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I should know I would fall.
And I was terrified when I did that I was going to fall hard.
So hard and fast that when I did finally strike the ground, itwould be rock bottom. Because right then I couldn’t fathom a scenario when I wasn’t right here, surrounded by this care and easiness.
By the laughter and the teases.
By the heat that radiated from River on hot gusts of air. The way it’d crawl over me each time our legs brushed under the stool, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
“Do you like the orange chicken, Miss Charleigh? I bet you like it as much as I do!” Nolan asked, wholly immune to the fact that each word that came from his mouth knitted me in comfort.
Each one weaving through my loss and pain, stitching the pieces back together as if they could become one.
I took another bite and struggled to swallow around the thickness in my throat. “I think it’s delicious.”
“You think we got the same taste buds?”
A soggy giggle escaped me.
I guessed I was enraptured.
Taken.
Mesmerized.
“We might.”
“One thing’s for sure, I have amazing taste because I picked you for my best friend.” Raven enthused it around a big bite of Lo Mein before she pointed her fork in my direction.
“Hey, I picked her, too, Auntie.”
“Not even, Nolan. I was the one who saw her passing by on the sidewalk, and I chased her down so I could meet her. That means I picked her first.”
“Well, I picked her second,” Nolan mumbled around a bite of eggroll.
An almost inaudible growl emanated from River, and I nearly came out of my skin when he set his hand on the top of my thigh and squeezed. He leaned in and pressed his mouth to my ear, words so low as they raked across my cheek. “Nah. I saw you first. Wanted you first. Think that means you’re mine.”
There was no shaking the single word from my brain through the rest of dinner.
Mine.
I couldn’t be.
He’d already warned me it would never be that way, and I knew I would likely never stay.
But God, I wanted to sink into the idea. The idea of doing this every night. Sharing a meal with these people.
With thisfamily.
Nolan had climbed to his knees on his stool, and he straightened, rubbing his belly while he pushed it out as far as he could. “Look it, Miss Charleigh. I ate all my dinner and now I’m all the way full.”
I could do nothing but poke it with my finger. “What? I think you could fit way more in there.”
He gasped and shrieked and grabbed at my hand. “Well, I gotta save a little spot because it’s movie night, and I gotta have popcorn with my movie. Right, Daddy-O?”
I glanced over at River. My stomach tilted. The man was so viciously handsome it was painful to look at him.
“Thursday night is movie night, yeah.”
