Hallie puffs out her chest, showing off the dragon sticker. “He my fwend.”
“I hope you hold out for more than a couple stickers and candy bars by the time you’re old enough for men to buy you.”
Hallie’s nose wrinkles.
Ingrid coughs and shoves the bag of books at me. “Excuse me. I need to finish stocking the shelves. Goldie, can you still stop by and sign the rest of my stock before you leave?”
“You’re on my calendar for Tuesday.”
“See you next week, then. Happy birthday, Hallie. Enjoy. You only turn four once. I mean, twice, but once.”
“I turn fourall da time,” Hallie declares. She climbs off the stool and grabs my hand, then grabs Goldie’s too. “Horsey time!”
I meet Goldie’s eyes.
They’re so expressive.
She hasn’t opened her mouth, but she’s said so very, very much.
Silas will be pissed. That normally makes me happy, but I don’t know how I feel about it when his kid’s involved. Also, we are not kissing. I like your beard. We are not kissing. This is a bad idea. But if you’re going to insert yourself into my niece’s birthday date, I will absolutely without hesitation push you to the limit of what you can tolerate with children so that you don’t pull this again.
Despite every reason I should be as upset as she is over this turn of events, I grin.
This is gonna be fun.
Torture, but also fun.
20
Goldie
My brother is goingto kill me.
Not because Hallie now wants a dog.
Not because I bought her cotton candy at the carousel at the park or because I let her coat go unbuttoned in the chilly late afternoon.
Not because ofthe horses. The horses are carousel horses, and every year for her birthday, I take Hallie to ride the horses.
So even Hallie going home tonight talking about wanting a horse too won’t be a thing.
Plus, Silas would buy her a carousel horse—just the horse—if she asks.
He’s extra. See also, he had her birthday costume custom-made for today and if she has a growth spurt before her princesses and knights birthday party next month, he’ll have the costume adjusted or made again.
He probably won’t even be pissed that I had an accidental date to my Aunt-Goldie-and-Hallie-birthday-date.
Not comparatively, that is, even with how he feels about me dating at all.
Andcomparativelyis how pissed he’d be that I had a date versus how pissed he’ll be that Fletcher, his mortal enemy on his team, crashed his daughter’s early birthday celebration.
Herode the carouselwith us.
He could’ve stayed on the side. Slipped away. Let Hallie get distracted with the horses and the cotton candy and tea coming next, but instead, he rode the carousel with us, with Sweet Pea tucked into her sling at his chest, completely breaking my rule about pictures when Hallie demanded he take a selfie of all of us, which he informed us is called anussiein the UK.
“Oh, what a precious family,” an older woman gushes as we sit on a bench beside the carousel while Hallie munches on her blue cotton candy and tries to feed it to Sweet Pea.
Fletcher’s ears go pink while I smile at her. “Thank you. We’re having a few last minutes together before he has to report to prison for grand theft auto.”
