I stared at the pile of food, my eyebrows climbing toward my hairline. "Remy. That's got to be a hundred dollars worth of meat." My voice came out somewhere between impressed and horrified.
"One hundred and forty-seven dollars and sixty-two cents," he confirmed cheerfully, holding up a receipt as evidence. "Plus tax. I also got these." He produced a bag of fancy dog treats shaped like bones, shaking them like a maraca. "I don't actually know if alligators eat dog treats, but they're bacon flavored, so I figured it was worth a shot."
"You're trying to bribe my alligator." I couldn't decide if I wanted to laugh or shake him, planting my hands on my hips. "Again."
"I prefer to think of it as offering tribute." He pressed a hand to his chest, the picture of wounded dignity, his expression shifting to mock offense. "I am courting you, chère. That means courting your family. Gumbo is your family." His face softened into honesty, the performance fading to reveal the real man underneath. "I want him to like me. Or at least... tolerate me enough not to eat me."
Harper made a sound that might have been a laugh, quickly smothered behind his hand. Silas's mouth twitched, the corner lifting almost imperceptibly.
I sighed, but I was smiling, my resistance crumbling under the weight of his earnestness. "Fine. But I'm watching. And if you fall in again?—"
"I won't fall in again." Remy drew himself up with exaggerated pride, squaring his shoulders like a soldier preparing for battle. "I have learned. I have adapted. I am a new man."
He fell in again.
To be fair, it wasn't entirely his fault. The soft spot by the dock—the one that had claimed him the first time—was obvious now, marked by churned mud and his own previous misfortune. He avoided it carefully, picking his way along the bank with exaggerated caution, the premium ribeye held aloft like a peace offering.
"And here we see the Cajun Alpha in his natural habitat," he narrated in a hushed, documentary-style voice, flashing a smile over his shoulder at where I sat on the porch with Harper and Silas, his feet picking carefully through the mud. "Watch as he approaches the apex predator, bearing gifts of the finest quality beef."
Gumbo was sunning himself on the far bank, one yellow eye cracked open to track Remy's progress. His tail twitched once. Judgment.
"The gatekeeper is unimpressed," Remy continued, undeterred, shifting to a conspiratorial whisper. "But our intrepid hero presses on, knowing that the path to true love runs through approximately nine feet of prehistoric murder lizard."
I pressed my hand over my mouth to stifle a laugh, my shoulders shaking. Beside me, Harper was trembling with silent amusement, his hand gripping the porch railing, and even Silas's shoulders were quaking.
Remy reached the water's edge, crouching down slowly, carefully. He held out the steak, his arm extended like an offering to a king. "Hey there, big guy. Remember me? I'm the one you tried to eat. Twice." He inched closer, his voice dropping to a soothing murmur, water lapping at the toes of his boots. "I come in peace. I bring offerings. I am very, very sorry for whatever I did to offend you."
Gumbo's eye opened fully. He didn't move, but his stillness shifted—from lazy to calculating.
"That's right," Remy crooned, extending the steak a little further, his knees sinking slightly into the soft mud. "Premium ribeye. Aged twenty-one days. I had to go to three different stores to find one worthy of your magnificence."
For a long, breathless moment, nothing happened. Gumbo stared. Remy held the steak. The bayou hummed with insects and birdsong.
Then Gumbo moved.
It happened so fast I barely saw it—one moment he was motionless on the bank, the next he was surging through the water like a dark torpedo. Remy yelped and stumbled backward, his foot finding the one patch of unstable ground he hadn't accounted for.
The splash was spectacular.
He went down flailing, arms windmilling, the steak flying from his grip in a graceful arc. Gumbo caught it mid-air witha snap of his jaws that echoed across the water, then turned and glided away with his prize, disappearing into the cypress shadows like a smug, scaly ghost.
Remy surfaced, sputtering, covered in mud and duckweed. His hair was plastered to his face. Something green and slimy was draped over one shoulder.
"That," he announced with wounded dignity, spitting out a mouthful of bayou water, "was not the same soft spot."
I lost it.
The laugh that erupted from my chest wasn't just a laugh—it was a joy that had been locked away for years. A chirp escaped my throat, high and bright, and then I was crying, tears streaming down my face as I doubled over on the porch steps, my whole body shaking with the force of it.
"That's—" I gasped, trying to catch my breath, my ribs aching from laughter. "That's PROGRESS, right??"
Remy was grinning now, even as he hauled himself out of the water, mud squelching in his boots, his soaked shirt plastered to his torso. "He took the steak! He didn't try to eat me! That's absolutely progress!"
Harper was laughing too—actually laughing, a deep rumbling sound I'd never heard from him before, his whole face transformed by it. Silas had his face in his hands, his body trembling with silent mirth.
Remy slogged up to the porch, dripping and triumphant. He stopped at the bottom of the steps, spreading his arms wide like a conquering hero. "I am victorious. Muddy, but victorious."
"You're ridiculous," I managed, wiping tears from my cheeks, my stomach sore from laughing.
