Page 50 of The Spite Date (Small Town Sisterhood #1)

While Daphne and Lana have their own animated conversation at the other end of the table, Bea brushes her foot against mine.

While Hudson tells a story about Ryker’s goats, I intermingle my fingers with hers and draw hearts on her palm with my thumb.

Yes, yes, I’m that far gone.

I should be very concerned for myself, but I rather suspect I’ll bugger this up soon enough.

Which is a thought that has my blood running cold.

I don’t want to bugger up anything with Bea.

She’s funny. She’s sexy. She treats me as though I’m a normal human being.

She spots my boys trading one of those looks before Lana or I do, and with one lift of her eyebrows, they both sink back into their respective seats and quietly grab another slice of pizza, but she also smiles at them and engages with them as the individual human beings that they are.

Bea has given me an opportunity to exist inside a bubble where family are tight and care about one another, even as they argue and tease each other, but ultimately are all watching out for one another.

And with Daphne and Lana and myself and the boys joining them—it’s the kind of family that grows without traditional boundaries.

The kind of family I never had.

Siblings. Inside jokes. Laughter. Love. Acceptance.

Their parents clearly did something right, and the injustice that two good parents have left this mortal plane while mine remain hits me square in the chest again.

Will my boys be this tight?

Are Lana and I doing anything right enough to give them a true sense of family?

Lana is, of course, my family as well, but she’s rather stuck with me because of the boys, whereas with Bea?—

With Bea, I feel as though she’s choosing me.

When she has so many reasons that choosing me would not be in her best interest.

“You okay?” she murmurs to me.

I shake my head as I realize everyone else at the table is laughing at something while I’m not smiling. “Quite all right, thank you.”

She watches me. “I’ve never seen you this quiet.”

I squeeze her hand. “Merely admiring how well your family get along. I rather doubt another person could have done what you’ve done for your brothers and still liked them in the end.

I certainly couldn’t have. But you—you are a wonder, Beatrice Best. A wonder who holds your whole family together, blood relations and not, and I suspect you’ve no idea how attractive that is. ”

She blinks quickly, but not quickly enough for me to miss the way her eyes mist over. “I forget sometimes that I shouldn’t take them for granted.”

“You absolutely should not. Though you should give yourself credit as well.”

“I did what I had to.”

“At great personal cost to yourself. And I’m happy to see your brothers seem to recognize it.”

She glances at them, Hudson laughing so hard that he’s nearly choking, Griff smiling mischievously, Ryker smiling as well, more reserved, but still smiling.

“Worth it,” she says softly, that lovely glow once again coming into her eyes.

How could a person see the way she loves her family and not want to be a part of her life?

“Dad, we ate three pizzas. Can we go play now?” Eddie says.

I swing my gaze back to my boys. “Each?”

“Together,” Charlie answers.

“I tried anchovies and didn’t like them,” Eddie informs me.

“I could like them if I tried them two more times.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“It’s true! I didn’t almost puke like you did. I think I like the salt. I just need to grow into it a little more.”

“You don’t have to find gross things to like.”

“Griff, how are your anchovies?” Bea asks.

He turns to stare at her in horror. “Gross. Who eats anchovies?”

“I do, dummy,” Ryker replies.

“I don’t, but I do sneak them onto Griff’s pizza sometimes,” Hudson announces.

Lana makes eye contact with me. “And now I’m glad we only have two.”

“Indeed,” I agree.

Bea giggles.

I glance at Butch, who rises.

He and Pinky have both finished their pizza.

“Got ’em, boss,” he says to me.

“You may go and play,” I tell the boys.

Lana pushes her chair back. “I think I’ll go play too. Show them how Centipede is done.”

Griff, who’s been leaning back on his rear two chair legs, drops the front two back to the floor as my family races one another to the game room. “That’s still here?”

“They’re never getting rid of it,” Ryker tells him.

“I thought it would’ve died by now.”

“It did,” Daphne says. “Right between you leaving for college and me being disinherited. I bought the new one and set up a trust fund for it in case they ever have to replace it again in the next hundred years.”

Bea’s brothers stare at her in utter reverence.

“In retrospect, I probably should’ve funneled my trust fund into a different trust fund but…eh. Live and learn.”

“Why do some rich people who are complete douchenoodles get to stay rich, but you had to be disinherited when you were doing so much good in the world?” Hudson says to her.

“Excuse you, I’m still very rich. In character.”

Bea’s dimples are putting on quite the show as she watches them all.

I slip my arm around the back of her chair, my fingers brushing her bare shoulder. Vest tops are, indeed, my favorite article of clothing ever. “You’re not friends. You adopted her.”

“It’s a little of both.”

“Have you contemplated that your role on this earth might be teaching the world what family means?”

Those lovely green eyes blink at me. “Oh, I’m not that good.”

She is indeed, and I file away her lack of recognition of the fact for contemplation later.

For now, I’m contemplating how close her face is to mine.

That she has a light dusting of freckles on her cheeks that I hadn’t noticed the last time I saw her.

Has she spent time in the sun? Has that brought out her freckles?

“I would like to take you out on a proper date, just the two of us. Somewhere without a menu swimming in cheese, and with an empty house to return to later.”

She smiles broader. “Can we keep the lights on this time? I heard a rumor you have a secret tattoo.”

“Have you? Or did you start that rumor because you have a secret tattoo?”

She lifts her brows mysteriously and continues to smile at me.

If ever there was an invitation to kiss a woman, this is it.

I lean in, anticipating once again having Bea’s lips against mine, when someone kicks me from across the table.

I yelp and straighten.

“Really, Griff?” Bea says.

“So I’ve been telling my teammates about your burger bus, and they want you to come do a cookout for us,” he says to her.

“So this is how a middle child acts,” I murmur.

“Be glad yours barely argue over who’s the baby,” she murmurs back, then she turns her attention to her brother. “I didn’t think burgers were on the menu for most of your teammates during the season.”

He grins. “Just the older teammates who don’t still have metabolisms of steel.”

“You’re gonna flunk out of the majors if you don’t stay fit,” Daphne tells him.

“Flunking out of the show isn’t a thing,” he scoffs.

“That’s the same thing at least three of my ex-boyfriends who flunked out of the majors said before their teams cut them for younger, faster, stronger players who ate chicken and greens instead of pizza and burgers.”

I could be kissing Bea.

Sneaking her off behind the building to kiss her and touch her in the semidarkness, someplace without witnesses.

But as she joins the conversation about Griff’s health, which turns to a discussion of Hudson’s lung capacity on a stage, which turns to a conversation about Ryker’s ability to continue chasing his chickens and goats, I’m unexpectedly content.

This must be what belonging feels like. Belonging without fighting it, without second-guessing it, without doubting it.

And it’s oddly more satisfying than sex.

Or perhaps differently satisfying.

Yes.

Differently satisfying.

In a way that I suspect I’ll crave far more than I shall crave sex long after I no longer have either.