Lark narrowed her eyes and stepped up.Her throw hit the rim of the front can, bounced high, clipped the side of another, and somehow dropped in anyway.
She screamed.
I nearly dropped my drink laughing.
Alice grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her once.“That was disgusting.”
“That was beautiful.”
“That was witchcraft.”
“That,” Lark said grandly, “was destiny.”
The game kept going like that, all noise and taunting and ridiculous near misses.A crowd even started forming a little around us.
Through all of it, Jude stayed.
Sometimes he talked to Wren.
Sometimes he watched the game.
Sometimes I caught him looking at me and snapped my eyes away so fast I made myself dizzy.
The weirdest part was that Wren started noticing it too.
Not in some dramatic, obvious way.She didn’t say anything.Didn’t raise a brow or smile like she knew something I didn’t.
But a couple times, when she was waiting for her turn, I caught her watching her son from the corner of her eye.Watching where his attention went when nobody was directly speaking to him.
And every single time, it came back to me.
I didn’t know what to do with that, so I kept playing.
At some point, the score got stupidly close, which only made Alice louder and Lark more feral.
“One cup each,” Alice announced, pointing between our remaining cans and theirs.“Final toss decides it.”
“Who made you commissioner?”Lark asked.
“I’m a natural-born leader.”
“You’re a natural-born pain in the ass.”
Lark handed me the kickball.“Here.You take first shot.”
“Nope,” I said immediately, shoving it back at her.“I am not blowing this for us.”
“That is the most honest thing anybody’s said all night,” Alice said.
Lark grabbed the ball from between us.“Fine.Let greatness handle it.”
“Your confidence is noble,” Wren told her.
Lark took her shot and it missed by a mile.
Alice clapped slowly.“Greatness, huh?”
Lark turned to me.“I had to lull them into a false sense of security.”
