Page 38 of One Night with Number Nineteen

One that’s so strong, so intense, so all-encompassing I find myself lifting up on my tiptoes, leaning in, my lips parting, our mouths so close I can feel his breath on my skin⁠—

The door slams open.

“Pancake time, Mom!” Ollie shouts.

Eleven

Sawyer

“Do you like the pancakes?” Ollie asks, a huge bite of the carby confection, soaked in syrup, hanging off the end of his fork.

I stifle a laugh, take a bite of my own flapjack, albeit with less sticky syrup spilling action. “Yeah,” I tell him. “They’re really good.”

“They’re my favorite,” he says, through the mouthful of buttery, sugary deliciousness.

Grinning, I keep eating.

So does he.

“Do you like ’em too, Leo?” he asks, waves his fork out.

A glob of syrup flies off the tines, lands on the table.

I lean in, dip the corner of my napkin into my water glass and swipe up the sticky droplet before it can get on anyone's clothes.

As I’m doing that, my eyes catch Gray’s, and there’s something in their depths, I don't understand.

Or maybe it’s that I want desperately for what I’m seeing to be true.

Because it’s approval. Respect.

And it’s been growing in the others’ eyes too, growing as we rounded everyone up for breakfast, growing as we’ve hung out and eaten and generally taken over our usual corner at Molly's.

Faye and Gray, Leo and Harper, Kailey and Smitty. Me, Ollie, and Lainey. Aiden and Luna. Bri and Rip. And Reese and Sophie, who are being passed around like tiny, adorable hot potatoes so Moms and Dads can eat too.

It’s a typical impromptu team outing with chaos and overlapping conversations and jokes and Smitty’s booming voice carrying across the restaurant.

I expected the judgment to come back after Ollie interrupted Lainey and me in her office.

Expected to begin to be warned off again.

Instead, I came out to find Faye in a quiet, terse conversation with Gray and the others.

The quiet was typical. Faye is generally quiet.

Her expression was too—the stubborn set to her jaw, the determination that made her a survivor, that helped her be successful.

It was the edge to her temper that was surprising.

She’s a redhead and has the disposition to match.

It just takes a long time to trigger her dormant volcano of a temper.

Today it had been, though, and I saw it in her hushed, angry words, saw it in the way she poked Gray in the chest…

Saw it in those pretty brown eyes.

Of course, her sharp words cut off when I came out, and what exactly she was so pissed about, I don’t know. I do know the guys backed off, though.