looked at him like he’d given them the world because he’d brought them a piece of cake in bed.
“How come you weren’t with your family on your birthday?” he asked.
She shrugged one bare shoulder, taking the cake off the nightstand. “We don’t make a big deal out of birthdays.”
“Why not?”
“Well, we do something for Sammy’s birthday, because she likes it. It’s fun. But...the rest of us aren’t really big on them.”
“Because you don’t care or because you don’t feel like you should ask for one?”
“It just didn’t seem like it mattered. After our parents. And you know, for a while it was mostly because we were sad. We didn’t want to get out all the birthday things Mom used to do. We didn’t want to get the banner back down, or the pineapple platter that she got from her grandmother that was used in her family since the nineteen twenties. We didn’t want any of that. Because it just felt sad. And eventually... We just got used to it. When Sammy came... Well, she’d never had a birthday party. And so Ryder decided that she should. And Sammy likes to have a big deal made out of her birthday.”
“But Sammy does make a big deal out of you?”
“I’ve asked her not to,” Pansy said.
“I’m sorry, that seems stupid,” he said. “You make a big deal out of somebody’s birthday whether or not they want you to.”
“That seems stupid,” Pansy said. “What if someone doesn’t like their birthday?”
“What if they just haven’t had the right kind? You seem pretty happy to have your cake.”
She dug another bite out of the piece and chewed thoughtfully. “Well, this feels different. It’s just you and me.” A blush stained her pretty cheeks. “It doesn’t remind me at all of the kind of birthdays I used to have.”
“No?” he asked, amusement tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“No,” she said. “I can honestly say this is the first birthday I’ve ever had with a naked man.”
“I’m still a little bit smug about that.”
“Me too,” Pansy said. “If only because it feels good to have finally handled that.”
“Is that what this is? You handling something?”
She shrugged. “What else could it be?”
But she was sitting there with a birthday cake that he had bought for her. He cared about her birthday.
And so the question felt like it might have an answer out there that he wasn’t quite ready to find.
“No clue,” he said.
She smiled and grabbed hold of her coffee mug. “How did you know how I like my coffee?”
“I pay attention to what you’re drinking when I see you in town.”
It wasn’t actually that hard. Piecing together the details of who Pansy was. He was interested in them.
He found everything about her pretty fascinating.
“I didn’t know men like you existed,” she said.
“I didn’t know I could be so observant,” he said.
Because he didn’t know what else to say. Which was unusual too. And really, he didn’t know that he possessed the capacity to care quite so damn much about what kind of coffee a woman drank, or what kind of birthday cake she might want.
Or whether or not her parents had tucked her in at night, or if anyone in her family had done it since they’d died.
He didn’t know what the hell was wrong with him.
Or what was right with him.
“I guess I better go check in on Emmett,” he said.
“Oh,” she said.
“Do you work today?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes.”
“Can I come over later?”
She looked like she was pondering that. “Yes. I would like that.”
“Good,” he said.
Because he might not know a whole lot of things right now, but he knew that he wanted to spend the night with her again.
He knew that he wanted answers and satisfaction for the desperate need that was coursing beneath his skin.
That he wanted to find a name for this thing that was shifting things around inside of him.
Right now, the only name he had was Pansy.
But that felt good enough for him.
“Do you know which day you’re going to visit the school?”
She nodded. “It’ll be tomorrow.”
“Well then,” he said. “I reckon I’ll come too.”
He expected her to tell him he didn’t have to.
But she didn’t.
“Okay,” she said. “That sounds good.”
As West collected the rest of his clothes and headed out of the house, he reflected on everything he had now.
He had expected to come here and forge some relationships with the family he hadn’t known he had.
He hadn’t expected to end up with Emmett living with him. Hadn’t expected