Mason exhales hard. “Damn.”
Dex shrugs. “Hire someone else.”
“I will,” I say. “But if there’s a gap, she’ll use it.”
Silence settles heavier now.
Colby studies me. “You talk to a lawyer?”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“It’s not great,” I say. “If she pushes, it gets messy.”
Dex mutters, “That’s garbage. Moving a kid across the country isn’t stability.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I say. “She’ll spin it.”
Eli leans back against his stall, quiet but solid. “She forgets something.”
We all look at him.
“What?” Mason asks.
“That this room is family,” Eli says. “We look out for each other. That includes Maddie.”
Bryce nods once. “Annabelle would back you. In a heartbeat.”
“Mia too,” Eli adds. “You know she would.”
Colby crosses his arms. Thinking. “There has to be a solution.”
Silence stretches.
The kind where everyone is actually thinking.
Then Dex, casual as breathing:
“Get married.”
The room erupts.
“Shut up,” I mutter.
Dex keeps going because he can’t help himself.
“I'm serious. You want stability on paper? You want a judge to stop imagining you eating cereal out of a helmet? Get married.”
“I have never eaten cereal out of a helmet,” I say.
Dex pauses. “That is exactly what a man who has eaten cereal out of a helmet would say.”
Bryce nods. “He's guilty.”
“I'm not,” I insist.
Mason points at my stall. “There is literally a granola bar in your glove.”
