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Ashby stands there holding a dish towel, which is somehow more destabilizing than if he’d been holding a weapon.

Warm light spills out behind him, alongside the smell of garlic, rosemary, and something buttery enough to make my stomach rumble.

Men don't normally just appear in my house with food, so this is another first. And almost nothing about the last month has qualified as normal anyway.

“You have a key now?” I ask Ashby cautiously.

Ashby’s gaze moves over my face before answering, checking, assessing, softening slightly once he decides I’m still upright. “The back door was unlocked.”

“So you just walked in.”

“Seems that way.”

Torin appears behind him carrying a bowl almost the size of a satellite dish. “Briggs said you were one inconvenience away from losing your damn mind.” Lucy slips past us, eyes widening as she spots the kitchen table. “Wow!” she breathes, holding Bun up to take a look too.

I follow her line of sight and start.

The table is covered with food. Pizza boxes from Pine Knot. Containers from Fern’s. Paper bags from the café. Somebody brought pie. There are little cups of sauce arranged in neat rows… because Ashby Knox commits fully even to condiment organization.

Torin smiles. “You looked like you needed carbohydrates.”

“I usually need carbohydrates,” I admit, my mouth watering as I help Lucy off with her coat and boots.

“Yes,” Ashby says calmly, “but tonight you need them therapeutically.”

Lucy runs into the kitchen and climbs onto one of the chairs, staring around the table like she’s accidentally entered heaven. “There’s curly fries,” she says with awe, eyes lighting up.

“Those are from Fern’s,” Briggs tells her, grabbing plates from the counter. “She threatened me until I agreed to double my order, said you two need feeding up.”

Lucy laughs and stuffs a curly fry into her mouth. It’s a relief to see her so carefree after the nasty scene at the school. And I have these guys to thank for it.

“That woman called me ‘baby’ and implied I look nutritionally neglected,” Torin mutters.

“She says that to everybody,” Ashby tells him.

Briggs pretends offence. “Not me. Says I’m as big as a barn already.”

“Okay, that’s deserved,” I say teasing him.

He presses one huge hand dramatically to his chest. “You wound me, Laurel Sterling.”

Laughter bubbles out of me unexpectedly. I should still feel angry. I should still be replaying every second of the confrontation outside the school.

Instead, standing in this warm kitchen with these three men while Lucy works her way through a bag of curly fries leeches some of the tension out of me.

Ashby notices.

“You sit down,” he says, taking my coat from my hands. “We’ll handle dinner.”

I don’t argue.

The evening settles strangely easily after that. Too easily, maybe.

Every now and then I catch myself looking around the room and wondering when these men became fixtures in my life.

A month ago they were strangers.

Now, the five of us are sitting around the table sharing a meal, eating and laughing like… like family.