Zeke, Cami’s oldest, leaned into view, grinning like a guilty criminal, maple evidence smeared across his shirt. “It’s not.”
“Awesome!” Harper clapped her hands. “Let’s go!”
The four of them disappeared toward the buffet line like a sugar-seeking tactical unit.
Logan’s eyes closed briefly. Like he was counting to ten.
Hunter looked like he was trying not to laugh.
Logan leaned forward then, elbows on the table, voice low. “So, Counselor,” he said, “looks like you survived all the wedding madness?” That low Southern twang wrapped around the words, snagging my attention.
The way he said it, like he was testing the shape of me in his mouth, made my throat go dry.
“Barely,” I said, keeping my tone light because I didn’t trust anything else. “My feet may never forgive me. But the cake helped.”
He huffed, although not quite a laugh.
Progress.
Across the table, Cami sipped her coffee with the satisfied smugness of someone who had absolutely engineered this entire morning.
“Enjoying your coffee?” she asked me, innocent as sin.
“Loving it,” I muttered.
Cami smiled wide causing Hunter to cough, suspiciously, like he was choking down laughter.
The conversation eventually slipped into something easier after that: light teasing, harmless questions, the kind of back-and-forth that didn’t demand much but still felt intimate because it wasustalking, not the whole table.
At some point, his gaze lingered. Just a fraction. It wasn’t flirty or obvious. It was the kind of attention that made me aware of the space between our knees, the warmth along my arm, the way his shoulder brushed mine every time someone bumped the booth behind us.
I asked about Harper’s obsession with glitter and his mouth tugged into a reluctant smile that was infectious, and almost boyish, in a way that caught me off guard.
“Found glitter in my truck for three weeks after her last project,” he admitted.
“Three weeks?” I gasped. “That’s not a truck anymore. That’s a craft store.”
He shot me a look, shaking his head. “Still don’t find it funny.”
I smiled into my coffee, enjoying the friction. The gruffness. The way he didn’t give easy warmth, but when it happened, it felt earned.
“She looks like you. Except for her hair. Does she get that from her mom?”
Logan’s jaw immediately tightened as his gaze dropping briefly to the table before lifting again.
The second the words left my mouth, I knew immediately that I’d gone too far, invaded a boundary I hadn’t even seen.
I hadn’t meant to probe or let curiosity get ahead of me, but heat crept up my neck as I resisted the urge to backtrack, explain, or fix it before it worsened.
Before I could act, Harper’s bright, easy voice cut through the tension, breaking the moment before it settled deeper.
“Daddy!” she shouted. “Zeke dropped his pancake in the syrup fountain!”
Cami choked on her coffee. “I’m sorry—what?”
Logan pushed back his chair with a slow sigh. “Be right back,” he said.
Hunter followed him instinctively, patting Logan’s shoulder as they navigated through the cluster of tables like two men going into battle.
