Chapter 16 #2
Lexi squints at it through sleepy eyes and says, “No.”
I look at her. “No?”
She points with the hand not holding juice. “Purple one.”
I stare at the cabinet. Raven, unfortunately for me, is already smiling into her coffee.
“There’s a purple one?” I ask.
“Third shelf,” she says, clearly enjoying herself now.
I open the cabinet, find the bright purple box shoved in the back, and hold it up. “This one?”
Lexi nods once, satisfied. “Yeah.”
“Of course.”
I get a bowl, pour cereal, add milk, and set it in front of her with a spoon. She looks at it, looks at me, then at her mother, who just shrugs like yes, apparently this giant biker is serving your breakfast now and no, I don’t know what the hell is happening either.
Lexi accepts this state of affairs without much concern. She sets Bunny beside the bowl carefully, like she wants him close but not at risk of milk damage, then starts eating in sleepy little motions.
I grab napkins from the holder and set them near Raven before she even asks.
That’s when she gives me that look.
Not flirtation. Not gratitude exactly. Something stranger. Like she genuinely doesn’t know what to do with the fact that I am useful in all the ways that matter without making a production out of it.
I know that look too.
It’s the one people get when they’ve spent enough time around men who help only if there’s something in it for them, or because they want credit for being the kind of man who helps.
I don’t like that one either.
“Stop looking at me like I just built the kid a house,” I mutter, taking my mug back to the counter.
The corner of her mouth lifts. “I wasn’t.”
“You were.”
“I was just…surprised.”
“By cereal?”
“By you.” The answer is so honest it almost knocks me off balance.
I turn my head and find her watching me over the rim of her mug, Lexi warm and sleepy in her lap, morning light just starting to brighten the edges of the kitchen around her.
Dangerous setup. Very dangerous.
I take another swallow of coffee and make myself look away first. “Try not to be,” I say.
“Noted.”
That should be the end of it. It isn’t.
Because now I’m aware of too many things all at once.
The sound of Lexi’s spoon tapping the bowl.
The way Raven tucks her hair behind one ear with the same hand she used to grip her purse in the truck.
The soft scrape of the chair when she shifts to settle Lexi more comfortably.
The fact that she takes her coffee with one sugar and two small pours of creamer.
The fact that Lexi apparently only eats cereal if it comes from the purple box and Bunny has to be positioned nearby but not too close to the milk.
This is not useful information. My brain stores it anyway.
Boots hit the hallway a few seconds before Shadow and Blaze appear in the doorway like the world’s least subtle pair of assholes. They both stop short when they clock the scene in front of them.
Raven at the table in her shirt from last night, hair loose, coffee in hand. Lexi in her lap, eating cereal out of the purple box. Me at the counter, already caffeinated enough to notice exactly what this looks like.
Blaze’s grin starts instantly.
Shadow, being Shadow, doesn’t smile much. He just looks between us once and says, “Well, this is domestic as hell.”
I don’t even turn around fully. “Go away.”
Blaze steps into the kitchen anyway. “Morning to you too. Hey, sweetheart.”
That last line is directed at Lexi, who pauses with her spoon halfway to her mouth and blinks at him. Then she slowly leans harder into Raven and picks Bunny up again.
Blaze presses a hand to his chest like he’s been wounded. “Wow. Harsh.”
“She’s got instincts,” I tell him.
Raven chokes on a laugh and covers it with her mug.
Shadow leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, gaze too knowing for this hour. “You didn’t come down for breakfast when I called. Now I see why.”
I look at him flatly. “Did you have a point?”
“Just taking in the scenery.”
“You do that somewhere else, I don’t break your neck before noon.”
Blaze, ignoring every obvious survival instinct he should have developed by now, saunters toward the coffee pot. “So this is what you brought back from Louisiana. Logan really undersold it.”
Raven goes still. Not visibly enough for anybody but me to notice.
But I see it. The way her shoulders tighten half an inch. The way her hand stills on Lexi’s back. The way she goes quiet inside herself for a second, like she’s not sure how much of this attention is safe.
My patience snaps thin fast. “Blaze.”
He glances over, finally catching something in my tone that isn’t a joke.
“Not your business,” I say. “Not your entertainment. Learn the difference.”
The grin drops right off his face.
Good.
Shadow’s eyes narrow a fraction, reading more than he says as usual. Blaze, to his credit, at least has the decency to look a little ashamed.
“My bad,” he mutters.
Raven, because apparently she is incapable of letting other people carry tension for too long without trying to smooth it, says quietly, “It’s okay.”
I turn my head just enough to look at her. No, it isn’t. She shouldn’t have to say that. The fact that she feels like she should almost makes me swear out loud.
Shadow catches the exchange and straightens off the doorframe. “We’re heading out back in ten,” he says to me, changing the subject like he knows exactly why he should. “Logan wants everybody there.”
“Got it.”
Blaze grabs a mug, pours coffee, and wisely keeps his mouth shut after that.
For about ten whole seconds.
Then Lexi drops her spoon on the floor. I bend automatically to pick it up at the exact same time Raven starts to move, and we both stop when our hands brush.
Not dramatically. Not some sparks-across-the-room bullshit. Just skin.
Brief. Unexpected. Enough.
Raven stills.
I still too.
Then Lexi, entirely oblivious to the fact that she just detonated the air in the kitchen, says, “Oops.”
Blaze makes a strangled sound into his coffee.
I don’t even look at him. I grab the spoon, rinse it in the sink, hand Lexi a clean one from the drawer, and go back to my mug like my pulse didn’t just kick once for no damn reason.
Shadow’s mouth twitches.
I hate all of them.
Raven looks determinedly at her cereal bowl like she wasn’t affected either, but there’s a little extra color high on her cheeks now. Not much. Just enough to be noticeable if you’re paying attention.
Unfortunately, I am paying attention. To everything. Always.
Lexi finishes about half her cereal before she gives up and starts playing with Bunny’s ears instead.
Raven tries to encourage two more bites.
Lexi negotiates for one and a half. I watch the whole thing like an idiot, leaning against the counter with coffee in hand while Shadow and Blaze mutter to each other about the day’s work like this isn’t the strangest fucking morning I’ve had in a while.
By the time Raven gets Lexi wiped down with the napkins I grabbed earlier, I have somehow learned the following without meaning to…
Raven takes hazelnut creamer. Lexi prefers the purple cereal and will reject all imposters. Bunny sits on the table when she eats but never farther away than arm’s reach. Raven says “baby” when she’s tired and “Lexi” when she means business.
And I am absolutely in too deep if my brain is already sorting through this kind of information before seven in the morning.
Temporary, I remind myself. This is temporary.
That’s the agreement. The whole point. She’s here because Grinder called in a debt. She and Lexi need a place to land, and Bartsville is that place for now. Then some other solution gets worked out. Some safer setup. Some more permanent arrangement that has nothing to do with me.
I know that. I do. The problem is my body already knows I’m lying.
Because temporary doesn’t explain why I clocked her coffee order after one morning.
It doesn’t explain why I knew to grab the napkins before she asked.
It doesn’t explain why Lexi’s cereal preference now lives in my head like that information might one day matter in a life-or-death situation.
And it definitely doesn’t explain why the sight of Raven half awake in the kitchen with her daughter in her lap hit me somewhere hard enough that I’m still feeling the bruise of it.
Shadow drains the last of his coffee and pushes off the doorway. “You done playing house, or are we canceling the day’s schedule?”
I look at him. “You’re real close to losing teeth.”
He grins without humor. “There he is.”
Blaze coughs into his mug to hide a laugh.
Raven, to my complete surprise, smiles into her coffee again.
Tiny. Tired. Still enough to trip something in my chest that I absolutely don’t have time for.
I set my mug in the sink before I do something stupid like keep standing here. “Finish breakfast,” I say to Raven, like the problem in this room is the cereal and not me. “If you need anything, Emma’s probably up.”
She nods once. “Okay.”
Lexi looks up from Bunny and says, “Bye, Joker.”
I freeze for half a beat. Then I look at the kid.
She’s watching me with sleepy eyes and cereal milk dried near the corner of her mouth, Bunny clutched to her chest, like saying goodbye to me in the kitchen is already normal.
That lands worse than anything else this morning.
I clear my throat. “Yeah. Later, kid.”
She nods like that answer satisfies her completely.
I head for the door because staying here one minute longer is a bad fucking idea.
As I pass Shadow, he leans in just enough to murmur, “Temporary, huh?”
I don’t break stride. “Shut up.”
Blaze falls in behind us laughing under his breath, and I ignore both of them while my mind does a real shit job of not replaying the kitchen in humiliating detail.
Raven at the table in the morning light. Lexi in her lap.
Coffee. Cereal. Napkins.
The accidental brush of her hand.
The look on her face when I handed the kid the juice box like it was nothing.
Temporary, I tell myself again as we step out into the yard.
My body already knows I’m full of shit.