Page 12
I freeze.
“The what?”
“Baby shower.” His green eyes blink at me, serious as a funeral. “I’m picking the games.”
It hits me like a punch. I wheeze first, then bark, then fold in half and slap my thigh so hard it stings. A baby shower. Nearly seven feet of mahogany muscle who once lifted a pickup off a man’s legs, and he’s about to run a diaper-pinning contest.
“Jonah.” I wipe my eyes. “Baby shower. Say it again.”
“Cole.”
“Say it with your chest.”
“I hate you.”
“Pin the tail on the stork,” Logan crows. Wren muffles a snort into her wrist. Nova laughs so hard she has to grip Silas’s arm. Even Marek’s mouth curves, a small, ghostly thing, there and gone. Jonah sits through it with the patience of a mountain, and the tips of his ears go dark.
Only Elias stays composed. When we run out of air, he sets his glass down with a click.
“The next Prophet will come soon enough,” he says. “Be patient.”
I wipe my eyes and lean my elbows on the table, grinning at him over the rim of my whiskey.
“What are you now, El? The fortune teller? Taking over Marek’s job?”
Elias’s pale gray eyes drift up to the awning’s ceiling, slow and unimpressed.
“Funny.” He lifts his drink and doesn’t sip. “Since you’re so interested in the forecast, here it is. Sloane gets room. Nobody camps outside her trailer. Nobody hauls her over here by the elbow.” His gaze slides to Silas, who suddenly finds his brisket fascinating. “She joins us when she’s ready. Next week, next month, I don’t care. She’s family on her own time.”
“Understood,” Teddy says, thumbs still working Nova’s arch.
“Mm-hmm,” Nova adds, boneless.
Then the ice-chip stare lands on me.
“You especially.”
“Me?” I press a hand to my chest. “I’m a delight.”
“You’re a hazard. No pushing, no crowding. Holster the flirting. Holster the jokes, while you’re at it.” He sets the glass down and squares it with the edge of the table. “We spent three weeks finding someone willing to stand in front of your knives. It would look terrible if she quit on the first week because the knife thrower couldn’t keep his hilt from quivering.”
The table goes dead quiet.
Logan’s chair slams down on all four legs. Jules inhales her drink and coughs ice into her fist, and Nova folds over her belly with a wheeze that sounds like a leaking tire. Wren has both hands clamped over her mouth, and her shoulders shake. Even Rowe ducks his head, his lip twitching at one corner. Marek hums a note that might be a laugh.
“My hilt,” I announce, “is a monument. Steady as the Rockies.”
“Quivering,” Logan gasps. “Quivering hilt.”
“I will end you.”
Jonah pats my shoulder with a hand like a shovel. “It’s okay, Cole.”
“Don’t comfort me.”
I laugh too, toss back my whiskey, plant a pickle between my teeth, and let the noise wash over the table like a warm tide.
My eyes keep sliding across the gravel, though.
