PENELOPE POV
Winter Pack’s common room was already loud when we entered. And seeing that normality warmed my heart.
After that s**t-show, I needed to see happy families eating together, brothers bickering over french fries, and mothers fighting toddlers about broccoli.
Long tables had been pushed together near the hearth. People moved around with bowls, plates, mugs of tea, baskets of bread, and I would have recognized my grandmother’s stew anywhere. The smell hit me hard enough that my stomach gave another deeply humiliating growl.
Liam heard it.
Of course he did.
He took two trays before I could object.
“I can carry my own food.”
“I know.”
“And yet.”
“And yet,” he said, and started filling both trays with that delicacy first.
I opened my mouth, because I was perfectly able to
