“Oh boy,” Nina murmured as Jay and Lynx leaned in toward each other so their noses nearly touched.
“How good is this?” Jonathan whispered. “It’s like a pre-show.”
Birdie leaned forward. “Should someone stop that?”
Dan and Sawyer were moving to join the three men, and that didn’t make Blue any happier. She rose before she realized she’d decided to.
“Blue?” her mother said.
“It’s okay, Mom. I got this, and will handle your testosterone-filled Neanderthal sons.”
“Go get them, girl,” her father said, glaring at the field. “If you need back up, you just wave.”
People called greetings to her as she moved, but she just raised a hand and kept walking. Blue wasn’t sure what she was going to say.
Reaching the bottom, she came face to face with Tripp Lyntacky.
“Now you get out there and calm things down, Blue. We have a match to play, and I’d like to not have to send anyone off if I can help it.”
“On it, Tripp,” she said, stepping through the gate and onto the grass.
Jay saw her first, his eyes moving over her face, but she read nothing in his expression.
Finch noticed her next. “Blue, you don’t need to?—”
“I do,” she said.
Lynx’s jaw flexed. “We’re handling it.”
“No,” she said. “You’re not.” She stepped between her brothers and the man she loved.
Loved.The word landed with a quiet certainty inside her.
“Hey, Blueberry,” Dan said. “Good to have you back, Jay.” He then looked at her brothers. “You guys need to back off and let these two work their own shit out.”
Sawyer and Dan then walked away and started lobbing balls at each other, but they stayed close enough in case they were needed.
“You don’t get to be angry at him again,” Blue said to Finch and Lynx.
Finch blinked. “He left you, and you got hurt.”
Her throat tightened. “He thought I had betrayed him, and he couldn’t have known someone would break into his house to steal my designs.”
“And he was wrong because you’d never do that,” Lynx snapped with brotherly loyalty.
Finch scrubbed a hand over his face. “Blue?—”
“I’m okay,” she said gently. “I promise.”
He stepped back first, and his brother reluctantly followed. Jay and Blue were suddenly alone, with the entire town of Lyntacky watching them.
He took a step toward her and stopped, seeming unsure if he should move closer still.
“Are you really all right? Your head, is it healed now?”
“Yes I really am.”
He looked tired. There were shadows beneath his eyes she hadn’t seen before. Jay was always so sure of himself—or had been until she’d entered his life.
