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“I didn’t have the ball, Parker,” Beckett said with a grin.
Parker gave him a steady look. “I know, you just looked like you needed to be knocked on your ass.”
Beckett rolled his eyes, shouldering Parker as he passed. Parker shoved back. The two started tussling. Again.
“And we wonder why their life expectancy is shorter,” I murmured.
Greer sighed, watching her normally very stoic husband wrestle our brother on the ground. Next to Beckett and Parker, Jax picked up the ball and tossed it back to Sage, who caught it neatly in one hand.
Dean strode past Jax without a second look. “That’s game, right? We won?”
No one answered him, but he jogged up the porch steps and tried to give me a hug.
I ducked away with a laugh. “Yeah right, get that sweat away from me.”
Dean’s eyes were bright in his face, and he smiled widely. “Oh come on, you love it.” He snagged a quick kiss, thenhopped off the porch, picking up a discarded basketball and dribbling it around. “Anyone want another game?” No one answered. Dean drilled a three-point shot, his focus entirely on the hoop. “How about you, Jax?”
“I think I’ll pass for now.”
“Suit yourself.”
My chest felt cranked too tight.
Jax’s jaw tightened, and his eyes locked on mine for a breathless second. Then he glanced away and walked over to Cameron and Olive. Ian and Sage had taken a pause, talking to Harlow, where she sat on the front porch next to Mom. The dessert table was on the other side of the front door. Greer, Ivy, and I still huddled together while I shoveled pie in my face as a coping mechanism.
“Whathappenedwhen they came out here?” Greer asked. “Dinner was good.”
“It was,” I told her.
“I bet Cameron fifty bucks they’d come to blows,” Ivy said smoothly. “I’m happy to lose, for obvious reasons, but the evening is still young, apparently,” she said smoothly, eyeing the tense exchange in front of us.
I rolled my eyes as Greer laughed.
It’s not like Jax was chatty. He was still Jax, but it was polite with him and Dean on opposite ends of the table. Pleasant, even.
Over the years, I’d honed a supernatural ability to keep blinders on when Jax and I were sharing space. Greer told me once it was just good self-control, but honestly, it was more about self-preservation than anything. And boy, did the years of practice come in handy at that particular dinner.
Parker’s surprise presence helped keep Dean occupied, they didn’t know each other very well. Parker hadn’t been home as much since Dean and I started dating.
Ian and Harlow kept Jax occupied, and next to me, Dean was his normal amiable self. We talked about his day. He kepthis hand anchored over my thigh under the table, his big hand a warm, solid presence that I’d gotten used to having on me whenever we ate a meal together.
He was one of those guys, always wanting to sit on the same side of the booth or table when we went out to eat. Easier to hold my hand, he always said. And he did that often, content with his arm around me or his hand in mine, his palm and fingers draped possessively over my thigh.
It was that same hint of possession present in his kiss when I arrived too. I couldn’t hold it against him, really. Knowing my history with Jax, any man would feel the slightest bit threatened, but watching the two of them on that football field gave me the sinking feeling that I would have to admit something that I didn’t want to admit.
That possessive display, even if it was understandable, sat on my skin like an oil slick I wanted to wash away. It wasn’t giving me butterflies, and there was a low-level buzzing that this was just wrong, wrong,wrong.
Greer nudged me with her elbow, and I blinked out of my snarly, uncomfortable thoughts.
“What happened?” she asked again. “Did you see, Ivy?”
She shook her head. “I was helping your mom set up the desserts.” Then she perked up. “You saw the cookies I made, right?”
Greer and I shared a loaded look. “They’re very nice, Ivy,” my sister answered diplomatically.
The plate on the table held a large pile of flat, slightly misshapen cookies that no one except Olive had tried.
Ivy narrowed her eyes. “Aren’t you going to try one?”
