“Summer,” she called, “are you sexting?”
Summer didn’t look up. “I do not sext in proximity to Rayann.”
“That was very fast.”
“It was also accurate.”
Brynn pointed at her with a pickle spear. “That is exactly what someone sexting would say.”
Summer lifted her eyes then, and the temperature around the bar dropped three degrees.
“I’m postpartum,” Brynn added. “My body built a person and currently runs on caffeine, spite, and cracker crumbs. I know things.”
Jerrick took the pickle spear out of her hand.
Brynn glared at him. “That was evidence.”
“That was sodium.”
Summer placed her phone facedown on the bar, but not before I caught the flash of an Alaska forecast for Juneau.
Interesting.
Summer didn't believe in casual weather. In her world, precipitation was either logistics, liability, or a problem pretending to be scenery.
“I am not discussing my personal life at Juliette’s dinner.”
Every Wilder woman on the patio went silent.
It was the wrong kind of silence. Summer realized it half a beat too late.
Emme’s eyebrows lifted. Annie’s eyes sharpened. Brynn sat forward despite Jerrick’s immediate hand hovering near her elbow. Rayann smiled slowly, which had historically preceded several family catastrophes and one incident involving a rented gondola.
I took a sip of sparkling water and decided, magnanimously, not to save her.
Nick looked at me from beside the grill, his expression unchanged except for the silent question in his eyes.This is how it starts?
I gave him the smallest shrug.Welcome to the interior, babe.
His mouth almost moved.
Max turned a row of skewers with perfect calm. “I’m deploying dinner before this becomes a tribunal.”
Rayann looked offended. “Max Harrington, did you just use meat to shut me up?”
“I prefer the term de-escalation.”
“That is both manipulative and arousing.”
“Eat.”
Sofia blinked.
Nick closed his eyes for exactly one second.
I looked away before I laughed, because I loved him enough not to make him endure that publicly.
Dinner moved the way all Wilder dinners moved, with too many conversations, overlapping questions, sudden laughter, and at least three attempts by Summer to impose strategy on joy.
