A laugh bubbled out of me—real, unexpected.
“Fourteen,” I repeated.
That number still did strange things to my brain.
Fourteen Dane brothers. One father. Two mothers they loved—Caroline and Lila—both gone now, both still present in the way the men spoke their names with reverence and grief and gratitude.
Seven Charleston Danes already married and settled into something that looked like peace.
Ryker and Isabel.
Marcus and Claire.
Atlas and Anna.
Noah and Hallie Mae—sopregnant and glowing and somehow still sweetly ferocious.
Elias and Vivienne.
Charlie and Sloane.
Silas and Portia.
And then the seven Montana Danes—the ones who had grown up on a ranch under big sky and hard winters, the ones who carried Lila’s name in their bones.
Caleb and Meghan.
Jacob and Camille.
Ethan and Natalie.
Lucas and Lexi Montgomery.
Gideon and Hazel.
Levi and Amelia.
And Micah?—
Micah, who was mine.
Micah, who had been my awakening and my anchor.
Micah, who was about to be blindfolded on a private plane like the world’s most lethal man had just been recruited for a surprise party.
The thought made me smile again, even as something softer moved under it—an ache that wasn’t grief this time. An ache that was love. The kind that made your chest hurt because your body had no better place to put it.
I checked my phone.
A text from my momma.
Momma:Y’all better not forget the buckets.
I laughed under my breath.
My parents and siblings were already en route, too—flown out because Portia didn’t do anything halfway. The McKinleys were coming to oversee the flowers, because Charleston blooms were being flown in as if petals could be airlifted like reinforcements.
In a way, they could.
