Page 27 of Handful

“She doesn’t mean anything to me,” he said. “Never has.”

I didn’t say anything. But I didn’t move away either. Holden, across from us, was watching. Quiet. I’d noticed that about him - he was always watching, saw everything, commented on almost nothing. Bea appeared at his side with two glasses of water.

“She’s doing well,” Bea said to Holden, looking through the window at someone inside. I followed her gaze and found Wren, sitting on the couch with Knox. He was showing her something on a tablet and she was leaning in, nodding, her face more animated than I’d seen it all evening. Glitch was at the bar getting drinks, glancing back at them every few seconds.

“She’s getting braver,” Holden said.

“She’s more comfortable with us.”

I filed that. Comfortable, not just brave — there was a difference. I was still working out where I fitted in with this group.

The clubhouse emptied slowly. Families left first — Lilac herding Luca and Knox toward their house, Colt behind her with Graham and Danny, one under each arm. Betty with them.

Dutch and Indira next — Maya had fallen asleep in the high chair, and Indira had lifted her out like nitroglycerin - not breathing, not wanting to wake the sleeping baby. Dutch took the chair under one arm and they slipped out quietly, his hand at the small of her back.

Glitch stood, stretched, and looked down at Wren with a private smile. “Ready, sweetheart?” She nodded, stood, and tucked herself under his arm. “Good girl.” They said goodnight to the room — Wren’s goodnight was a wave, small and quick — and left.

Holden and Bea stayed longer. They left around ten, Holden’s hand finding Bea’s as they walked toward their house on the lane.

The common room went quiet. A few brothers at the pool table. The jukebox playing something slow. Handful and me on the couch, my legs tucked under me, his arm along the back behind my shoulders.

“So,” he said.

“So.”

“What do you think?”

I thought about it. The toast. The kitchen. Lilac’s food, Betty’s napkin swans and Maya throwing pasta at Colt. Wren’s shy smile across the table. The way every couple in the room had their own private language — hands finding hands, names said softly, the automatic gestures of people who’d chosen each other and kept choosing.

“I think this is a family,” I said. “A weird, loud, slightly terrifying family.”

Handful laughed. Then he looked at me — the way he’d been looking at me for months now, the way that had nothing of the old performance in it. Just attention. The full, steady kind that made me feel like the only person in the building.

“Stay tonight.”

“In the clubhouse?”

“In my room.”

I hesitated. Not because I didn’t want to — I’d known how tonight would end since I’d said yes to coming. But in the version I’d rehearsed, I was the one doing the inviting in after Handful drove us back to my apartment. My territory. Staying here, in his bed, in this building, was a different proposition, and it snagged me for a second.

He caught it.

The grin went. “Hey. We don’t have to do anything.” He shifted on the couch, and I didn’t miss the way the denim had gone tight across his lap, or the slow breath he took to steady himself. “I want to. I’m not going to insult you by pretending I don’t. But I’ve gotten good at waiting and I can keep waiting. After tonight, watching you in here, with all of them, I’d be happy just to fall asleep with you next to me. That’s the whole ask.”

I screwed up my face.

“Whoa.” He sat back like I’d pushed him. “Okay. We can head out, I’ll run you home, it’s no—”

“It’s not you, it’s…”

“Okay, stop there. You don’t have to explain. I’m a big boy, I don’t need the it’s not you, it’s me speech.”

“Handful.” I caught his arm and slapped it, light, the kind of slap that meant stop talking. “It’s not me. It’s not you. It’s the bed. The idea of the bed.” I nodded toward the stairs. “You’ve had — what? Half the women in this building in that room? I’m not in a hurry to be the next one in that bed.”

The color climbed his neck and kept going. I had never once seen this man blush. It was extraordinary.

“I’m not going to sit here and tell you I’ve been a monk,” he said. “You know what I was. But I haven’t had a woman in my room since the night you first made me an Old Fashioned.” He held my eyes. “Haven’t had a woman anywhere since then. Not one.”