Rook went still. “What?”
“When you were teenagers. You and Soren.” Martin leaned back against the counter with his arms crossed, not unkindly. “I thought it was obvious. Your mother thought I was projecting.”
“I didn't think you were projecting,” Martha said. “I thought you were getting ahead of things.”
“And then he started bringing home women who were perfectly fine but never quite right.” Martin said it plainly, without judgment, looking at his son. “And eventually you stopsaying anything because a person gets to figure themselves out on their own timeline and it's not a parent's job to push.”
The kitchen was very quiet.
Rook looked like a man who had just found out a room he'd been locked out of for thirty years had actually been open the whole time.
“You knew,” he said.
“We wondered,” Martha corrected gently. “There's a difference.” She looked at me then, with the same soft careful attention she'd been giving Rook since they'd walked in the door. “And then you disappeared. And he didn't talk about it, so we didn't either. Some things you wait on.”
Talia was looking at Rook the way she looked at everything she was still deciding about. Then something in her expression settled, and she looked at him directly and said, “Don't hurt him again.”
“Talia—” I started.
“I'm talking to Rook.” She didn't look away from him. “He's been through enough.”
Rook held her gaze without flinching. “I know that,” he said. “I won't.”
She studied him for another beat. Then she nodded, once, and picked up her coffee, and that was that.
Micah crossed the kitchen and hugged me again. Poppy tucked herself back under my arm like she'd never left.
“We're going to the game tonight,” she announced, to the room at large, already back to herself. “All of us. I want to see you score, Rook.”
“I'll see what I can do,” Rook said.
“Don't see what you can do. Just do it.”
“She's been like this all week,” Micah told me. “Very directive.”
“She learned it from me,” I said.
“That explains so much,” Talia said drily, and the kitchen filled back up with noise and Maple threading between everyone's legs and Martin reclaiming the spatula with the authority of a man who considered himself the last word in cookie production.
I sat there with Poppy warm against my side and Rook's hand resting on the counter next to mine, close enough that our knuckles touched, and let myself stay inside the moment instead of bracing for what came after it.
The arena was packedby the time we arrived, the parking lot a sea of cars and people wearing Wolves jerseys. Martin navigated through the chaos with the confidence of a man who'd done this a thousand times, and we ended up in a VIP parking spot that made Poppy gasp.
“We get VIP parking?” she hissed. “Soren, we get VIP parking.”
“I know, Pops.”
“This is the best day of my life.”
We walked through a side entrance that bypassed the main crowds, and suddenly we were in a hallway that looked nothing like what I'd expected. Clean, carpeted, with framed photos of players lining the walls and the kind of quiet that suggested we were in a space reserved for people who mattered.
A woman in Wolves staff gear greeted us with a tablet and a professional smile. “Kincaid party?”
“That's us,” Martin said cheerfully.
“Perfect. Follow me. Captain Kincaid asked me to bring you to the VIP lounge first.”
We followed her through another hallway and into a room that made Poppy stop walking. Leather couches, a full bar, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the ice, and a spread of food that looked like it had been catered by people who gave a shit.
