She glances around. "Greasy diner lighting and clown-adjacent ambiance?"
"You. Me. Pancakes. Nobody screaming your old name as a threat. You sitting next to me because you want to, not because the world's on fire." She looks down, blinking too fast. "Pancakes or waffles?" I ask, dragging us to safer ground.
"Both," she says immediately, then freezes as though she didn't mean to say it.
I grin. "Both it is."
We order too much. Mara doesn't blink, just yells the ticket.
"She thinks we're monsters," Sloane says.
"Good thing she's fond of monsters. Keeps the coffee coming."
The food comes fast, pancakes the size of her face, waffles drowning in strawberries, bacon, eggs, toast. She takes one bite and closes her eyes as though it's church.
I nearly groan. "That good?"
"Best thing I've ever eaten," she says around a second bite.
"Rude. I've definitely given you better."
Her eyes cut to mine, heat flashing. "I was being polite." If she keeps talking that way in public, I'm going to forget we're in public.
We eat and let the heavy stuff sit in the corner. Talk drifts to Maggie's campaign to feed the county, the prank war, Frankie plotting pastel revenge murders, Darla turning East's revenge costume into a strip-show power move.
Sloane jabs her fork at me. "You started Operation Payback. You can't complain now that it's evolving."
"It was supposed to rattle you. Not inspire Ruby to launch a livestock acquisition plan."
She grins and digs out her phone. "Speaking of. Ruby's serious about the goat." She tilts the screen toward me. There are two photos of smug pygmy goats. One with floppy ears, one staring straight at the camera as though it already owns the place.
"She's narrowed it down. General Mayhem or Nasty Nash Jr."
"Absolutely not," I say, but my brain's already painting the picture. Ruby leading a goat on a glitter leash while Nash pretends he doesn't care and everyone else pretends we're not doomed.
"She's already Googling fencing," Sloane murmurs.
"Over my dead body is a goat moving into my clubhouse."
Sloane laughs quietly, soft and warm. That sound hits somewhere behind my ribs. The curve of her mouth, the way her eyes light when she talks about our people. Then it hits me. It's not the goat she's testing. It's us. This. The idea that there's a future where she can say our clubhouse and our chaos without anybody snatching it back.
Her gaze goes distant. "It never stops feeling strange. Saying things out loud. Planning around something. And no one telling me it's too much, or stupid, or not mine to keep."
I want to burn every person responsible for that sentence down to ash.
"You say it's yours," I tell her, hand sliding under the table to squeeze her thigh, "and it's yours. No take-backs. That's the deal."
She bites her lower lip, eyes flicking to mine. I'd rather be the one biting it.
After breakfast, we ride with no destination. Just asphalt, air, her arms around my waist. My hand on her thigh, her palms flat against my stomach. With every mile, those small defensive tensions bleed out of her shoulders. By the time we end up downtown, her thumbs are drawing idle circles against my abs.
We park outside the bookstore Maggie loves. The bell chimes. It smells of dust, paper, and faint incense.
I buy her a book without reading the back because she tells me her teenage self had to hide one under her mattress so her father wouldn't see. Her grown-up self shouldn't have to sneak romance novels.
She tries to argue. I arch a brow. She rolls her eyes and lets me pay. Progress.
By the time we head home, the sun's higher, air warmer. She's quieter on the ride, in that thoughtful way she gets when she's sorting new data. The kind of quiet that's not closing off, just rearranging.
