“He always picks the bear.” Marc elbowed me with a grin. “Elias Keller gave it to him.” Keller was a good friend of Marc’s and the only bruin I’d ever personally met.
Marc pulled me into a hug as if he’d actually missed me, and before I could extricate myself, Logan flew past us with Des on his heels.
“Whoa!” Marc let me go and grabbed the back of Des’s shirt as Rick Wade scooped Logan up on his rebound from a leather couch cushion. “Everyone under the age of…” Marc glanced at Abby. “Twenty-one?”
She nodded, and I frowned. Abby was legal for everything?
“Everyone under the age of twenty-one, out!” Marc called. “Manx is going to kick off this sleepover with a bedtime story in Greg’s room.”
“No bed!” the toddler shouted when Faythe set him on the floor.
She frowned at him firmly. “Gregory Sanders, if you’re not in your room in two minutes, you can go straight to sleep with no story.” She handed him the bear he’d dropped, then spun him around by both shoulders and gave him a little push toward Marc. Greg toddled off with his arms crossed over his small chest and his tiny lips turned down in a pout.
Abby’s dad put Logan down, and the older boys reluctantly followed little Greg into the hall in the direction of his room.
“We have Logan for the week,” Marc explained. “Angela gets him for Christmas morning but promised to bring him over that night, then he’s all ours again for the New Year.”
“That’s great.” I watched as Ethan’s son disappeared around the corner. “He needs to spend time with his own kind.”
“We don’t even know if he’s a shifter yet,” Abby pointed out.
“He is,” Marc and I said in unison, and she laughed. Probably because he and I rarely agreed on anything.
“Abby, give me a hug!” Faythe stood, and my eyes widened at the sight of her small but distinctively rounded stomach as she pulled Abby closer.
She laughed at my expression. “Did I forget to tell you?”
I nodded, and I could tell from Abby’s face that she hadn’t known either.
“Dr. Carver says it’s another boy. Due in April. We want to call him Ethan.” She watched me from across the room, and everyone was silent, waiting for my response.
“No better name in the world,” I said at last, and Faythe visibly relaxed as she pulled me into a hug.
“It’s good to see you, Jace. I hope you know you’re always welcome.”
When I hugged her back, I found that leadership, marriage, and motherhood had changed her scent as much as they’d changed the rest of her life. She smelled like Marc now, even more than she used to. She smelled like the droplets of little Greg’s apple juice on her blouse, and like whatever prenatal vitamin supplements she was taking, and like the earthy, healthy hormones her second pregnancy was producing.
And she felt strong. Steady. Resolute, as she always had, but now her determination was backed by four years of peaceful and successful leadership.
Faythe was gorgeous, as always. But she was no longer mine, and for the first time since she’d chosen Marc over me, I was okay with that, because I had truly let her go. Finally, it felt less like I had lost her than like the rest of the world had gained her.
“You look terrific. Healthy and happy,” I said.
She let me go, grateful tears standing in her eyes. “Thanks. As it turns out, a woman really can do it all—if she’s willing to give up sleep almost entirely.”
I laughed, as I was supposed to, and we were making our way toward the center of the room when Kaci stepped into the office in snug jeans, a long sweater, and a cropped leather jacket.
“I’m leaving,” she announced, jangling a set of car keys in one hand, and again the subversive passage of time smacked me over the head. How the hell could she be old enough to drive?
Of course she was driving. She had to be…seventeen?
“Hey, Kace.” I braced myself to be attacked with another homecoming hug, but her gaze hardly even skipped over me.
“Hey.” Then she turned back to Faythe. “Can I take your car? Marc’s still smells like feet.”
“Sure,” Faythe said, while Marc grumbled something he probably wouldn’t have said in front of the toddler.
“Kace.” I ducked into her field of vision, trying to catch her eye. “When you get back, you wanna—”
“Don’t wait up.” Kaci shrugged. “I’ll be late.”
“No, you’ll be back by midnight,” Marc called over his shoulder from the couch.
She heaved a dramatic sigh, and I was all but forgotten. “My friends don’t have curfews!”
“Your friends don’t have claws, either,” Marc pointed out, and Abby glanced back and forth between them, as if she wasn’t sure whether she was supposed to identify with the oldish teenager or the youngish adult.
“That is neither relevant nor fair!” Kaci snapped, but Faythe only smiled, as if maybe she agreed. Secretly.
“Midnight,” Marc insisted. “That’s an order.”