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I held up a hand to shield my eyes from the sun.

It wasn’t an Impala, and it wasn’t an F-350.

I resumed my trek but glanced back every now and then until I saw it was Lane’s car. Funny running into him again. This exact thing happened the other day too, only I’d been walking Romeo and Lima then.

Lane lowered the window and slowed down. “No puppies today?”

I mustered a faint smirk. “Just me.”

But speaking of other shit the Tenleys wanted to do with me: adopt two dogs.

After the fire last fall, Reese had given me the permission—and encouragement—to “shake them down” for a puppy. And I’d opted to cash in once we moved in to the new house—except, we’d arrived at the shelter, and I’d fallen for a pup whose mother and four siblings had been abandoned. Two brothers remained. In no way had I been able to separate them. I wasn’t a monster. And neither were River and Reese when they weren’t lying to me, so they’d let me adopt both.

“Who are you meeting up with today?” I asked Lane. Last time, it’d been Macklin. They’d met up to go out and buy a wedding gift for the Carters.

“No one, actually,” he responded. “Ty’s daughter is borrowing his car, so I’m picking him up after work. I figured—” he shrugged “—I might as well wait here.”

I cocked my head. “Aren’t they out in Fairfax?” Granted, Mclean was closer to Fairfax than Arlington, but not by a whole lot.

“He and Colt are meeting with some bigwig security client in Mclean,” he clarified. “They’re kinda hush-hush about it.”

“Ah. Got it.” I knew a thing or two about partners who were hush-hush. “I’m just gonna drown my sorrows in the pool if you wanna waste time with me.”

He squinted at me. “Sure… What kind of sorrows do you have?” He motioned for me to get in the car.

Hoo boy. Where did I begin? Where could I begin? How much could I divulge?

I really liked Lane. He was very fucking easy on the eyes. But mostly, he was easy to talk to. He had zero expectations and said, “You don’t have to share anything you don’t want to.” So I didn’t. I skirted around the details and said that River and Reese had kept something fairly insignificant from me—but in the grand scheme of things, it’d made me feel excluded.

“It’s something all people know about their partners,” I went on, collapsing in one of the loungers around the pool. “Like I said, insignificant—like asking someone’s profession or favorite meal. And what I thought I knew—what they led me to believe—was bullshit.”

Lane didn’t bother with the umbrella either, and he sat down in the lounger next to mine. “And you wouldn’t let them explain their side? No judging here, to be clear—just asking.”

“I was too pissed,” I admitted. I opened my soda and took a swig. “Shit will work out, obviously, but I need to let this marinate.”

He nodded and unbuttoned his blazer. “I get that. But at the risk of giving my cousin cred, what’s the point of marinating something that doesn’t have all the ingredients yet?” He shrugged out of the jacket and lifted his brows. “I’m saying this as someone with a past of running off before I have all the facts—because my brain decides when I’ve had enough. Once I’m there, it doesn’t matter if the rest of the information will take all the hurt away. I gotta get out and recover before I can absorb anything else.”

That was sort of what had happened, wasn’t it? I’d left the laundry room in a state of shock, only to come face-to-face with both River and Reese. They’d essentially frozen. They’d known I’d overheard them in the hallway.

I’d become so overcome by the anger that my only thought had been to flee the scene. River and Reese had taken a step toward me. I’d heard their “It’s not a big deal, pup” and “I guess we should talk.”

And that…that…dismissiveness… That sense of “Oh whatever, it’s nothing” had short-circuited my brain. Because to me, it was a huge fucking deal.

I was supposedly spending the rest of my life with these two men, but don’t fucking ask me when their birthday was.

It was insane.

I had images in my head of what their cake could look like, for chrissakes.

I’d looked up bakeries.

I’d started making plans, sort of inspired by them, actually. ’Cause my birthday was in June too, and River and Reese—especially Reese—was all over that shit. He wanted to host a birthday dinner for me and whoever I wanted to invite. But I couldn’t celebrate them?

“My anger and hurt were met by total aloofness,” I replied eventually. “That’s what did it. They don’t understand why me not knowing this thing about them is upsetting at all. So I reached my limit damn quick and hightailed it out of there.”

Lane smirked a little and tilted his head. “It’s their birthday, isn’t it?”

Well, fuck.