My ladies froze for one long moment as a group and then turned in eerie unison in their seats to look at me.
Tayline caught the sob that exploded from her lungs in both hands, eyes wide.
Rainbow choked on the latte she’d been drinking.
Cleo’s jaw dropped open, and she had to close it shut with both hands on her cheeks.
Maja and Hannah, seasoned as they were, just reached for each other where they sat on a loveseat, lined hands tangling.
Bea blinked and blinked like she stared into the sun.
Lila pressed her hand to her heart so hard the skin bleached white.
One blissful moment of suspended peace and then…
Chaos.
They erupted into motion, racing to me, hands everywhere on my body, my swollen belly, my hair. They pet me as they peppered me with questions, as they jostled like eager puppies around their mother.
“Why didn’t you tell us you were coming home?” Loulou demanded.
“Why didn’t you tell us you were pregnant?” Tayline barked coarsely even as she bent to press her cheek to my rounded abdomen.
“It’s King’s,” Cleo breathed, eyes round with dreamy wonder as they locked with my own. “What a gift.”
I nodded, my voice lost to the storm of emotions in my gut. Absently, I realized I was crying, but only because Lila collected my tears on the tips of her long fingers.
“You’re home,” Benny said as he pushed through the female mass and wedged himself under one of my arms, his huge dark eyes luminous with love as he looked at me. “My God, you’re home.”
When I opened my mouth to say something, a sob fell out. I tried again, and another sprang forth.
“Someone get her a tissue,” Rainbow ordered as she and Maja ushered me to the lounge area and practically forced me onto a couch.
Everyone else pressed in close around me, pages around a flower they wanted to preserve forever.
Loulou sat Angel in my lap where the little girl happily hugged my big belly, resting her curly blond head there.
“Aunty,” she said as she pat, patted my stomach as if I was her pet.
On-tay.
I looked at Loulou who smiled. “We showed her lots of pictures while you were gone. They started talking a lot three months ago.”
“Even Mr. Grump here,” Bea added, hoisting Monster into her lap even though he scowled at her.
“No,” Monster argued.
We laughed, and I felt as I had since moving to Entrance that laughter was a powerful magic. It was a bonding, cleansing force. I let it move through me into the women, and Benny gathered around me, unifying us and tightening our loosened ties.
“You’re home,” Tayline said, sniffing as she wiped her forearm across her nose. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“So you could brace and not make a fool of yourself crying?” Rainbow offered with an arched brow.
Tay glowered at her, but it wasn’t very effective on her sweet-faced, five-foot-nothing frame. “I’m not crying.”
Harleigh Rose poked at a tear caught on the edge of her chin and held it aloft as proof. “What’s this then?”
Tay sniffed and looked away. “I have allergies.”
“In February?” Hanna asked, trying to smother the laughter in her tone unsuccessfully.
“Why are we talking about me? Cress is the one with explaining to do!”
They looked at me, and I felt the way I had the first time I’d had to lecture an auditorium of university students when I was doing my master’s degree, ill-equipped and deeply uncomfortable.
I swallowed thickly, my hands carding through Angel’s curls as she dozed on my lap. “I’m home because I found what I was looking for on my trip.”
Maja nodded sagely, bent over the back of the couch so she could press a kiss to my cheek before going back to playing with my hair. “Closure.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “But not just that.”
“A baby,” Harleigh Rose snarked with a wink.
I rolled my eyes at her, but Loulou looked back and forth between us with a slight furrow between her pale brows.
“Why don’t you seem more shocked?” she asked her daughter-in-law slash best friend. “You’re usually dramatic as hell.”
“Hey,” H.R. snapped. “I’m not dramatic. I’m intense.”
“There’s a difference?” Cleo murmured, leaning in to Bea, who giggled in response.
“Fine, so why aren’t you being intense about this?” Loulou demanded.
“Have you seen your husband at all today?” she asked innocently, picking at a hole in her jeans.
“No…”
A smile flickered over H.R.’s wide mouth.
Lou turned to me with betrayal souring her expression. “Cress? Did you tell H.R. you were coming home and not me?”
“Not us,” Tayline countered with a similar frown.
“I didn’t just find closure in Alaska,” I hurried to say. “I found what I’d been looking for my whole life.”
“Now who’s being dramatic,” Rainbow muttered.
I bit off the edge of my smile. “I did marry into the Garro family.”
There were murmurs of agreement. Harleigh Rose pushed Lila over in retribution, then pulled her back in to smack a kiss on her cheek.
Home.
The word reverberated through me with each beat of my heart.
“I hate secrets,” Tayline grumped.
“Be grateful she’s home to have them,” Cleo offered, not unkindly as she squeezed my foot.
I smiled at her in thanks. “I wanted to hang out with you guys today before the…celebration tonight, but I do have secrets and I would appreciate it if you let me keep them until tonight. If you’ll let me.”
Everyone waited, and I knew it was because they wanted Loulou to make the decision for them. She was Zeus’s Old Lady, the head of our biker babe posse because of her status but also because she’d won the respect of every woman there. They looked at me too, or they had, because of my age and marriage to King, but I understood I’d have to win that privilege back over time.
Loulou pursed her glossed lips and leaned forward to run a hand down her baby girl’s head as she slept draped over my stomach, a little patch of drool forming under her open mouth. Those Lafayette blue eyes, so saturated a blue they seemed as fake as a Crayola crayon, locked with mine.
“I’m good at keeping secrets,” she reminded me as her hand slipped from Angel’s back onto my belly. She had been the only one who figured out my pregnancy before I left town, and she’d kept that secret even from her own husband all these months simply because I’d asked her to. “But I’m good with waiting for them to be told too.”
I reached up to palm her cheek, marvelling at the twenty-one-year-old mother of twins who was at once fresh and wise, a contradiction in so many ways I doubted I would ever get to the bottom of who she was and what made her so endlessly beautiful.
“Thank you,” I said, rubbing my thumb over the ridge of her cheekbone. “For trusting me and loving me, even when I was gone.”
“Entrance isn’t home without you,” she responded easily as if her words didn’t rock me. “The Fallen isn’t either. We’re just glad you’re back.”