Page 118 of Hometown Touchdown
I narrow my eyes. “Souping?”
“Yeah. It’s like…soup, but a verb.”
“You’re making up verbs now?”
“I’m innovating. Embracing culinary fluidity.”
I stare at her. She stares at her soup. And I know. She knows. I don’t knowhow—but she does.
Maybe it was my tone earlier. Maybe I left the receipt for the ring in the truck. Maybe I talked in my sleep and said something deeply poetic like“Brynn Marlow, please let me put a diamond on your left hand and waffle batter in your hair every Sunday for the rest of our lives.”
But the bottom line is my girl is hiding something.
Which would be hilarious if I weren’t trying to plan the most important question I’ll ever ask.
I push off the counter and cross to the table, setting my hand over hers. Her fingers tense for half a second, then relax.
“You’re being weird,” I say gently, teasing.
She blinks up at me, scrunching her nose with an expression so full of innocence, it should be illegal. “I’m not weird. You’re weird.”
I tilt my head. “You’ve said five words since I walked in the door. Four of them were about soup. You dropped your phone in the sink while making tea. You kissed me on the cheek andsaid,‘What a sturdy man,’like I was an eighteen hundreds lumberjack.”
She tries to hold it in. Fails.
A laugh bursts out of her, half-snort, half-gasp. “Okay. That was maybe a little much.”
I pull her hand into my lap and rub my thumb along the back of it, slower now. “You sure you’re okay?”
She meets my eyes then, all soft and shining, and my chest tightens because yeah—she definitely knows. But instead of panicking or avoiding it, she just…smiles. Real and quiet and a little breathless.
“I’m good,” she says softly. “Better than good.”
I brush her hair back from her face. “You’d tell me if something was on your mind?”
“I’d try. But you usually figure me out before I get the words right.”
I lean down, kiss the corner of her mouth. “Hazard of loving someone since you were seventeen.”
Her hand slides up my arm, curling around my bicep. “Just for the record…if anything was up—hypothetically—I’d still act surprised. Like really surprised.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Gasps. Maybe a hand to the chest. One tear. Possibly two.”
I grin against her skin. “Sounds convincing.”
She kisses me back, soft and lingering, and whispers against my mouth, “Just make sure you keep being sturdy, Coach.”
“I plan to,” I murmur, resting my forehead against hers. “Gotta carry this whole future I’ve got planned for us.”
Her breath hitches. I feel it.
And for a second, we just sit there. Quiet and close and full of everything we haven’t said yet. But soon, I’ll say it all.
Evie barrels toward me with the force of a linebacker.
“Coach!” she squeals, arms wrapping around my legs. “Guess what? I named the rolls.”
