Chapter 8 — Pantry Shelves And Bad Ideas #2
My cock answered both touches like an idiot with no survival instinct, and I had to shift in my chair while Mark Bishop stood ten feet away discussing grill temperatures.
The situation was so absurd I almost laughed.
I was a grown man getting quietly destroyed by a napkin, a fork joke, and two women who knew exactly how badly I wanted them.
Shay saw me shift.
Of course she did.
"Comfortable?" she asked.
"Very."
"That sounded like lying."
Kiki smiled into her lemonade. "Luke is very committed to table manners."
"Heroic," Shay said. "Deeply fucking heroic."
Mark clapped me on the shoulder as he passed with a platter of chicken. "Luke, you're on cooler duty after lunch. Vince keeps putting the beer where the kids can get soda, and apparently that's the kind of crisis I need a committee for."
"Happy to serve," I said.
"Good man."
Good man.
Kiki's knee pressed more firmly against mine under the table.
Shay's grin went bright enough to start a fire.
Nobody noticed.
Or if they noticed, they saw exactly what they expected to see. Kiki being Kiki. Shay being Shay. Luke Whitaker sitting in the middle of the summer circle, trusted by everyone, adored by all six women in the way they had always openly adored me.
The difference was that now two of those women knew what I sounded like when restraint finally broke.
And they were sitting on either side of me at a family lunch, pretending the world hadn't changed.
It had changed.
It had changed so much I could feel the shape of it every time Kiki's hand brushed mine and Shay's thigh shifted against my leg.
***
After lunch, Eden's influence made itself known from wherever she had vanished to that afternoon.
It arrived in the form of a mixing bowl full of colored bottle caps.
"Lake-games tournament," Paige announced from the porch steps, shaking the bowl with unnecessary drama. "Random partners. No complaints, no trades, no bribery unless it's offered to me personally and includes cash."
"Rigged," Vince said.
"You say that every time you lose at anything," Trina told him.
"Because every time I lose, corruption is involved."
The group laughed. I didn't, because Kiki and Shay had gone very still on opposite sides of the yard in a way that made me profoundly suspicious.
Random partners, my ass.
The bowl made its way around. People drew caps, shouted colors, groaned, cheered, argued.
Mark ended up with Caroline and immediately accused her of throwing games to keep the marriage interesting.
Cooper got paired with Knox, which turned into the kind of chest-bumping male celebration that made everyone nearby lose several IQ points.
Penny drew silver with one of Cooper's college friends.
I didn't like that.
It was stupid. Immediate. Ugly. Mine before I could pretend otherwise. Penny wasn't mine. Not yet. Not in any way I had the right to claim.
But watching some twenty-two-year-old with a boat-club tan grin at her like he had a chance made my hand tighten around the blue bottle cap I had drawn.
Shay appeared at my elbow and held up her own cap.
Blue.
Of course.
"Partner," she said, entirely too pleased with herself.
"Random, huh?"
"The universe ships us."
"The universe has suspiciously organized handwriting."
She leaned closer. In public, it looked like she was checking the cap in my palm. In reality, her fingers slid over my wrist and rested there, warm and confident.
"Don't worry," she murmured. "Kiki's got red with Reese. Nobody is suffering."
I glanced across the lawn.
Kiki stood beside Reese near the cornhole boards, red bottle cap pinched between two fingers. Reese said something that made her laugh, and Kiki looked back at me over Reese's shoulder.
No jealousy. No worry. No performance.
Just warmth.
She was happy.
Not tolerant. Not pretending. Legitimately happy.
That should have calmed me down. It did, a little.
Then Penny's partner touched her elbow while pointing toward the ladder toss setup, and my jaw tried to turn itself into a structural support beam.
Shay followed my gaze.
"Oh my God," she whispered. "Are you jealous again? Really?"
"No."
"That was the least convincing no in recorded history."
"I'm not jealous."
"Luke, you looked at that guy like you were deciding whether his bones would fit in the cooler."
"I was assessing sportsmanship."
Shay's laugh burst out of her bright enough that Vince looked over and smiled. She covered it by grabbing my arm and dragging me toward the cornhole boards.
"Come on, Sportsmanship. We have bags to throw and emotional defects to exploit."
The games started innocent.
That was also a lie.
Cornhole first. Shay stood beside me in the grass, barefoot, sunglasses pushed on top of her head, blue cap tucked into the strap of her tank top like some kind of team badge. Every time I stepped forward to throw, she leaned against my back and whispered coaching advice that was mostly slander.
"Too much wrist, baby."
"You aren't a cornhole professional."
"My wrist game is legendary."
"Don't say that near your father."
"Relax. Dad thinks wrists are for fishing."
I threw and sank the bag clean.
Shay made a delighted sound and jumped on me from behind, arms around my neck, her body plastered to my back for two full seconds before she slid down.
"See? I helped."
"You nearly strangled me."
"Motivational strangling."
Across the yard, nobody cared. Shay had been climbing people like furniture for years. Cooper booed. Knox accused me of performance-enhancing coaching. Vince shouted that Shay needed to stop assaulting her partner unless it improved the family honor.
Kiki watched from the next game over, laughing with Reese, and the look she sent me had teeth.
Not jealous.
Interested.
When our rotation moved to giant Jenga, Kiki and Reese ended up at the same station. For ten minutes, the four of us circled the tower, pretending to care about blocks while Kiki and Shay coordinated an entirely different game.
Kiki brushed past me to study the lower rows, her sundress sliding against my knuckles. She didn't look at me. That made it worse.
"Careful," she said, bending to test a block.
"You keep saying that."
"You keep needing it."
Shay crouched on the other side of the tower, chin in her hand. "I vote he pulls from the middle. Luke is very good under pressure."
Kiki's eyes flicked up.
Reese coughed into her drink, smiling like she knew more than she was saying.
I pulled the block from the middle. The tower wobbled. Shay grabbed my forearm like she was steadying herself, except the block tower was three feet away and her thumb traced the inside of my wrist once, slow and deliberate.
"Strong hands," she said.
"Family event, Shay," I said under my breath.
"I said hands."
Kiki slid her block free and set it on top. "She did."
"Don't encourage her."
"I always encourage her."
The tower fell two rounds later because Knox tried a move that required either surgical precision or divine intervention.
He had neither. Everyone shouted. Someone accused Vince of sneezing on purpose.
Mark demanded a replay. Shay used the chaos to lace her fingers through mine for one second behind her thigh.
One second.
Then she let go.
My skin kept the shape of her hand.
By the time we reached ladder toss, the public performance had become almost unbearable.
Kiki handed me a bottle of water and twisted the cap loose first. Shay stood on my other side and drank from my lemonade without asking.
Kiki wiped a spot of sauce from the corner of my mouth with her thumb, then turned away like that was a normal thing to do to your trusted family friend in front of both your parents.
Tatum, paired with one of Shay's cousins, laughed at something he said and bounced on her toes like a sparkler someone had lit too close to curtains.
It was nothing. He was probably harmless. She wasn't leaning into him. She wasn't giving him anything real.
My body didn't care.
Penny caught that one.
Her sunglasses hid her eyes, but her mouth curved slightly.
Not surprise.
Assessment.
Future trouble in a white linen skirt.
I looked away before my face betrayed me.
Shay didn't miss it.
"Careful," she said, throwing Kiki's word back at me.
"With what?"
"The jealousy thing. It's cute, but if you glare at every guy who speaks to one of us, you're going to pull something."
"I'm not glaring."
"Luke."
I looked down at her.
The joke stayed in her mouth, but something softer moved behind it. Shay's chaos was loud. Her insight was quiet and mean as a sniper.
"They're not interested in him," she said.
"Penny is making him nervous because she enjoys watching men with sponsored sunglasses realize they are basic.
Kiki is over there looking at you like you're dessert she already licked.
Reese is being Reese, which means she noticed your feelings before you did and decided to be kind about it.
Tatum is vibrating because someone told her to wait, and waiting makes her personally offended. Nobody is drifting away from you."
My throat tightened.
"I know that."
"Do you?"
I watched Kiki laugh at something Reese said, head tipped back, sunlight in her hair. She looked happy and easy and free in a way that made my chest ache.
Then she looked at me.
The ache moved lower.
"I'm trying," I said.
Shay's hand slid into mine again, hidden by the angle of her body. "Good. Try faster."
"That's supportive."
"I'm a motivational icon."
She let go as Caroline called everyone toward dessert.
Kiki reached us at the same time, close enough that her hip brushed mine as she leaned around me to steal a strawberry from Shay's plate.
"How's my partner doing?" Kiki asked.
"Terrible," Shay said. "Emotionally. Great at throwing things."
Kiki looked at me, warm and wicked. "We can work with that."
Three words. Innocent enough to survive any parent in earshot.
My entire body understood what she meant.
***
The pantry hallway at the Bishop house wasn't private.
That was the point.