Jessica Forever After

Chapter 5

Everyone started to leave and Cam pulled me aside. "We're going to take off. This was so much fun." He smiled before tucking a piece of hair back behind my ear.

"It was, wasn't it? I think I'll be sure to make the suggestion that we should do this once every few months. Whoever wants to be host group can choose the games that we play or it could be a movie night." I said.

"Other brilliance. I know you have it in you to pull it off." He chuckled. "Listen, the guys are going to say good night but don't say anything about next weekend. I'm pulling rank as family lead and having a meeting once we get home and I'll tell them about it."

"No problem." I nodded slightly. "I just want to talk though this week. Can you do a group chat that includes me?"

"Absolutely, Mon Ami. But maybe you should make an impassioned plea to Josh while you're at it. He can probably unscramble everyone from whatever he did after you had a break-up." He brushed a kiss across my temple and gave me a quick squeeze before heading off to let the guys know it was time to head out.

I didn't have long to wait as the guys approached me one at a time while I busied myself putting games away, having already taken care of any leftover food. The hugs were genuine, the smiles were real and they each apologized again for any chill they'd been basically projecting towards me earlier. My responses were real and genuine as I hugged each of them and accepted a kiss on the cheek or forehead, whichever way they were leaning. I tugged Josh back when he would have turned to leave. "I'm sure you thought you were protecting everyone after they had a relationship end and it probably served us all fairly well as far as having no distractions over the past five years."

He eyed me for a long moment before blinking. "Right...?"

"But it's time. I'm sure that I'm not in any danger that had you breaking up with me early and I need to be able to speak to any of you when I want to so do your little magical finger thing, my dear hot stalker cop and put all of us back to rights so that we can talk, okay?" I stared at him.

Josh stared at me for a really long time until Cam hollered at him that it was time to leave. He exhaled slowly. "You're right." He finally said. "I'll take care of it by tomorrow."

I beamed at him. "Thank you."

He pulled me into another hug. "Anything for you, hot baker chick." He kissed the top of my head before reluctantly letting me go.

"I'll talk to you later then. Don't be shy about coming to the bakery this week. I know your boys at work know where to find me." I chided him before grinning.

"As long as I don't have any long, drawn-out cases this week, I'll make sure I stop by." He promised before heading to follow the rest of the guys out the door.

I followed him towards the door, flipping the lock and waving as I watched their cars pull out of the parking lot. It was only Sang, Luke and I left anyway since the others had helped to do a lot of clean up before making their escape to "put the baby to bed".

Not sure why they thought I'd believe that 8 of them needed to put an infant to bed but whatever.

I talked over plans with Sang for my baby snuggle time in the morning while Luke made sure everything was ready for the morning shift to be able to open before we headed home.

~A~

"She talk to you?"

Josh glanced up at Cam. "Yeah, she did. I'll fix everything by morning."

Cam smiled. "Good. She wants a group chat with all of us."

"She mentioned she wanted to talk this week." Josh nodded slightly. "Sounds like we're on the way to get things back on track?"