Page 165 of Smoke and Glitter

Then he kisses me.

One of my suitcases starts drifting across the polished floor, and Sam catches the handle with his foot without taking his hand from my face.

I break the kiss laughing. "Very romantic."

"I saved your luggage."

"You're a hero."

He hooks the runaway suitcase closer with his foot before looking back at me. "You hungry?"

"I spent nine hours eating airplane food, so I'm going to need something that wasn't heated in plastic."

Sam takes my carry-on before I can object. "I was thinking Roti, take it to go and eat at home."

Home. This time, the word doesn't surprise me.

I take his free hand. "Don't tease me with Roti. You don't have to ask me twice. I'm getting extra sauce. Let's go."

Summer goes into labor before I finish unpacking.

By the time the hospital waiting room starts to feel like ours, my suitcase is still open on Sam's bedroom floor and I've changed clothes since getting off the plane. Jake gets in from Charleston looking like he came straight from work, loosens his tie within the first hour and eventually gives up on sitting altogether. Lucia keeps finding increasingly creative reasons to approach the nurses' station until Marisol finally catches her by the wrist and tells her she's going to get us all removed from the building before Wren is even born.

Dom disappears every so often and comes back with coffee. Nobody knows where he's getting it. Nobody asks anymore.

Sam stays beside me for most of it. His thigh presses against mine beneath the low table while I refresh my phone for the fourth time even though Colt promised he'd text the second there was anything worth telling us. Sam reaches over without looking and turns my screen facedown.

I turn it back over. He turns it facedown again.

"Do that one more time and we're going to have a problem."

"You've checked it six times in ten minutes."

"Maybe the seventh time is when the baby comes."

"That isn't how babies work."

"You own a club. Stay in your lane."

His mouth twitches, and his hand settles against the back of my neck instead.

The updates from Colt are infrequent and mostly useless. Summer is fine. Wren is taking her time. Summer would also like it documented that every part of this is Colt's fault.

That one gets passed around.

Eventually Sam looks at the collection of vending-machine wrappers and half-empty coffee cups scattered across the table and gets to his feet.

I catch his hand before he can walk away. "Where are you going?"

"To get actual food."

"We have food."

He looks at the crackers beside me. "That's not food."

"It's hospital cuisine, very posh."

"I'm not letting you survive on peanut butter crackers, and you're not even the one having the baby."