things happening between him and Sammy, which was something his younger sister would never pick up on.
“Sure,” Rose said. “But if Sammy is going to call Ryder out, I want a front-row seat.”
“You have one,” Iris said. “With steak.”
She got up from the table and went into the kitchen, coming back with the steak that had been resting. There was salad and green beans, too, and for a moment everybody was occupied dishing food and tearing chunks of bread off the loaf that Iris had made.
That meant that he and Sammy had a choice. They could call a cease-fire. Because with oral sex and an orgasm between them maybe it wasn’t the best idea to be pushing all this out in the open.
But he wasn’t in the mood.
“Better than trying to inflict your feelings on everyone else, I expect,” he said. “Then other people might die of them.”
“Oh right. Me and my harebrained schemes. Always inflicting myself on people. That’s me. And yet...here you are. And here I am. So for all the trouble that I cause, you seem to need it. You seem to need me.”
“Are we in the middle of a fight that we didn’t see the beginning of?” Iris asked.
“Something like that,” Sammy responded.
“I want to eat steak,” Logan said. “You have a problem with that?”
“Can you not eat steak when there’s tension around you, Logan?” Sammy asked. “I didn’t realize that you needed to clear your chakras in order to enjoy your food. But I can burn some sage if you want.”
Sammy had clearly correctly identified that Logan was on his side. And she was not happy about it.
“Oh, I’m fine,” Logan said. And as if to prove his point he cut into the steak and took a bite.
Sammy was tapping the edge of her ceramic flowered plate. These plates had been gifts that Sammy had brought with her. Ferreted out of various charity stores and yard sales. She had compiled enough dishes for the expanded family, including her.
She had elbowed her way in. Made a place for herself.
And he had put everything she did down to shenanigans. He did treat her like she was a kid. Like she was running with her arms in a windmill doing things that had no point or purpose. But these nonmatching dishes had a purpose. Like all the other things that she did.
“It’s fine,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
She blinked, her lips twitching. “What?”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been poking at you.”
“Somebody write this on a calendar,” Rose said.
“I apologize, when I’m wrong.”
“When you think you’re wrong,” Rose said. “Which is basically never.”
“Well, I haven’t had the luxury of running around thinking I might be wrong. Because usually I just have to make decisions and stick with them. But I was picking on Sammy, and that wasn’t okay. So there. See? I can apologize.”
“We’ll have to continue the conversation later,” Sammy said. And then she shifted, brushing up against him again, and he realized that was calculated, too.
They finished eating, and then Sammy got up to get her pie from the kitchen. “I’ll help,” he said.
“It’s just a pie,” she responded.
She said it so sweetly that he was sure she was making him push the fact that he wanted to be alone with her.
“There’s ice cream. Anyway, it’s chivalry.”
The two of them went into the kitchen, and she leaned against the counter, crossing her arms. “Is there something you want to say?”
He thought about pulling her into his arms and kissing the smirk off her face, but his sisters were in the next room, and it wasn’t the time.
“You okay?”
“Are you inquiring about my well-being postorgasmically?”
“Yes,” he said, gritting his teeth.
“I think the time to do that would have been when you actually did it. Instead of leaving me.”
“It was the right thing to do at the time.”
“Was it? Because it seems to me that if it was the right thing to do, it would be the right thing to do now, not just at the time.”
“Are you mad at me for leaving?”
She shifted her shoulders, making a strange little smirk with her mouth. “I wouldn’t say that I’m mad. I just... I don’t know. You’re my friend. I expected you to stay and talk to me.”
“It was better if I didn’t,” he said, his voice rough. “Trust me on that.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he said. “I would have taken things further. And it didn’t seem like you were in the headspace to do that.”