“And you still talk too much,” she whispered.
“Shut me up then.”
She did. Time stopped mattering. It could’ve been five minutes or fifty. All I knew was the couch, her warm, soft, weight in my lap, the taste of her, the way her body fit against mine like we hadn’t missed a day.
For a second, I let myself forget the last ten years.
Forget courts and custody and Christmas deals.
It was just us.
Then I heard it—the sound of a car outside. We both froze.
Three seconds later, Max’s head popped up from his dog bed. He barked once, sharp. The driveway sensor chimed low in the hallway.
“Shit,” she breathed.
I listened. Car doors. Serena’s laugh. Mr. Benton’s measured voice. A higher, excited voice I knew would be Aziza’s. Reality slammed back in. Kyleigh scrambled off my lap like I was on fire. Her sweater was twisted, hair wild, lips kiss-swollen. She looked wrecked by me. I loved that shit.
I grabbed a throw pillow and adjusted myself, smiling at her anxious fixing.
“This is not funny,” she hissed, smoothing her hair frantically.
“It’s a little funny,” I said. My voice came out rough.
“If my child walks in here and sees me climbing you like a tree?—”
“She gon’ think her mama finally has good taste again,” I said.
She smacked my arm. “Fix your face. You look… happy.”
“I am happy. I just got climbed like a tree.”
“Shut up,” she whispered, but her mouth curved.
We heard them outside the front door. Her eyes flew to mine, wide and vulnerable in a way I hadn’t seen since we were kids.
“Jay,” she said, low.
“I got you,” I soothed her.
I stood, grabbed our empty mugs, and took them toward the kitchen like I’d just been a polite guest helping clean up instead of a man trying not to pull her back into my lap.
The front door opened.
“Mama! They had a dinosaur exhibit with lights and?—”
Aziza’s voice floated in, bright and full.
I leaned against the counter for half a second, drew in a breath, and let a shift I’d never had to feel happen—the one from wanna be lover to father. I had to get myself together, put my game face on, with my dick still rock hard and my heart still pounding. People weren’t lying.
This parenting shit was hard.
If anybody had toldme a month ago that I’d voluntarily get in a truck to go buy Christmas decorations with Jabali Christopher and two nine-year-old girls, I’d have blocked their number. Aziza and he had plotted this mess yesterday, when I was still too dazed from his kisses to object. I was still stuck wondering how that happened, why that happened, and most irritatingly, when it might happen again. But for the moment, here I was, standing in my foyer, watching him walk in with another child at his side like it was the most regular thing in the world.
Aziza squealed when she saw her. “Zozo!”
“ZiZi!” the other little girl yelled back.
