Lyon clutched his chest. “Oh, he thinks he’s cute.”
“He is cute,” Sarah said from the patio table, not even looking up from arranging paper plates.
Knox turned to her, offended. “You’re my wife.”
“I have eyes.”
Cade’s dimples appeared, and I hated how the sight of them made my entire body remember his mouth between my thighs.
Absolutely not, not here. Not with my father six feet away holding tongs.
I grabbed the nearest stack of napkins and started setting them around the table with the focus of a woman defusing a bomb. Cade followed beside me, pretending to help, which mostly meant he stood too close and watched me try not to unravel. Every time his shoulder brushed mine, my whole body flashed back to the kitchen counter. The bedroom. His hands gripping my thighs. His voice telling me to put my libido away like he hadn’t been the one to set it on fire.
“You’re enjoying this,” I muttered as I slapped napkins beside the plates.
“Immensely.”
“You are so much worse around my family now that you know they like you.”
“They have excellent taste.”
“They have low standards. Knox once trusted a man named Tank with fireworks.”
Knox yelled from across the yard, “Tank had a vision.”
“Tank had no eyebrows for three months.”
Cade laughed, and the sound rolled through me warm and stupidly satisfying. He fit too well here now. That was the problem. He didn’t feel like some stranger I had dragged into my loud, messy family world anymore. He moved through the yard like he understood the rhythm of it. Like the yelling didn’t overwhelm him. Like the chaos interested him instead of exhausting him. He took the teasing, gave it back when he wanted, stood near me when the attention got too heavy, and somehow made the whole thing feel easier.
I had spent years believing athletes made women feel small.
Cade made me feel untouchable.
And today, high on last night, drunk on this morning, and wrapped in the dangerous knowledge that he wanted me so badly he had agreed to my ridiculous benefits-only terms with that quiet, strategic look in his eyes, I leaned into it.
Maybe that was reckless. Maybe that was stupid. Maybe it was exactly what I needed before everything went dark again.
A ball smacked against the fence, and Lyon yelled something about street hockey regulations that immediately became an argument about whether “yard rules” counted as legally binding. Cade moved behind me while I was lining up plastic cups, one hand sliding to my waist with a confidence that made my breath catch. Not hidden. Not obscene. Just casual enough that it could pass as affection and possessive enough that I knew better.
My body knew better too.
I stilled for half a second, cup still in my hand.
His chest came close to my back, heat pressing through the thin air between us. His mouth brushed near my ear when he said, “Relax.”
I looked over my shoulder. “You cannot say relax while doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Existing like a felony.”
His smile grazed the side of my neck before his mouth did, a quick, warm press just beneath my ear that made every coherent thought I possessed drop dead on arrival.
Holy fuck.
My fingers tightened around the cup so hard it almost cracked.
Across the yard, Emmitt shouted, “I knew it!”
