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Boone took the lunch box back. “Josie likes them.”

Josie’s face went pink.

I loved Boone a little for not looking embarrassed. He stood in our finished kitchen, six foot five and broad enough to block the morning light, holding a divided lunch box full of star-shaped cheese as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

It should have been.

Cash put his hand to his chest. “When I was nine, you gave me jerky out of your pocket.”

“You ate it.”

“I didn’t know how old it was.”

“You lived.”

“Against the odds.”

Josie slipped her hand into Boone’s.

He looked down at her, and his entire face changed by approximately half a degree. With Boone, that was a public declaration.

“You’ll be close?” she asked.

“Barn.”

“Okay.”

“Come get me if you need me.”

“I will.”

He bent and kissed her forehead.

Cash leaned toward me. “I can do that.”

“This is not competitive.”

“It could be.”

He kissed my forehead anyway, then my temple, then the corner of my mouth because the first two had apparently failed to establish market dominance.

I pushed him away, laughing. “Go fix something.”

“Your shelves are level.”

“They are now.”

He put a hand over his heart again. “You wound me in my own home.”

“Our home.”

The words came without thought.

Cash went still.

Only for a second. A brief pause under the grin, the feeling catching up to the sentence.

Then he kissed me once, softly.