“I’m good.” He reached out and clapped a hand on my shoulder and pulled me into the warm and welcoming house. It smelled like French toast and bacon. It felt like walking into a full body hug when I so desperately needed one.

As we walked up the stairs, I could hear Rome arguing with Cora over something and Shaw trying to play the peacekeeper. She was always trying to smooth things over, trying to make sure everyone was happy and getting along, sometimes at the expense of her own happiness. At least, she had sacrificed that until Rule woke up and realized she was a beautiful young woman who had been in love with him for most of her life. I was hit at the knees by a preciously little girl with blond pigtails who immediately lifted her arms up and demanded to be picked up.

I hefted Remy into my arms and gave Shaw a one-armed hug as she made her way over to my side.

“I haz a friend.” At least that’s what I think she was trying to tell me but her words were caught between baby talk and being all the way clear. I nuzzled her neck until she squealed.

I looked at Shaw, who was watching her husband take their son from Dale, the baby’s grandfather so the older Archer could go and set the table. If anyone had ever had their heart in their eyes, it was the woman next to me.

“Who’s the friend, Remy?” She laughed at me and patted my cheeks with her palms.

“He haz twucks.” She stuck out her tongue and proceeded to blow a raspberry right at the end of my nose. Cora groaned from across the room as her fiancé, Rome, made his way over to collect his handful of an offspring.

The big, retired soldier took the squirming child from me and put a smacking kiss on her cheek. “It’s a long story, but there is a five-year-old she now has her eye on and I don’t think it has much to do with his trucks.”

I laughed and followed him into the room. Margot and Dale Archer had had to do more work than any of us when it came to dealing with Remy’s death. When their son passed away, the entire family’s fractured and already thin ties had snapped. It always did my heart good to see them all together and working, always working and putting things back in the order they should be. Neither Archer brother wanted their kids to go without their grandparents, so it took constant effort from all sides.

I walked over to the couch where Cora had planted her very pregnant self and bent so I could kiss her on the forehead. “Looking good, prego.”

She swatted me away with a playful scowl and rested a hand on her swollen belly. “I look like I swallowed a watermelon. This kid needs to make an appearance like today.”

“Don’t even say that.” Rome barked the order from where he was getting his daughter settled at the table. “I have no desire to rush to some tiny mountain hospital because you’re impatient.”

She made a face and held out her hand so I could leverage her up to her feet. “I’ll just have the baby in the woods. That’s a thing now. I saw it on TV.” There was a spark of trouble in her mismatched eyes that told me she would always love goading her gigantic other half. In fact, I was pretty sure it was her favorite pastime.

Rome grumbled something under his breath that immediately had Remy looking up at him and calling out, “Whaz a shithead?”

That had Margot gasping and Rule almost rolling on the floor with laughter. Rome looked equally horrified and proud of his daughter as Cora crossed her arms over her chest and lifted an eyebrow at her man.

“She’s at that age where she absorbs everything. Way to corrupt her early, Big Guy.” Rome had the grace to look sheepish and to tell Remy that what she was saying wasn’t something nice to say to anyone. But it was clear the more he tried to correct her, the more interested the little girl was in repeating the word. It was adorable and hilarious to watch a man who had fought for his country, taken a bullet for the woman he loved, and who ran a bar catering to some unsavory characters, lose an argument to a little girl that barely reached his knee. When she got older, the big man was going to be in so much trouble, and the look on his scarred face said he knew.

When Shaw came back into the room from changing little Ry we all finally sat down to eat. It was easy conversation, what everyone was up to with work, how school was going now that Shaw was back at it, what Cora and Rome needed for the baby, and how the wedding planning was going for them. I basked in the familiarity of it, in the comfort and safety of it all. Nothing here felt like I was getting leveled, taken to my knees and forced to face something I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to handle. At least until Rome looked at me from across the table, sharp-eyed and knowing.

“So you took on Royal’s partner? How’s that been going for you?”

I almost dropped my fork, so I clenched my fingers around it tightly. “It’s going. He has some pretty extensive damage, but he’s getting where he needs to be for a medical release to head back to work.”

Shaw reached out the hand that wasn’t holding on to her sleeping baby and put it on my arm. “Saint mentioned that he’s gay.” She shrugged. “I’ve never asked Royal but if it came from Saint, as tight as the two of them are, I bet it’s solid information.” She wiggled her eyebrows up and down. “Just in case you wanted to know.”

I let my fork fall and sighed. “I know he’s gay, Shaw.”

Her mouth made a little O of surprise and I caught Rule’s gaze over her head. I forced a grin at her. “We have a secret handshake that we all know to identify each other with.”

Her eyes got even bigger until Rule put a tattooed hand covered in ink and a subtle wedding ring on the back of her neck and squeezed. “He’s kidding. Lando has the hots for the guy and felt him out. That’s how he knows he’s up for some dick-on-dick action.”

“Rule!” Margot barked out his name at the same time Rome did. From across the table, Remy looked at us all with wide, innocent eyes and started chanting, “Dick, dick, dick.”

Rome growled at his little brother, who was once again laughing hysterically, but the women at the table had their eyes locked on me.

“Do you like him? Royal’s partner I mean.” Shaw’s tone was soft and a little sad. She loved Remy just as fiercely as I did and I could see the idea of me moving on was as jarring to her as it was to me, though I knew she would never, ever begrudge me any kind of happiness.

“I do like him. A lot actually, but I don’t know how seriously involved I can be with someone who has such a dangerous job.” I shifted nervously in my seat. “I don’t think I can handle losing someone I care about again.”