Page 76 of Knights Like These
“When did you get so wise?”
“I’ve always been wise. You just never listen because you’re too busy being stoic and repressed.” He grins. “Go home. Everything’s gonna be okay.”
The house is warm when I walk in. Lily is on the living room floor with her crayons, Luke is on the couch with a book, and Sydney is at the kitchen island chopping vegetables. She looks up when I come through the door and smiles.
The smile hits me differently today. Not because it’s changed—but because I have. Because ten minutes ago, Bree saidif it falls apart, they lose their whole daily life, and now I’m standing in the doorway watching that daily life happen in frontof me. I can see how fragile it is. How much everyone in this room is counting on it holding.
“Hey,” Sydney says. “How was practice?”
“Good.” I set my bag down. “Syd, can we, uh, talk tonight? After the kids are down?”
Her smile fades. Not all the way—just enough that I can see her register the shift in my voice. She sets the knife down. “Sure. Everything okay?”
“Yeah. Just—something came up that we should talk about.”
She looks at me for a long second, reading my face the way she’s been reading it since we were in high school. I don’t know what she sees, but whatever it is makes her nod slowly.
“Okay,” she says. “After bedtime.”
I nod. I go upstairs to change, and I stand in my bedroom, pressing my hands against my face, thinking about how Bree suddenly wants to get lawyers involved again.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Mine
Sydney
After the twins are down, I find Archer at the kitchen island with two glasses of wine poured and an expression that tells me this isn’t a wine-and-unwind kind of conversation.
“So,” I say, sitting across from him. “What came up?”
He wraps both hands around his glass and doesn’t drink. “Bree called today.”
My stomach drops. “About the kids?”
“About us.”
I set my wine down. “How does she know about us?”
“Lily told her about the date. Logan babysitting, me in a fancy shirt, the whole thing.” He almost smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “She reported it like front-page news, apparently.”
“Of course she did.” I touch my fingers to my temples. “What did Bree say?”
He tells me everything—the custody arrangement, the lawyers, the concern about what happens to the twins if we don’t work out. He repeats what Bree said about the kids losing their daily life again, and I watch his face while he says it. I can see what it cost him to hear it and what it’s costing him to repeat it.
“She’s not wrong,” I say when he finishes.
“I know. She’s not.”
“The kids are attached to me, Archer. If we try this and it falls apart, I can’t just—I can’t just go back to being Auntie Syd who visits on holidays. That’s not how four-year-olds work.”
“I know.”
“So this is serious. Whatever we’re doing, it has to be serious. Because the stakes aren’t just us.”
“I know that, Syd. I’ve thought about it.”
“And?”
