Page 153 of Deacon

She laughed. “Well, you were. And it was making it hard to type.”

My hands settled on her hips. “You are a menace.”

“Says the man who licked me and called it law.”

“That is law.” I didn’t even try to sound reasonable.

She rolled her eyes. “It was a conversation that was going nowhere, Jackson.”

“I know.” I kissed the corner of her mouth. “Still liked the way you ended it.”

A voice came from the doorway. “I would actually like to eat dinner before you make me lose my appetite with your totally inappropriate kitchen behavior.”

We turned.

Jade leaned against the frame wearing the expression of a teenager who had been forced to witness grave parental crimes. Lila flushed pink. I grinned wider.

Jade looked at me and winked. I held out my fist, and she bumped it without hesitation.

Lila turned in time to catch us. “Did you two just pound fists like you’re conspiring together?”

Jade and I faced her at the same time. “Who, me?”

Lila stared.

The humor caught in my chest when I saw her expression change. Jade and I had matched without planning it, same timing, same answer, and for a heartbeat Lila looked at us like she could see all seventeen missing years standing between what should have been and what we had now.

I glanced at Jade before the moment could get too heavy. “I think we just broke your mom.”

Jade nodded solemnly. “Nah. She just needs to reboot.”

“Go in the other room,” I told her. “I’ll reboot her.”

Jade smacked my arm. “Ew, Dad. No.”

That snapped Lila out of whatever had caught her. She pointed the wooden spoon at both of us. “To the table,” she said, then sharpened the order when neither of us moved fast enough. “Both of you. God, I have my hands full with both of you.”

I followed her toward the table, catching her around the waist long enough to smack her ass. “And you love it.”

She threw me a look over her shoulder while Jade groaned dramatically behind us.

The apartment felt loud in a way I’d never known I could miss. Lila fussing at both of us. Jade already picking my side whenever it amused her. Dinner on the stove. Too much teasing packed into too small a kitchen.

I had spent years believing leaving had protected the people I loved. Standing there with my daughter laughing and Lila trying not to smile at me, I could finally see what staying might have looked like.

Maybe that was why the childish shit felt so damn good. We had lost enough time being serious.

40

Lila

Dinner was over, the apartment had gone quiet around the edges, and Jackson had disappeared.

That should have warned me.

Jade stood beside me at the kitchen counter, drying plates with the long-suffering expression of a teenager being forced into unpaid labor, while I rinsed casserole from the good spoon. Water ran warm over my rubber gloves. Dishes clinked softly. Twenty minutes earlier Jackson had been everywhere at once, teasing Jade through homework, reaching around me for plates, making himself at home in ways that should have irritated me more than they did. Now there was nothing from down the hall.

“You know,” Jade said, attacking a plate with the dish towel, “for people who were being disgusting in the kitchen twenty minutes ago, you two are suspiciously well-behaved now.”