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 go 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 likemyfamily. 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?”
* * *
Iwas smilingand 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. TheI 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!”
