Page 231 of Ex Somnis

I have to press my lips together so I don’t cry in front of him for the second time in five years.

Good.

“Yeah,” I manage. “Yeah, it is.”

He folds the flyer carefully, tucks it into his flannel pocket, and tips his head toward the door, getting ready to go back out onto whatever long road he’s on.

“Hey,” I catch his sleeve one more time. “There’s no service today. But you remember what I said? At the diner? That if you were ever in town, you should come by for a better burger?” I jab a thumb at my chest. “I’m the chef now so that offer stands, and it’s a much better burger. Next time you’re close, you come here, and you let me make it for you. Deal?”

He looks at me. The corner of his mouth moves, the same fraction it moved five years ago when I made him try my emergency sauce. He raps his knuckles twice against the doorframe, and then he’s gone, out into the gray afternoon, and I stand in the doorway, watching until I can’t see him anymore, the way I once watched him cross a dark parking lot to make sure he got there safe.

With him, the crowd thins to family, and the family eventually thins to just us, the way it always ends up. Tessa and Derek have taken the kids home, and Jasper has packed up his cards with the smug glow of a man who booked out his next three months in one afternoon. Ridge is exhausted and pretending he isn’t. Paul is washing the last of the cups by hand because the dishwasher is apparently not doing a good enough job. Nevan is stacking chairs, and Pudding is asleep under table four.

Pudding is Nevan’s and my dog. A Maltipoo. An unbelievably cute, apricot-colored, eight-pound dog that Ridge campaigned against for a solid month. “We are not getting a small dog, Lenny. I have a reputation. I write horror,” and who now sleeps on Ridge’s chest every single night, rides in his lap through the house, and answers only to Ridge, the traitor, who insists he tolerates her and who I have personally heard, through a door, calling her the best girl in the entire world.

“Come on, monster.” Ridge scoops her up off the floor, and she doesn’t even wake, just melts over his arm. “Time to go home.”

Home.

When everyone is out, I take one last look at the room in the restaurant that was a notebook dream, inside the inn that turned into a home, the empty cake stand, the banner, the tarot cards Jasper left behind, and I flip the light.

The car ride home is quiet at first, a comfortable silence that only comes after a day that feels too full. Ridge is in the passenger seat, Pudding a snoring weight in his lap, her apricot fluff spilling over his black jeans as if she were poured there. Paul drives with one hand on the wheel, the other reaching back and resting on my knee where my skirt has ridden up, thumb tracing absent circles against bare skin. Nevan is beside me behind Ridge, his long legs crammed in front of him.

I’m still tasting butter and cinnamon on my tongue. My body feels loose and buzzing, like the French toast, the laughter, and the sheer rightness of today have rewired something in me.

Ridge shifts, glancing over his shoulder with that half smirk that always means trouble. “You gonna tell us why you went full domestic goddess on French toast today, or are we supposed to guess?”

I scrunch my nose at him. “It just happened. My hands knew before the brain caught up.”

“Mm.” Paul’s thumb presses a little firmer, sliding higher under the hem of my skirt. “That so?”

“What can I say, my hands have good instincts.”

Nevan leans over, his breath warm against my ear when he says, “Yeah? Anything else those hands are good at?”

Heat races up my neck.

I twist enough to smack his shoulder, but he catches my wrist before I can escape and presses a kiss against the inside of it.

“Behave,” I say, but it comes out breathy, not commanding.

“That’s adorable.” Ridge chuckles.

“What?”

“You always tell us to behave after you’ve started it.”

“I did not start…”

“Darling,” Paul says calmly from the driver’s seat. “You spent the last six hours feeding people homemade desserts while wearing that dress.”

“Your point?”

“My point is you’ve been a tease all day.”

Nevan grins. “See? Even the psychologist agrees.”

“Doctor,” Paul corrects automatically.