I don’t want Celie to see my expression. But she gets up off her chair and envelops me in a hug. “She’s like twenty years younger than him or something. Anyway, it doesn’t mean anything. He’s just a penis, anyway. A sperm donor.”
“I don’t think of him that way.” I push Celie off of me. “He wasn’t just a sperm donor to me, so please don’t talk about him like that.”
Celie puts her hands up in surrender. “I worried you wouldn’t take it well. And I admit, the idea of Daddy with a new family is…”
She doesn’t finish her sentence, and I don’t want her to.
Before she can continue, Molly slides into a seat at our table.
She takes one look between us and turns to me. “A son, huh?”
“That’s what Celie says. We’re going to have a brother.”
It sounds foreign to say out loud.
Celie clears her throat and says she’s going to use the restroom.
Once she’s gone, Molly says, “He’s coming here this year, you know.”
“I know.” I roll my coaster back toward me. This will be the first time the Caves have come to Climax since my father became their coach.
“It will be a blip on the radar, right?” Molly says. “You’re so busy with dancing and your job…”
“Right.” I put on a smile. “Let’s just have fun tonight. I don’t want this news to ruin our evening out.”
* * *
Cameron
Two hours and as many beers later, I’m in a booth at the Climax Bar & Grille next to Dylan who’s wearing his baseball cap so low on his face even I wouldn’t recognize him.
“Dude, I think you’re safe,” I tell him. We’re in the backmost corner of the bar, which is dusky to begin with. Back here, no way anyone recognizes him.
He keeps the cap on but adjusts it to a normal level on his head. His dark eyes zero in on me.
“You’ve been acting weird for the past hour.”
“Have not,” I say immediately.
“Yeah, you have,” Colton says as he returns from the restroom and slides into the bench next to Dylan. “First, you went and hit on that waitress, but then when she came back to talk to you, you ignored her.”
“You did do that,” Brayden points out from his seat next to me.
“I didn’t. I wasn’t hitting on anyone,” I say.
I wasn’t. I was asking the waitress to send a round of drinks over to the front table, which happens to have three women sitting at it, one of whom is Savannah Virginia McMann.
Savannah hasn’t spotted me yet, but I noticed her the second she walked in. I’m assuming the two women with her are her sisters. She never said where they were going out, and I’ve never seen her here before. When she stepped through the front door, shaking off the snow from her adorable pink hat with a pom-pom on each side, I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.
And I’ve been fucking distracted ever since, a fact my cousins have clearly noticed.
“So,” Brayden says, “Colt has some news.”
Thank Christ. Someone else for us all to focus on.
I turn to Colton. “What’s up?”
Colton breaks into a grin. “Sky’s pregnant.”
