Page 25 of All In

Payton: I’m just saying it has a ring to it.

Payton: Also, how am I the only single one left and y’all still give me a hard time about being overly romantic? You should be writing poems about your wives.

Henry: Gracie would murder me.

Oliver: Cora would laugh.

Payton: We were raised in the same house. With the same parents. I don’t get it.

Me: Goodnight.

Henry: Goodnight. be careful.

Oliver: Send a picture of the costume, I need to see this for myself

Payton: YES!

I send the photo—the one from this morning, full costume, shield raised, taken in the hotel mirror before I left for the floor. Then I send the one from one of the panels Juniper and I attended. I’d taking a selfie of us snuggled up against each other and her smile is so pretty, it makes my chest hurt.

I put my phone face-down on the nightstand before the responses can start rolling in. Because right now, I don’t want to think about my cousins. I want to just think about Juniper and what meeting her like this might mean.

chapter

seven

Juniper

I’ve barely gotten out of the bathroom, freshly washed face, when my phone starts buzzing against the nightstand, screen lit up with Clover’s contact photo… a picture I took of her mid-laugh at a wedding two years ago, mouth wide open, looking deeply unhinged in the most loving possible way.

I answer on the second ring. “Hello, you’ve reached the office of⁠—”

“Do not.” Clover’s face fills the screen, propped against what I recognize as her kitchen counter, a glass of wine within reach. “You do not get to ‘hello, you’ve reached the office of’ me tonight. You kissed a stranger today. I have been waiting hours for an update and you have given me radio silence since ‘getting a snack with Leo.’”

“I told you it worked.”

“You told me four words and then went dark for an entire day and evening. I had to assume either a wonderful date or a true crime situation, and given the vibe of your texts, I was hoping for the former.”

“Definitely the former.” I flop back against the hotel pillows, phone held above my face, and something about saying it out loud for the first time makes my whole chest go warm and a little embarrassingly fluttery. “Clover. It was—I don’t even know how to explain it.”

She smiles. “Try anyways.”

“We went to a few panels. He had his arm around me the whole time, which started as cover and very quickly stopped being cover. Then we got pizza. Out of costume. And Clover, I have to tell you something deeply unfair that the universe did to me today.”

“I’m listening.”

“The costume was not doing the heavy lifting I assumed it was doing.”

Clover sits up slightly, visibly delighted. “Excuse me?”

“He’s just built like that. The actual man. Underneath. I saw him in a t-shirt and nearly walked into a potted plant in the hotel lobby. Wait, let me text you a picture.” Because, yes, I’d taken a few of him throughout the day. Especially when the people would ask him to pose. Because he was so into it and watching that made me ridiculously happy. “I mean those are actual muscles.”

My sister gasps as she sees the photo. “Oh my God. Ma’am, that is a certifiable hot man! He looks like a cross between Clark Kent and Captain America. When I said to find a hot stranger and kiss him, I was thinking more on the lines of like a normal attractive person. Not, ‘I’m sexy and I know it.’”

I laugh. “There’s also a tattoo sleeve I haven’t gotten close enough to fully examine, which feels like an oversight on my part that I intend to correct.”

“Juniper Eleanor.”

“What.”