She didn’t finish the thought—so we don’t get caught together. She didn’t have to.
He understood why they needed to be secretive, for now. He didn’t like it. Didn’t like the way it made his back teeth set on edge or his limbs itch, but he understood.
Standing on her tiptoes, she pressed a breath of a kiss against his lips. “When you’re done here, we’ll probably need your help to find Mr. Pretzel.”
“It won’t be as fun as the toothbrush hunt, but you’ll be there, so I’ll deal,” he murmured against her mouth.
She smiled, but the effect of it didn’t quite meet her eyes. Yeah, they’d need to figure out how to handle this thing between them before they had a real accident. The kind of accident they couldn’t cover with a toothbrush and Mr. Pretzel.
The problem was, he wasn’t sure how they could approach the situation reveal without facing the damage of a fallout.
Deep down in his gut, he worried it would affect everyone.
But it’d be Rachel who suffered most.
CHAPTER 23
RACHEL
“Brady.” Rachel was only yay-far from losing her shit. “Where did you put Mr. Pretzel?”
“He ate my gummy bears.” Brady shoved his index finger toward his brother.
This was the response Brady was giving to everything.
“We don’t point like that.” Rachel glanced to Dane and Travis, who were tearing apart the closet in search of the missing stuffed pretzel toy. “It’s rude.”
Apparently, if Rachel was following the train of activities correctly, Kellan had eaten into Brady’s special stash of gummy bears. The ones Rachel didn’t know existed that someone had bought in Confluence.
In retaliation, Brady had held Mr. Pretzel hostage in an unknown location until Kellan replaced the candy or came up with a suitable alternative.
So far, none of Kellan’s suggested resolutions had been acceptable to Brady and his demands.
“Fine. How about you can have all my underwear, you jerk.” Kellan said this with not an ounce of concern that his mother was standing right there.
Rachel did not have time for this. Or patience.
She opened her mouth to explain to Kellan the consequences for name-calling—no electronics for the rest of the day—when there was a throat clearing from the doorway.
“There are my boys,” a deep male voice said.
Gavin?
Rachel turned and, sure enough, Gavin was standing, arms wide, waiting for one of his boys to run in for a hug.
Neither of them did as he expected, seeing as they were currently in a standoff.
No, they did what Rachel expected. They took their argument to the new authority figure in the room.
“He stole Mr. Pretzel.” Kellan ran to Gavin, but not like he clearly had hoped. There was no hug, no welcome, just more finger pointing.
“He. Ate. My. Gummy. Bears.” Brady clenched and unclenched his fists.
On any other kid, it would’ve been cute because it wouldn’t have been Rachel’s issue to deal with. As it was, the clenching and unclenching was not cute. Not at all.
“They. Were. Left. Out.” Kellan went into a showdown with his brother.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
