“You mean Coach,” Josh suggested.
I shook my head, still watching my neighbor. “No, I meant Professor.”
Dallas must have heard us because I spotted him smirking and shaking his head.
Louie immediately asked, “Are you coming with us?”
Dallas touched Josh on the back of the shoulder as he approached us, one of his hands extended out toward me. He took the gift from under my arm as he answered, “If you guys don’t mind.”
Like I would ever mind.
“Come with us!” Louie agreed.
“I don’t care,” Josh added.
I swallowed the knot in my throat as Dallas leaned forward and kissed my cheek for one brief moment that would be etched into my memory forever and ever even as Josh made a gagging noise. “Of course you can.” I gave the keys a jiggle. “Want to drive?”
He looked me right in the eye as he took the keys. “Tell me how to get there, Peach.”
* * *
I’d been to a lot of weddings in my life—my parents used to drag me to every single one they ever went to when I was a kid—but even if I hadn’t known Ginny, I would have thought it was the most beautiful wedding I’d ever been to. There was a reason why she’d been so tight with money for so long. She’d splurged. A lot. But as I sat in the banquet hall following the ceremony, which had taken place in another section of the facility, I had a feeling she was going to have zero regrets about all the struggling she’d put herself through. Gin was beaming. Her happiness was like a light at the end of a dark tunnel.
It made my heart swell. I hadn’t known Ginny back when she’d been with her ex, but I’d heard why they split up. They’d both been young, and by the time they decided to go their own way, they were completely different people. No shit. You weren’t the same person you were at seventeen that you were at thirty-three.
I thought about Trip and Dallas’s dislike of her new husband—of why they felt the way that they felt—but all I could think to myself was that, if she could be so happy with someone who had “been around the block” a few times, what did it matter what someone had done before you? No one ever succeeded at anything on the first try.
“Saving your first dance for me?”
I blinked from the empty plate of food in front of me and gazed at the man standing beside my chair. I smiled at Trip. “You dance?”
“You bet your ass I do. Come on.” He flexed his fingers at me in an invitation. There was a slow country song playing through the speakers, following the couple’s first dance.
He didn’t have to tell me twice. I got up and followed him, setting one arm on his shoulder and letting him take my other hand in his. He grinned as he took a mini step away from me with a wink.
“I don’t feel like dying tonight,” he explained, like that made any sense.
“Who’s going to kill you?”
“Dal.” He peeked over his shoulder for a moment before glancing back at me with a smile that reminded me of a little boy who knew he was doing something bad. “I give him two minutes before he’s over here.”
“He’s with one of your relatives right now. They were asking him about Miss Pearl,” I explained.
I’d gone over to Dallas’s house two days before to give the old woman a haircut. She’d acted like normal, didn’t call me Miss Cruz once, and then all of a sudden, in the middle of trimming her hair, she’d announced, “I’ve thought about it, and I wouldn’t mind some tan great-grandchildren someday.”
What the hell did I respond with? “Okay?”
Tan grandchildren. Oh my God.
My white-haired neighbor turned in her chair just enough to see me with one of those rheumy eyes and then said, “He looks out the window to check on you every night. I tell him to call you and quit being a stalker, but he thinks I’m going to listen in on his conversations.” She huffed. “I have better things to do with my time.”
All I’d managed to do after that was just nod. Obviously, Miss Pearl was doing just fine after losing a lot of her things in the fire.
“I still give him two minutes.” Trip raised his eyebrows at me as he turned us, bringing my attention back to the present. “So you two finally, huh?”
“Finally?”
“Yeah, finally. It’s only been, what? Three months?”
“No.” I narrowed my eyes. “Really?”
“You sweet, sweet, blind child.” He chuckled. “I told him he was an idiot for waiting until his shit had been settled, but he ‘wanted to do it right’—”
“Go find your own girl to dance with,” came a voice from behind me.
I’d bet my life that Trip’s easy acceptance was a sign of how much he cared for his cousin and that was why he backed away so quickly. He still winked at me before telling the man behind me, “Just warmin’ yours up for you, brother.”
“I bet you were,” Dallas said. He came around me and slipped so fluidly in front of me, placing my hands where they needed to go, I didn’t react until his chest was an inch or two away from mine. Those brown-green-gold eyes hovered above my own. I didn’t even watch in what direction Trip had gone I was so sucked in to the man in front of me. “There’s my one and only.”
I blushed and pinched my lips together. How was it that I had no idea how to act around him anymore? It was dumb. “Your one and only,” I muttered. “There’re lots of pretty girls here to dance with too,” I said like a complete idiot, even though my stomach started hurting immediately afterward.
His eyebrow arched upward as his hand curled over my shoulder, touchy, touchy, touchy. “Are there?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s nice for everybody else,” he said, drawing me toward him.
The sigh that came out of me was long and probably showed how confused I felt.
“What’s that sigh for? They don’t do me any good.” That broad palm of his went to the small of my spine, the other led our hands to the corner of his chest and shoulder, settling there as he dipped his face closer to mine. His eyes were steady and even, staring right into my own. “I already have the one I want right here,” he said.
“Dallas,” I groaned, ducking my head. What was I doing?
“What?”
Our talk at the salon a couple of days ago hadn’t eased my worries much. Talk was talk. Anyone could say they were Batman, but not everyone could be Batman. “There’re a million other women in the world who would love to be with you—”
“You want me to go find them?” he asked with way too much humor in his voice.
I glanced up at him. “No, but I can’t do casual. I don’t think you get that.”
His mouth went to my ear. “What gave you the idea that’s what this would be? The last thing I feel for you is casual, Diana.”
I groaned, feeling a warm sensation fill my belly. “Look, I just… I’ve really been trying hard to be an adult, and an adult would want someone like you to be happy. I care about you so much, and I’m a mess, you know that.”
“I know, baby.” He pulled me in closer to him with the hand on my spine. “It’s one of my favorite things about you.”
Heaven help me. Heaven help me.
I groaned again, trying to put my thoughts together. “You have a thing for single parents, huh?”
The hand on my back lowered, going over the curve before sweeping back up, teasing. “I got a soft spot for single parents. It’s tough. But I got this thing—you might know what it is, it’s red and it’s in the center of your chest—and that has more than a soft spot for hot aunts who raise their nephews. You can’t even call it a spot, really.”
I choked and felt his chin rest on the top of my head. “How big is this… spot?”
“It’s big enough so where I’d do anything for an aunt like that,” he told me.
“Anything?”
“Anything,” he confirmed.
I gulped and let myself swallow up the feel of his arms and hands around and on me. “Huh.”
“You can’t g
o around giving something that big and important to just anybody.”
I glanced at him, watching his face. “You’re going to give it?”
Dallas only cuddled me closer to his chest so that I couldn’t look at his face. “I gave it to you a long time ago, Diana. In little pieces and then bigger pieces, and the next thing I knew, I didn’t have anything left in me, so I hope it’s enough.”
I drew back and glanced up at him, and I swallowed. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I do, baby. Trust me. I know exactly what I’m doing. You three feel like my family. It isn’t every day you look at your friend and two kids and know this is where you were supposed to be. Do you believe me?”
I didn’t even have to think about the answer. “Yeah, I do.” I shook my head at myself, trying to remind my brain that we trusted this person. That everything would be all right. “You’re never getting your big red thing back if I have anything to say about it. I want you to think about that. I want you to know what the hell you’re signing yourself up for, because nice Catholic girls who only go to church twice a year don’t believe in divorce.” I blinked. “You know, when the time comes.”
He smiled at me and I smiled back. Before I could take my next breath, Dallas dipped his head and pressed his mouth, closed and sweet, to mine. He pulled back and then pressed it again.
“God, you guys are gross,” came a voice I’d be able to distinguish in a crowd. It was Josh. “When can we go home?”
* * *
I was smiling and more than a little sleepy as we drove home hours later. Going against Josh’s wishes of bailing an hour into the reception, I sent him back to hang out with Dean and play, or do whatever it was eleven-year-olds did at weddings when there was a playground and an adult in charge of watching the kids. Luckily, they must have gotten into something interesting because it wasn’t until I went to check on the boys once every hour that I found them still alive and in one piece, sitting at a picnic table looking at videos on Dean’s phone.
Meanwhile inside, I’d laughed my butt off with friends and family of Trip and Dallas, who filled up the rest of the table I’d been sitting at, and danced one song after another with one of the two of them, and even once with Trip’s dad. All those clubs I had gone to in my early twenties had really paid off. Mostly though, I’d spent the night either beside Dallas or in front of him. I wasn’t going to complain even a little bit.
With Louie passed out in the backseat in his chair and Josh playing a game on the tablet his brother was obviously not using, it had been a good night. I was ready to get home, change, and kick off my shoes though.
“Tired?” Dallas whispered the question.
“Little bit,” I answered him. Shifting how I was sitting, I watched his profile in the darkness of the car, taking in that almost long nose, his full bottom lip, square jawline, and the notch of his Adam’s apple. I loved him and it wasn’t even a little bit. It was a lotta bit. “You?”
“I’m fine.”
Hesitating for one second, I reached across the center console to grab his right hand, the one he didn’t use to drive. I didn’t know what it was about doing that that made me feel like an insecure kid again. The nerves, the wonder. The I hope he likes me as much as I like him. But Dallas didn’t pause as he flipped his hand up and linked his long, cool fingers through mine, holding them tight.
I smiled at him and he smiled right back.
Before I knew it, he was turning the car into my driveway. I was too busy looking at him to notice the car parked directly across the street.
I was moving slower than usual as Dallas got out and opened the back passenger door, his hands going to unbuckle the straps of Louie’s seat, gathering him into his arms before I could tell him I’d carry him. He was halfway to the door, and I had just finished closing the door with my hip as Josh got out, too. We were rounding the back of the SUV with me ruffling his hair when it happened.
“Josh!”
I stopped walking so fast, I turned my ankle in my heels. I knew immediately that voice could only belong to one person.
The one person who Josh spotted before I did. Anita was crossing the street.
“It’s me,” she called out to the boy who was frozen in place at my side.
Without thinking, as I straightened up, not giving a single shit about an ankle I had for sure either twisted or sprained, I set my hand on his shoulder. And I panicked a little. I didn’t tell him anything in the time it took his biological mom to cross the street and end up four feet away from us on the driveway.
What was she doing here again?
“You’re so big,” she said before I snapped out of it and took a step forward to block her from seeing him, a sharp pain shooting up my foot.
“Anita, this isn’t the time or the place,” I told her as calmly as possible.
She didn’t even glance at me. Tenting her hands under her chin, the woman who was almost my age but looked so much older tried to peek around me. “You look just like your dad, baby boy. I can’t believe it.”
My hands fisted and I took another sidestep over, faintly hearing the sound of the front door closing. I hoped Dallas had taken Louie inside so he wouldn’t wake up and witness this. As well as Louie had adjusted to all of the changes in his life since he’d lost both his parents, I’d never fooled myself into thinking that one day it wouldn’t catch up to him. I just really didn’t want that day to be anytime soon.
“Anita, focus. You’re not supposed to be here. You can’t drop by like this,” I told her as nicely as possible, fighting the growl in my throat as a hand touched my back, a hand that could only belong to Josh.
“He’s my son,” she finally spoke to me, her gaze going to mine.
I opened my mouth to tell her that he was mine too, but Josh beat me to it.
“Leave me alone,” he whispered.
Anita’s head jerked back, her gaze going to the boy behind me. “Josh, I’m your mom.”
That was the worst thing she could have said to him, and I wasn’t surprised how he reacted.
“You’re not my mom!” he shouted all of a sudden.
Shit. With one hand going to the back of his neck, I started leading him toward the front door, careful to keep my body between him and the woman neither one of us wanted to see. At least I didn’t want to see her. Not like this.
“Josh!” she called out to this boy I wasn’t convinced we both loved equally.
I kept moving him forward, pointing my index finger at her as I stared her down. “Go. Go.”
“You can’t keep me from him!”
“I don’t want to see you!” Josh shouted again, suddenly turning around and moving aside so he could look at the woman who had given birth to him. “I never want to see you again! You’re not my mom today. You’re not my mom tomorrow. You’re never going to be my mom!”
“Josh—”
“No! You didn’t want me! You can’t change your mind!” he yelled at her, his chest puffing.
Fucking shit. I placed my hand on Josh’s shoulder and turned him around, quickly leading him up the pathway to our house just as Dallas came storming out of the front door, his eyes going from Josh, to me, and finally to Anita. It seemed to click. He remembered her. “Take him inside. I’ll deal with this,” he told me firmly as he walked by us.
The last thing I heard as the door closed behind us was his low voice spitting, “Do I need to—”
Josh shrugged my arm off almost instantly, and before I could stop him, he took off running toward his room. The door slammed to a close, and all I could do was stand there, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. Jesus Christ.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I let out a breath for a minute, kicked off my heels, and went straight for Josh’s room. Partially expecting the door to be locked, I was surprised when the knob turned. I didn’t ask if I could come in. I was going to whether he wanted me to or not. I found Mac on the floor by the bed, his ears pinned back and
his expression anxious and focused on Josh, who didn’t even glance in my direction as he plopped down on the carpet and reached for the controller to his game console. His fingers pressed hard into the buttons.
I swallowed. “J, do you want to talk about it?”
He was staring at the television screen, sure, and his fingers were moving across the controller of his game, but I could tell he wasn’t paying attention. I knew him too well to be able to ignore the anger and the hurt radiating off him. This kid was never the crying kind; he usually went straight into getting angry, and that was exactly what he was doing right then.
With that in mind, I wasn’t surprised when he snapped out a “No.”
I sighed and walked further into his room, taking a seat on the floor by the television, my dress forcing me to tuck my legs under me. “All right. Let me rephrase that: let’s talk about it.”
He didn’t look at me as he repeated himself. “No.”
“Joshua.” I moved my head to the side to block his view of the screen. I raised my eyebrows. “We’re going to talk about it. Now. Save your game. You’re not even going to play well right now anyway.”
Those little fingers hammered at the keys of his controller a moment before he sent it flying behind his head, the innocent remote hitting the wall before it crashed to the ground. His chest started expanding in and out, and he was breathing hard, his face turning red.
It was times like these I had no idea what the hell I was supposed to do with him. What was the right thing to say? How was I supposed to soothe him? I didn’t fool myself into thinking that it wasn’t these moments that would shape how he handled bad things for the rest of his life. I knew it was. I knew that however I taught him to deal with shit would be the route he would most likely take from now on. And throwing shit was not something I wanted him to continue with.
“I get that you’re pissed off, J, and I don’t blame you.” I couldn’t tell him I understood he was hurt; it would immediately put him on edge and defensive. He didn’t get hurt. “But throwing your shit around is not all right. You want to deal with your anger? Do something productive. Scream your anger into a pillow to get it out of your system, but don’t bottle your shit, don’t break things, and don’t take it out on someone else. If your remote is broken, I’m not buying you another one.”
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