Beckett doesn’t slow as he darts through the kitchen and out the door, buck naked save for a throw pillow clutched over his junk.
His hair is wild, his eyes are wide, and his breaths are sharp and short. “She was in bed with me.”
I follow him out, with Rowan on my heels. “Who? Liv?”
Rowan shrugs. “Is he sleepwalking?”
“Muriel,” Beckett mutters.
He’s walking in circles, still holding the pillow in place, which means I’ve officially seen far more of him than I would like.
“He’s hallucinating,” Rowan says. “Maybe the ties have been cutting off oxygen to his brain all these years.”
Beckett stumbles back inside, shaking his head in disbelief.
I’m still chuckling as I follow him in. The humor dies quickly, though. Because the tiny kitchen looks like a war zone. Miller is standing at the stove, scrambling eggs, with Willow on his hip. Finn is pouring orange juice into what looked like brandy snifters, and all over the table, for himself and Addie, and the twins are sitting at the bar, heads bent in close and casting suspicious glances around the room.
If they’re editing Beckett’s Wikipedia page again, Delia will be so mad. The last time they did it, they called him “world’s grumpiest nepo-baby” and added that he slept with fourteen teddy bears and had six toes on his left foot. Then they locked it with some kind of unbreakable code. Langfield had to call in a favor to the CEO out in Silicon Valley to get it fixed. The guy did it, but only after he offered the twins jobs on his data security team. He didn’t seem concerned they had only just turned nine.
Several minutes later, Beckett returns, fully dressed and looking a bit more composed.
In true Beckett fashion, he recovered from his fit of hysteria quickly and is acting like nothing happened. Already, he’s shouting into his phone and pacing like a cranky CEO.
I’m toasting bread and Rowan is wiping up juice when he whips around, phone still pressed to his ear, and glares at us. “Do not speak of what happened earlier.”
I raise my eyebrows. This guy is truly coming unglued. He’s been away from his wife for one single day, and already, he’s decompensating.
His eyes narrow and dart between the two of us. “Did you guys sneak out? What the duck? We agreed to lay low.”
I hold my hands up in surrender. “Just went for a sunrise run. No one saw me.”
Rowan gives an unbothered shrug. “You made me miss a game. I needed to get some kind of workout in.” His shit-eatinggrin is so cocky it takes real control to fight the urge to smack it off his face.
What the hell is wrong with me? The dude is one of my closest friends. Damn, I guess I really am sexually frustrated.
Beckett growls, “If Liv finds out…”
Rowan saunters to the coffeepot. “Stop stressing. I’m stealthy. I’d be more worried about this guy.” He nods in my direction. “He’s having some kind of existential crisis.”
My stomach drops.
Jesus, am I that transparent?
Beckett looks me up and down. “Woman trouble?”
“Your aura does seem off,” Cortney says over his shoulder.
“You sound like Dippy Do.” Beckett smirks.
Cortney whips around and scowls at him. The expression does little when he’s holding a tiny ray of sunshine who’s tugging on his shoulder-length hair and cooing.
Denying will only make things worse. So I pinch the bridge of my nose and say nothing. Langfield is worse than my Nonna when it comes to the meddling and interference. She, at least, has the good sense to cuss me out in Italian.
“Hannah,” he grinds out. “I gotta go. One of these morons needs me to fix his life again.”
Once he’s ended the call, he crosses his arms and fixes that stupid glare on me.
“Liam,” he barks.