, so fucking proud that she’s mine, “I was feeling nauseous again. Next thing, he’s bringing me a homemade dal curry, along with brown rice and a coriander naan bread.
” She imitates a chef’s kiss. “Perfection. My craving for beans and pulses was immediately satiated, and the nausea suppressed.”
Jon motions behind him to the stove. “Well, why aren’t you up here, proving your worth?”
Wrapping Darcy tighter in my arms, I bury my face into her hair. “Too busy loving my girl.”
“Ugh, I just love him,” Felicity coos from across the table, heart eyes when she looks at me and her daughter. “I’d say my son-in-law has already proven his worth.”
“Hmm,” Mom replies, twisting her wineglass around on the table. “I have a few stories I can tell that might change your mind.”
I pull my thumb and forefinger across my mouth, begging for her silence. There are plenty of secrets my mom can unearth about me—mostly when it comes to my past with women—but I know she won’t go there.
She just laughs, and my heart swells even bigger.
The temptation to drop that I just bought her a place a few blocks from my and Darcy’s penthouse is overwhelming, but I decide to wait until tomorrow, as I originally planned since it’s when we can get access to show her around.
Emma’s already called dibs on the room she wants when she comes to visit.
“Oh!” Darcy announces, excitement lighting up her face when she looks at me. She rests her palm over my hand. “Did you feel that?”
Don’t cry around the dinner table, Archer.
When Emily kicks again, Jon throws his spatula down and races toward us. “Can I feel?” he asks Darcy, an emotion I’ve rarely seen before in his eyes.
Felicity and Mom rise from their seats, too, and a circle forms around my wife.
Jon holds up a hand to everyone. “I think you’ll find I called first go. Granddad Jon wants to meet Emily.”
As if following his instruction or maybe just to humor my demanding coach, Emily kicks again, and his face lights up.
I know Jon met Felicity when she was thirty-nine and Darcy and Jack were almost college age.
A stranger could argue he might’ve wanted children of his own, but from the way he protects, loves, and defends his stepchildren, along with the proud look in his eyes right now, I’d say he feels rich enough.
“I’m so proud of you, Darcy,” Jon says, a shine to his eyes that I know isn’t from when he was cutting onions earlier.
He steps aside, and Felicity rests her palm across her daughter’s stomach.
“Typical,” she moans. “Everyone performs for my husband, but the second I get a look in, it goes—” She cuts herself off, eyes darting to Darcy’s bump. “Wow. She really is incredibly active, isn’t she? Just like her mumma.”
She turns over her shoulder to look at Kendra. “Fair warning though: this one here”—she points at Jack—“slept through the majority of my pregnancy, including all of the scans. It was even a struggle to work out if we were having a boy or a girl—he wouldn’t move to show us.”
Don’t say it, Archer. Don’t say it.
“I mean, I guess body parts have to be large enough to show up on the monitor in the first place.”
Jack turns to look at me, one brow raised aggressively. “Divorce this asshole, Darcy. We don’t need that kind of negativity in the family.”
“I can vouch that?—”
“Yes, yes. I don’t want a full-blown discussion about my center’s dick size,” Jon quickly interrupts Kendra, shuddering at the thought.
Laughter fills the room as Kendra, Jack, and Felicity all help clear the table and serve dessert when my eyes briefly connect with Mum’s.
She leans forward, both elbows braced on the table in front of her, chin resting in one palm. And when she flicks me a single wink, I know exactly what she’s saying—she’s proud of me, proud that I went after the girl I wanted and made her mine.