Page 19 of One Night with Number Nineteen

“Okay, Mom!”

But that sticks about as well as me telling him to go to bed the first time I ask because he’s climbing and leaping and…

Trusting me to catch him.

So I don’t chastise him.

I just watch and cheer on and…catch.

Then when he’s tired, I coax him over to the deck where mostly everyone is gathered around, eating cake and cookies and cupcakes.

“Hey, bud,” Sawyer says. “Want dessert?”

Ollie nods so fast he practically turns into a bobblehead.

Sawyer snags him his choice and then turns to me, “Chocolate peanut butter cupcake, right?”

Something twists inside me.

The last time he brought them I had three and a couple of Harper’s chocolate chip cookies.

“Yeah,” I say. “Thank you.”

He just nods and a moment later, I have a plate with a cupcake and a chocolate chip cookie on it in my hand.

I exhale silently as that piece inside me twists again.

“Thanks,” I whisper.

Another nod, this one paired with a smile that grows when Gray starts teasing Smitty about wombats and Leo chimes in with Canadian Geese facts (including the slightly shuddering-inducing fact that they can poop one to three pounds a day).

“It’s the beady eyes,” he says, chomping on a cupcake and nearly devouring the entire thing in just one bite. “But them pooping every fifteen minutes doesn’t help either.”

“Doesn’t seem to bother your appetite,” Ryan says dryly.

Sawyer looks at him, eyes widening slightly in concern, but Smitty just laughs and chucks the cupcake wrapper at him. “Rude.” He pats his belly. “I’m a growing boy.”

“It’s Kailey who spent the last few months growing something. Rightfully so,” Gray adds before Smitty gets all protective and grouchy.

“Damn right,” Luna chimes in. “And us baby-growing machines should keep all that growing”—she snatches a tray of cupcakes—“to ourselves.”

Protests (from the men) ring out all around.

Teasing and jeers follow.

And the cupcakes (and cookies and cake) get eaten—by both the men and women.

But, though Sawyer eats one of each, along with a slice of cake, he doesn’t sit down with the rest of us.

First, he’s refilling drinks. Then he’s taking dirty dishes and cups into the house, stopping to scoop up an errant napkin here or there. Then he’s drawn into a game with Alex and Ollie, Ryan and Rip and Bri, all of them battling it out in a makeshift soccer matchup.

Bri steals the ball from Rip and scores, whooping in victory.

“You just make it too easy,” she teases.

“Keep telling yourself that,” he says, stealing it back and streaking down the other way, the grin he shoots her decidedly more playful than anything I’ve seen from the quiet twenty-year-old rookie.

Eventually, the game wears down, and Alex and Ollie go inside to watch a movie on TV.