Chapter 384: I’m Back

Smoke was already thick in the kitchen when the sound of the gate reached them.

None of them went to the door.

The moment they heard he was coming, the four of them had turned the kitchen into a competition without ever saying the word. Pots sat on every burner. Oil popped. Steam rose in heavy clouds and mixed with the sharper smell of something just starting to catch. Mia worked the main pan. Daisy moved between two smaller ones. Debbie kept checking the pot at the back like it might ruin itself if she looked away too long. Gracie stayed near the counter, quieter than the rest, but still part of the mess.

Outside, he stood near the entrance a second longer than planned.

The house was not silent. Metal against metal. A lid set down too hard. Someone talking over the heat. He glanced at the woman with him.

"Sit for a bit. Let me check what’s going on."

She nodded and stayed in the sitting room while he walked toward the kitchen.

The smoke hit him first.

It rolled out the moment he pushed the door wider, warm and thick enough to sting. Different pots were going at once. None of the girls looked up. Mia stirred hard. Daisy reached for salt without turning. Debbie leaned over her own pot, focused to the point of blindness. He coughed once. Then again. The third one caught in his throat and nearly bent him forward.

Still nothing.

He cleared his throat the hard way and raised his voice.

"I’m back."

Spoons stopped.

All four heads turned at once.

Mia’s spoon left her hand and hit the counter with a sharp clatter. For a second nobody moved. They had not expected him this early. The shock sat plain on their faces before the rest of them caught up.

Then the kitchen broke open.

Mia reached him first. She did not walk. She crossed the space and jumped, arms locking around his neck. Debbie came right after her, and he caught both of them with an arm under each, hands settling against the soft curve of their ass as he lifted them enough to keep balance. They kissed him one after the other, short and hungry, the kind of greeting that did not wait for permission.

Daisy came in harder.

She ran the last few steps and jumped with no warning. He was still holding the first two and had no clean way to adjust. The force took him backward. He hit the floor with Debbie still half on top of him, and she used the fall to kiss him again while Daisy scrambled in from the side, laughing and refusing to give space.

"We missed you."

"Where have you been?"

"You didn’t even call properly."

The questions stacked on top of each other. He tried to answer once and got another kiss instead. By the time he managed to sit up, all three of them were still too close, still talking over him, still treating the reunion like he might disappear again if they let go too soon.

Gracie had not moved with them.

She stood a little to the side near the counter, watching. She was comfortable enough with the others now, but her place with him still sat in a quieter, unfinished space. When the noise finally thinned, she gave a small smile and lifted her hand halfway.

"Hey, Lucas."

The greeting was soft. Almost shy.

He nodded back at her, still on the floor with the others climbing off him, then pushed himself up and brushed the heat of the kitchen off his shirt.

"I got something for you. All of you. Come."

That was enough.

They followed at once, still pressed around him as he led them out of the smoke and into the sitting room. Rechelle was already there, seated upright on the couch, posture clean, expression carefully neutral. The moment the group entered, the air in the room changed.

The girls saw her.

She saw them all over him.

For a second she did not know which feeling came first. Relief that the house was real and the women in it had faces. Or the sharper pull of watching them touch him so easily, like that place beside him already belonged to someone else. Maybe more than one someone else.

He stopped in the middle of the room.

"This is Rechelle."

He looked at each of them in turn.

"Rechelle, this is Daisy, Debbie, Mia, and Gracie."

A spread of quiet hellos answered him. Polite enough. Thin enough.

Daisy did not look away.

She kept her eyes on the new woman with the focused stillness of someone trying to place a face. Rechelle felt the stare immediately. It did not feel curious in a friendly way. It felt like a line being drawn. A silent warning that the seat she was sitting in was not open.

She did not react to it.

Debbie was the one who spoke.

"You look familiar. Like we’ve met before."

Rechelle blinked once.

"Have we?"

Debbie frowned slightly, still searching.

"I don’t know. Maybe through work. Something like that."

"What kind of work?"

"I’m a lawyer."

That was the piece that clicked.

Rechelle’s expression shifted by a fraction. Memory settled into place without much effort. The ex-husband. The clean separation. The way he had walked away with nothing and then tried to come back through the law, reaching for property he had no right to claim. When that failed, he stopped pretending the fight was legal. Everything had been handled. Closed. Buried under paperwork and final decisions.

"Then maybe we have," she said. "There was a case. My ex tried to use the courts after the split. It didn’t go his way."

Debbie’s eyes narrowed in recognition, then eased.

Rechelle did not want the conversation to go any further. The direction of it was already too personal for a first meeting in a room full of women who had just been kissing the same man she arrived with.

She tipped her head toward him.

"He said he wanted to show you something."

That broke the hold of the moment.

All four of them turned on him at once.

"What is it?"

"You said you got something."

"Where?"

He only smiled.

"It’s a surprise. Outside."

They moved as a group. Even Rechelle stood and followed. She wanted to see their faces when they looked at what she had chosen for them. The hallway carried them out into the afternoon light again, back toward the BMW still parked near the garage.

He opened the trunk.

For a second the girls just stared.

Bags. Boxes. Clean packaging stacked carefully into the space. Then the rest of the picture landed. The car itself. Dark. Different. Not the one they were used to hearing from the gate.

Mia looked around once, then back at the BMW like it might change if she stared long enough.

"Hmm. Lucas."

Her voice was already suspicious.

"Where’s your car?"