Page 529 of Lodestar

“It’s okay, Conor. I’m not upset.” Her hand settled on my thigh and she squeezed me gently there. “Just saying if you’re going for broke, make it clean.”

Aela huffed but the conversation trickled down so we heard Inessa telling Aoife, “I swear to God, it gave me blue eyeballs, Aoife. How you can read that crusty vajayjay stuff is?—”

“Blue eyeballs?” I drawled with a laugh. “What are you reading?”

Inessa’s cheeks blushed. “Nothing.”

“Ha, doesn’t sound like that to me,” Eoghan teased, leaning over to smack a kiss on her cheek.

Aoife prodded the air with her fork. “Stop teasing her. Be grateful that we read what we do because you reap the benefits.”

Finn chuckled. “She’s right, Eoghan. Shut up.”

At that, Aoife kissed Finn—on the mouth.

None of us knew what had happened, and Finn wasn’t willing to talk about it, but three or so months ago, shit had changed between them.

Out of nowhere, they weren’t sitting at the heads of the table for Saturday night dinner anymore. No, they were sitting in the middle of a new glass table that was longer than the other one, with us all clustered around them, the heads no longer set with cutlery.

Weird, but it was their house and we didn’t question it.

Then, crazier still, Aoife, Finn, and Jake showed up at Ma’s apartment for Sunday dinner. While their relationship remained strained, it was better than not having them there at all.

Finn had started smiling more, had stopped looking like he was walking on eggshells, and then, when Aidan asked him to reschedule a trip he’d booked for his family to Denver for some book convention Aoife wanted to attend, Finn had refused.

Small steps, but I thought Star had something to do with it because when I’d told her about Aidan’s expression at Finn’s refusal, she’d smirked.

Now, my woman smirked a lot, but that was a special kind of smirk. One that was smug and happy at the same time.

I dipped my head down and whispered, “I don’t know what you did to fix them but thank you.”

She arched a brow at me. “I didn’t do anything.”

“If you say so.”

“I do.” She tucked into her dinner without taking credit for getting involved, but she didn’t stop me when I hugged her to my side.

But I knew how she rolled.

She hadn’t said anything either when I’d lost a week in my office with work and had dropped ten pounds. Then Ma started popping up in our apartment with food. Food I was hard-wired to want to gorge on.

Star rarely said anything—she acted.

“Conor told us that you got the adoption papers through today, Star?”

She angled her head at Aidan and then peered at the second, smaller table that was set up in the next room where Katina, Shay, and Victoria had taken to sitting so they could watch TV at the same time. “I did.”

My older brother hid a smile. “It wasn’t an accusation.”

“Hmm.”

“Did you get the whole ‘kidnapping of a minor’ thing cleared up too?” Aela asked, surprising me with the fact she knew about that.

Since Star had started attending afternoon tea with the other women, I knew she’d grown closer to them.

“I didn’t. Grandfather did.”

That was new too.

---