Then, “Yeah,” he replies. “I know.”
That should annoy me more than it does.
I close the cabinet and lean my hip against the counter, arms crossing without my permission. “So what was that? Your charity moment? You trying to rack up good-boy points while you’re stuck here?”
He stares at me, unbothered. “If I wanted good-boy points, I’d be doing dishes.”
I narrow my eyes. “You don’t do dishes.”
“Exactly,” he says. “I’m clearly not committed to the image.”
I scoff, but the corner of my mouth twitches before I can stop it.
He catches it. His mouth twitches, too, like he’s filing it away.
I glare harder. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” he asks, innocent in the most irritating way.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I snap.
“Like what?”
“Like you…” I search for the word and hate that I can’t find it fast enough. “Like you’re not annoying me by breathing.”
His brows lift. “Wow. That’s brutal.”
“Good,” I say. “Suffer.”
He shifts slightly, wincing when his knee adjusts, then looks at me like he’s offended on principle. “For the record, I’m still annoying. I’m just multi-dimensional.”
“God,” I mutter. “You’ve been trapped in this house for five minutes, and you’re already delusional.”
“Five minutes?” he repeats. “Sloane, I’ve basically lived here my whole life. This is my origin story.”
I glare at him over the island. “You do not have an origin story.”
His eyes brighten, like I just handed him a ball and told him not to shoot. “Sure I do. It starts with Cameron telling me I sucked at football.”
My chest tightens despite myself.
Because that’s true.
Cameron found him in fourth grade on the elementary field, throwing a wobbly spiral like he’d never seen a football before. Cameron laughed so hard he fell over. Then he stayed. Then he fixed it.
“Cameron tells everyone they suck,” I say.
“Yeah,” Logan agrees. “But he means it with love.”
I roll my eyes and grab a mug just to have something in my hands. “Pops asleep?”
“Yeah,” Logan says. His voice dips a fraction. “He crashed pretty hard.”
Pretty hard.
Like the day took something out of him.
I swallow. “Cameron?”
