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Nothing extravagant.

Just food, balloons, cake, too many gifts and entirely too many children running through my new house.

My house.

I still smiled sometimes when I said that.

Not townhouse.

Not apartment.

House.

I’d closed a little over two months ago.

A five-bedroom colonial in Union Township on a quiet residential block where the biggest neighborhood scandal so far had been somebody leaving their garbage cans at the curb two days too long.

It wasn’t a mansion.

Didn’t have marble floors.

No gate.

No movie theater.

No twelve-car garage.

The kitchen could use updating.

One of the upstairs bathrooms had ugly-ass tile I already hated.

And the backyard wasn’t huge.

But it had enough grass for the kids to run around, a driveway, laundry downstairs, a little deck off the back and five bedrooms.

Everybody had a door they could close.

That meant something to me.

Maybe more than it should’ve.

I’d used part of what I received after Xay died for the down payment, and made sure I bought something I could still afford on my ICU salary. Because I never wanted to live inside something I couldn’t maintain without a man.

By eleven that night, everybody was finally gone.

Well.

Almost everybody.

“You got a whole piece of cake on your floor.”

I looked over.

Levin was standing near my dining room table holding a napkin.

“Then pick it up.”

He stared at me.