"Jesus Christ, Xavier," I mutter, shaking my head. "Do you ever do anything that isn't systematically perfect?"
Griff laughs - actually laughs - reaching over to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, but I swat his hand away.
"No touchy. More groveling required," I say firmly. I'm not letting down my guard that easily, no matter how good the pasta is.
"Don't let him fool you," Logan grins, and it does unfair things to my pulse. "He spent twenty minutes yesterday wrestling with a fitted sheet. Looked like he was fighting a ghost."
"I don't understand the physics of fitted sheets," Xavier says with the kind of serious tone most people reserve for discussing actual physics. "The corners are mathematically impossible."
"They're sheets, not rocket science," I point out, though I'm fighting a smile. "You literally save lives for a living, but you're defeated by cotton blends?"
"Everyone has weaknesses," he says, his eyes meeting mine with an intensity that makes my stomach flip. "What's yours?"
The question hangs in the air, loaded with meaning I'm not ready to unpack. The wine is making me honest, and honesty around these three feels like stepping into quicksand.
"Bad decisions and men who think they're charming," I say quickly, taking another sip of wine as armor.
"Are we charming?" Griff asks, his voice dropping to a low rumble that should come with a warning label.
"You're something, all right," I mutter, then immediately regret it because now they're all looking at me with varying degrees of smugness.
"Really?" Logan asks, holding my gaze across the table.
"The verdict's still out," I lie, because admitting they're the most attractive disaster I've encountered in years seems like a spectacularly bad idea. "Though your ceramic destruction skills definitely lean toward the 'disaster' category."
"Hey, those dishes attacked me," Logan protests. "It was self-defense."
"Right." I roll my eyes. "And I'm sure the next kitchen casualty will also deserve it. You three are idiots," I say, but I'm fighting a smile. "Attractive idiots, but idiots nonetheless."
"I can work with that," Xavier says, tilting his head with a smirk that does things to my blood pressure.
"Don't let it go to your head," I warn, pointing my fork at him. "I also think Chris Hemsworth is attractive, but that doesn't mean I have good judgment."
"Ouch," Griff says, clutching his chest dramatically. "Comparing us to movie stars. That's harsh."
"Who says you're unattainable?" The words slip out before my brain can stop them, and I immediately want to crawl under the table and hide.
The temperature at the table rises about ten degrees. Logan's hand somehow ends up near mine on the table. Xavier is looking at me like I'm a fascinating puzzle he wants to solve in great detail. Griff's eyes have gone dark and hungry.
"That sounds dangerous," I admit, because the wine has apparently made me temporarily honest. "The kind that usually ends with me making spectacularly bad decisions and wondering what the hell I was thinking."
"And yet you're still sitting here," Xavier observes, his thumb tracing along the back of my hand.
"Yeah, well," I say, trying to ignore how his touch is making my brain short-circuit, "I never claimed to learn from my mistakes. I prefer to make new and creative ones."
"What if this time isn't a mistake?" Griff asks quietly, his voice serious for the first time all evening.
I look around the table at three faces watching me with expressions ranging from hopeful to hungry, and I feel that familiar flutter of panic mixed with want.
"Then I'm about to find out if I'm brave enough to find out," I say, surprising myself with the truth. "Or stupid enough. Hard to tell the difference sometimes."
"Both," Logan says with a grin that should be illegal. "The best things usually require both."
"Great," I mutter, draining my wine glass. "Nothing could possibly go wrong with that philosophy."
But even as I say it, I'm not pulling my hands away from theirs, and I'm not getting up from this table, and I'm definitelynot running for the door like every self-preservation instinct is screaming at me to do.
Maybe it's time to be the idiot who takes a chance.
