Again, there’s quiet. Harry clears her throat. “What’s sweet?”
“How he calls her by her real name, and she lets him get away with it. It’s sweet. You would light Wyatt up if he called you Harriet. And I’m the same way with my actual name.”
Gunner tips his head and puts a finger to his lip, as if he’s thinking. “Whatisyour real name? I seem to have forgotten…oh yeah! Tallulah!” Laughter rings out.
I growl. “That’s it—”Gunner dodges the roll I throw at him.
Part of me floats above all of this, watching it like a scene in a movie I accidentally walked into. The long table, the soft overhead lights, the clink of glass and flatware, the blend ofvoices. The way everyone seems to slot into their places like they were always meant to be there.
There’s a strange, sharp ache under my breastbone.
I love them. That part is simple. I love Shiloh’s too-big heart, Jack’s gruff-cat loyalty, Brodie’s steady logic, Cotton’s sunshine. I’d die for any of them without thinking twice.
Sometimes, though—nights like this—I feel like I’m standing just outside a window, palms pressed to cold glass, watching everyone else’s life happen.
I’m the friend who fixes Wi-Fi, hacks into clouds when you forget your password, and tracks down the stalker who tried to kill you. The brain in the corner who makes sure the monsters are held at bay.
It’s an important job. It just…doesn’t come with plus-ones or shared tax returns.
“We should do a toast,” Harry says suddenly, lifting her wine glass. “To surviving another year in the murder capital of scenic Appalachia.”
“Harry,” Shiloh hisses.
“What? I’m kidding.” She shifts, face softening. “To—fine—to family, I guess.”
Everyone lifts their glasses. I lift my lowball, too.
“To family,” I echo. The word hits something hollow in me, rings there.
Brodie’s phone buzzes on the table and he glances down, thumb swiping the screen, then lays it back face-down again. His gaze catches mine, and for a second his features soften with a kind of big-brother worry that makes my throat tight.
By the time the dishes are cleared and we’ve migrated to the living room, the sharp edge of the bourbon has dulled into a fuzzy warmth that my brain keeps trying to catalogue and label.
Point-zero-eight blood alcohol content, I estimate. Functional but compromised.
My mother would be horrified; Dad would be properly proud.
Shiloh and Gunner claim the big couch, and Cotton curls up in Brodie’s lap like a cat. Harry sprawls in one armchair and Wyatt another, with Sammy taking up more floor than is strictly necessary. I sit cross-legged on the rug, back against the coffee table, my laptop open at my hip more out of habit than need.
Jack lingers by the window, fingers on the dial of his radio. Always half at work, never fully off-duty.
“I’d call that a success,” Shiloh declares, stretching her legs out to nudge my thigh with her foot. “Right? We did it. Friendsgiving. Nobody burned anything. Nobody cried.”
“Yet,” Harry mutters. “Wyatt and I still have to go home to a passel of kids. There will be tears, I can practically guarantee it.”
“We should try for another,” Wyatt says.
“I will stab you with a turkey fork,” she tells him sweetly.
Their bickering hums in the background, a familiar soundtrack. I let my gaze wander around living room—at the mismatched throw pillows, the photos on the mantle, the tiny sock pinned to the wall with a clothespin that says “Baby’s First Christmas Soon.”
Somewhere, my chest squeezes again. I press my thumbnail into the seam of my cup until it hurts.
“Twig’s thinking face is on,” Sammy observes lazily from the floor.
“I can hear it from here,” Brodie says. “Gears grinding.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m just…processing.”
