Page 203 of The Exit Strategy

She smiles sweetly. “I wish I could have known your parents, Cole.”

“They would have loved you dear,” Nana Mae says. “Katie, pass the potatoes and move on. I can only handle so many tears before my heart gives out.”

“What the hell, Nana Mae?” Nolan mutters. “I saw your bloodwork. You’re perfectly healthy.”

Nana Mae shrugs and then engages Junie in a discussion about the new dock that’s being built this week.

Nolan leans into my space and very, very quietly whispers, “I didn’t say anything.”

I whisper back. “No, but you just cheated your way into a win with that bet. You only know I have the damn thing because I did the right thing and asked for your fucking blessing.”

Fen sits across from us, clocking it all.

Nolan tips back in his chair and laughs. It’s a good sound to hear coming from him. Work or life has been stressing him out lately, and he isn’t inclined to share yet.

I go back to eating and try to mute the entire dinner and pretend that Katie didn’t just almost blow up my entire plan.

Junie kicks me under the table.

Once. Lightly. Just to let me know that she’s fine.

I tap her back with my foot.

Fen, clearing his throat, clinks his wineglass with a fork.

“Don’t,” I growl just as Nana Mae says, “Sit down.”

“I cannot sit, Nana Mae. I just have one thing to say.” He raises his glass in the air. “To Nana Mae. For being our rock—and for forgiving us, mostly, when we deserved less.”

We all raise our glasses to my grandmother.

“That was a good one, Fenway.” She takes off her glasses and sets them on the table, and eyes each of us in turn.

“You kids got me to seventy-four. I don’t know how useful I’ll be for the next decade, but I’ll always be your rock until the day you bury me with them.”

“Jesus,” Hudson grumbles.

And with that morbid toast, I raise my glass. “To Nana Mae.”

“To Nana Mae,” everyone says in unison, but she’s already scurrying to the kitchen, muttering about dessert when we haven’t cut the chicken yet.

We drink to her anyway.

While everyone else is busy with their wine, I lean in and press my lips to Junie’s. It’s a check-in. A confirmation that we’re still on the same page. A meeting of two souls that we’ve somehow perfected over the last six months.

“That was a lot,” I whisper against her lips, thankful that, for once, our family is ignoring us.

“It always is.” She smiles back at me so sweetly my teeth ache.

“Tonight.” It rumbles from me with a hint of lust.

“We’ll go slow.” She places her lips just to the corner of mine.

“As slow as you want.” It’s a promise for later tonight, for tomorrow, for our future.

And she hears it exactly as I mean it because for the first time in my life, I’m perfectly in tune with who I’m supposed to be—hers.

35