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Jace: Changing his contact name right fucking now.

Jude grabs his phone.

Jude: Don't you fucking dare.

That does it.

The entire table erupts again.

“Would everyone put their damned phones away and eat?” Josh's voice finally cuts through the noise.

One by one, phones start lowering.

“Joshua!”

Josh turns toward Lily. “What?”

She points toward the children. “Tiny ears.”

His expression changes immediately. “Sorry.”

“Opa said damn.”

Mia's little voice carries perfectly across the sudden silence.

I bite the inside of my cheek.

Josh looks at his granddaughter. “Yes, sweetheart. Opa said a bad word. Opa shouldn't have said it.”

Mia nods very seriously.

“Daddy said shit when he stubbed his toe yesterday.”

Summer chokes on her drink.

Ethan's head snaps toward his daughter. “Mia!”

“You did.”

“That is not the point.”

“And Uncle Dex says fu—”

“OKAY!” Dex nearly launches himself across the table. “How about we eat?”

Cas drops his head into his hand while Grace laughs so hard she can barely breathe. Lily looks like she's mentally deciding which one of her adult sons to murder first, Summer is still coughing into her napkin, and Ethan has started explaining to Mia why repeating the bad words he says is somehow different from him saying them.

Even Jude is laughing now.

Not the little smirk I've gotten used to or that quiet huff he does when something amuses him. He's actually laughing, his head lowered and his shoulders shaking beside me, and for some reason I find myself watching him for a second longer than I should.

He looks younger when he laughs.

Lighter.

Happy.

Then he catches me staring, and his green eyes meet mine.