Page 12 of XOXO, Yours

Payton has claimed the chair on my other side.

I don’t know how that happened.

One minute it was empty. The next there’s a six-foot-whatever of a cowboy folded into a plastic hospital chair designed for a normal-sized human, knees jutting up too high, boots planted wide, one arm slung along the back of my chair without actually touching me.

His knees keep bumping mine, though.

Every time his leg shifts, a little static of warmth transfers straight through my jeans.

I keep pretending not to notice.

“So where do you fall in all of this?” I ask, mostly to have something to say that isn’t, Are you going to be sitting that close to me the whole time?

He looks over, and up close I can see a thin white scar through one eyebrow, the kind you get from doing something stupid as a kid.

“All what?”

I gesture toward his family, at the wall of Blankenships murmuring and hugging and passing a phone charger down the row. “This Brady Bunch situation.”

“I’m the youngest.”

That tracks.

There’s something about him, a lightness maybe, something in the loose set of his shoulders, the way he sat down like the plastic chair was a porch swing.

Not immaturity. More like he’s never learned to expect the worst thing to happen.

Lucky bastard.

“How youngest?”

He frowns. “What does that mean?”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-two.”

I nearly choke on my chocolate, the last bite going down wrong, catching somewhere behind my breastbone.

He pats my back, his palm broad and warm between my shoulder blades.

I jerk away, heat flooding my face for an entirely different reason now. “I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

“Twenty-two?”

He looks genuinely confused. “Yeah?”

“Years?”

Now he laughs, that same low huff from the hallway. “That’s generally how we measure age.”

Jesus Christ.

Twenty-two.

He is twenty-two years old.