Page 12 of Knocked Up By the Silver Foxes

I stand. Maddox looks up. I give him a look that means keep her talking and head toward the back.

The kitchenette is stocked the way Maddox stocks everything, thoroughly and without being asked, because he grew up without enough and never forgot it even after the money stopped being a question. There’s real food back here. Ground beef, brioche buns, a block of sharp cheddar that’s been kept properly. I find a pan and get the burner going.

Vivian appears in the narrow doorway while I’m shaping the first patty. She leans against the frame, arms crossed, and watches me for a moment.

“You cook even on vacation,” she says.

“I cook everywhere. It’s not a vacation thing.”

Pause. “Asher.”

I look up. She’s not unkind about it. Her expression is clear and direct, a woman who knows when something isn’t going to happen and has made her peace with it faster than most people would.

“She’s very pretty,” Vivian says simply.

I don’t confirm or deny it. The pan sizzles. I focus on the patty.

Vivian pushes off the doorframe. “I’ll check on the cabin.” She’s gone before I have to figure out what to say, which is its own kind of kindness.

I finish three burgers quietly. Sharp cheddar, the right condiments, brioche toasted just enough. Simple. A burger on a plane at thirty-five thousand feet should taste like something worth eating, not like an afterthought.

I carry the plates back through the cabin.

Harper and Maddox are still talking. She’s leaning forward now with her elbow on the table, genuinely engaged, and she hasn’t noticed yet that Maddox is being more careful with her than he usually bothers to be. She will eventually.

I set a plate on the table in front of her. She looks down at it. Then up at me.

“Eat,” I say, and sit back down.

She stares at the burger for a moment like it’s said something unexpected. Then she looks at Maddox, who’s already picked his up, and back at me.

“You just… made burgers.”

“You forgot to eat.”

Something moves across her face. Quick, there and gone, the flicker of someone who isn’t used to being looked after and doesn’t entirely know what to do when it happens. She covers it by reaching for the burger.

She takes a bite.

I watch her try to be casual about how good it is and fail.

“Okay,” she says, with the gravity of a formal announcement. “This is the best burger I’ve ever had. Like I base restaurants on their burgers and fries, and this…” she hums a sound that makes me smile, “is the best burger of my life.”

“High bar,” Maddox says.

“He clears it every time,” I tell her. “It’s annoying.”

She laughs, the full version of the smile I saw in the lounge, and something in my chest settles in a way I don’t entirely have language for. Quiet and certain. Not loud. Not urgent.

Just there.

I pick up my own burger and eat and let Maddox carry the conversation and decide this is a problem I’ll deal with later. When I’m not thirty-five thousand feet in the air with a whole summer ahead of me and nowhere reasonable to go.

For now, she’s eating.

That’s enough.

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