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Eventually my shoulders come down from wherever I keep them. I’m slouched, a little, in a way I’m usually too aware of to allow. I’ve stopped bracing for a lull that clearly isn’t coming.

I settle in.

The conversation moves the way it must move in this house every night. Luke’s week at the station, a call that ran long. Then church. Then Bo, because everything eventually comes back to Bo.

He’s telling me about David and Goliath. It’s his favorite, apparently.

“And David didn’t even have armor, he just had his slingshot, and he picked up rocks, and...” He stops, stuck. “A bunch of rocks.”

“Five, I think.” It comes out before I’m sure of it. Then I’m sure of it. “Five smooth stones. From a stream.”

Bo’s eyes go wide. “Five?”

“Five.” And I don’t know how I know that, except that all of a sudden I do. “There was this night in high school, at youth group. The leader dumped a bag of rocks on the floor and made us each pick five. He said some people think David grabbed five because Goliath had brothers, other giants, and David went in ready for all of them.” I hear myself talking and can’t quite stop. “One for Goliath. One for whoever came next.”

The table’s gone still.

Dottie is watching me. So is Luke. Neither of them says anything, but I feel the question under it.

Bo, uninterested in my private crisis, leans in. “Goliath had brothers?”

“That’s how I’ve always heard it told,” Dottie says, warm. “Big Philistine family, and at least one brother the Book names for certain. Whether David counted them out or the preachers filled that part in, I couldn’t tell you.”

“That’s so cool.” He’s fully lit up now. “Did David fight them too?”

And then I’m in it. Talking. Not answering questions like a guest, but telling a ten-year-old everything I can dredge up about a story I didn’t know I still had in me, while Dottie laughs and the whole loud table carries me along.

I’m part of the noise.

That’s when I catch Luke looking at me.

He’s said nothing for a minute, letting the table run without him, one arm draped over the back of Bo’s chair. He’s watching me and he’s smiling.

I’ve learned two of his smiles by now.

There’s the one for Bo. I’ve seen it the most. It’s the one where his whole face gives up trying to be anything else. It softens everything at once. It’s the smile of a man who can’t believe his luck and has stopped pretending otherwise.

And there’s the one for everyone else. The barista. The people at church. Polite, easy, practiced. A good smile. The kind that’s genuinely kind.

This is neither of those.

This one starts slower. It doesn’t hurry to his mouth. It reaches his eyes first, and it stays there, and it’s aimed entirely at me, like he can’t quite make himself look away.

Then his mouth catches up. One corner lifts before the other, slow, like he’s in no rush to let me have the whole thing at once. It pulls a crease into his cheek. It finishes what his eyes started.

And I follow it down. From his eyes to his mouth. I catch myself looking at his lips a beat longer than a friend has any business looking, and by the time I drag my gaze back up, he’s watching me do it.

He saw. Of course he saw.

Just Luke, looking at me across a loud table like I’m the best thing that’s wandered into this house in a long time, and not bothering to hide it.

My whole body forgets it has rules.

He holds it a beat too long. Then Bo says my name for the third time, and Luke’s mouth tugs, and he’s the one who finally looks away, and I can breathe again.

But I know now.

He has a third smile.