Luke laughed softly. “You always let guys order you around now,Pip?”
She flinched when he called her that, it was tiny but with my arm at her waist I felt it.
That was it.
I let go of her, slowly, pushing her behind me until she finally stepped back. It was only then when I turned fully toward him.
“What did you call her?”
Luke’s smile widened because he thought he had found something to push. “Pip. Inside joke? I just wanted to join the fun.”
“You aren’t man enough to have her name in your mouth.”
My words cut across the driveway and Daniel straightened from the grill. “Everything okay?”
Pip moved fast, too fast, her smile snapping into place like armor. “Yeah. They’re being stupid. It’s fine.”
“No.” I didn’t take my eyes off Luke. “It’s not.”
The silence that followed felt like the first drop in a storm.
Pip’s hand brushed my forearm. “Cade.”
Not warning this time but pleading with me to stop and I hated that.
I hated that she looked at me like the only way to survive him was to make me smaller. Quieter. Easier to manage. Like if I just let his little digs slide, if I smiled and played along, if Ididn’t make a scene, then maybe the rest of the day wouldn’t rot around her.
Fuck that.
I turned my hand and caught hers, threading our fingers together in front of everybody. Public. Obvious. Not hidden behind a cooler. Not half-accidental under a table. I brought her hand to my mouth and kissed her knuckles while looking straight at Luke.
Pip went perfectly still as Luke’s face emptied.
Beautiful.
“Cade,” she whispered.
I looked at her then, and whatever fight sat in my chest shifted just enough to let her feel the point of it. “Fuck him.”
Her lips parted.
“That’s enough,” Luke said, voice low.
I smiled without looking at him. “For you maybe.”
Pip stared up at me like she wanted to be furious and couldn’t get her body to cooperate. She was flushed, anxious, too beautiful with her wild hair and that stubborn mouth trying to hold back the truth. I could see the lie forming already. I’m fine. It’s nothing. Luke’s just Luke. Every phrase designed to keep the peace while it ate her alive from the inside.
I wasn’t letting her have it.
This shit stopped here.
My hand slid to the side of her face, thumb brushing her jaw, and I bent down and kissed her right there in front of every Bennett, every neighbor, every kid with a popsicle, every pair of eyes in that driveway.
It was not soft so much as a promise.
Her breath broke against my mouth, and for half a second she froze, probably from shock, probably from the absolute disaster of being kissed in front of her entire family by the manshe kept insisting she wasn’t dating. Then her fingers fisted in the front of my shirt, and she kissed me back.
Not enough for anyone else to understand what had happened this morning but enough for me to know she wanted to. Enough for Luke to know it too.
