Rigby just raised his eyebrows and shook his head. He swam over to where River was standing at the deep end of the pool, leapt up and grabbed him by the back of the calves, pulling him into the water. Nova laughed from the shallow end, where she was sitting on the steps with a still-splashing Huey.

Idyllic. But why did it make my chest hurt so bad?

Chapter Twelve

NOVA

I was only human, okay? I wasn’t particularly special, didn’t have any hard luck stories that made me edgier or more badass than any other woman in the world. Well, at least until now.

Believe me when I say nothing in my life had prepared me for sitting around the table with three half-naked men as we ate steaks that each cost more than my weekly grocery budget, and drank fancy craft beer in the freaking candlelight.

Swimming had tired out Huey quickly, and when I gave him his bottle, he’d nodded off into that deep, floppy baby sleep almost immediately. He’d hardly stirred when I’d changed him into his onesie and put him in his sleep sack.

The baby monitor was now in the middle of the table, and Rigby was regaling everyone with a story about the time he’d tried to rescue a baby moose from the frozen lake behind his house. I could imagine a thirteen-year-old Rigby saving a moose but losing his dad’s tractor in the lake. How could you even be mad about that?

His dad had grounded him for a month, because both moose and tractors were dangerous when coupled with a frozen lake, and he’d forgone his allowance forever after that. When he’d been drafted, he’d bought his dad a state-of-the-art new tractor, and they all still laughed about it.

But it wasn’t the grounding that gave me an insight into how Rigby had ended up the guy he was—it was the part where he dropped his voice conspiratorially. “After I’d been yelled at for a solid two hours about how dangerous everything was, my mom came in with a huge cake, covered in chocolate mousse”—I laughed at that part, because the irony—“and said that what I’d done had been dangerous, but courageous acts deserved recognition, especially when it was to save something weaker. I ate the whole damn thing. I was so sick afterwards, but it was the best hero cake I’ve ever had.”

I looked at River, remembering the story he’d told Huey last night when he got him ready for bed. Would he have turned out like Rigby, open and willing, if someone had baked him a cake after he’d saved Alana from the river? We’d never know, but I stored away the Hero Cake idea for when Huey was older.