My parents are watching us interact, and I’m pretty sure my face is turning bright red.
“So, you’ve met Penny… our daughter,” my dad chimes in. I catch the slight narrowing of his eyes toward Declan, but hepulls himself together and softens his expression before Declan can see it.
I could go climb into a hole right now and never come out.
“Yes, sir. Just once.”
Technically, he’s not lying. But I’m sure Lucas’s bullshit meter is going a million miles a minute behind me. I have no doubt he’s going to tell Jordan about this later, and I’ll have some explaining to do after she hears of this little interaction.
“I still have some setting up to do. I should get going.” Declan throws a thumb over his shoulder. “It was nice to meet you all.”
Wren takes the moment to step up and hand Declan the large coffee. “This is for you,” she says softly. The girl is so sweet, it’s ridiculous.
Declan eyes the coffee for half a second before taking it from her, surprise written all over his face. “Thank you. You didn’t have to do that.”
She nods her head and steps back.
“How much do I owe you?” He looks at me as he asks the question.
“Oh no. This one is on us,” my mom says with a smile on her face.
“That’s really generous of you. Here…” He pulls out his wallet from his back pocket with his free hand and takes out a ten-dollar bill. “This is for…” He looks toward Wren.
She tells him her name, and he walks toward her and hands her the ten-dollar bill. “Thank you,” he says and then smiles at her.
Fucking hell.
He has dimples. I forgot he has dimples. Actually. No, I didn’t. When he laughed at Autumn the other week, I saw the dimples, but was too busy looking at his tattoos to give them a second look.
Now that he’s here, standing in front of my family and friends, his smile is like looking straight into the sun. It makes him even hotter than he already is.
“It was nice meeting you all. Thank you, again,” he says and makes eye contact with me one more time before heading toward the door.
Just as he opens it, he turns back around. “The party starts at five, there’s going to be food and drinks. You’re all welcome to come over.”
“Can we go, mommy?” Autumn bounces on her feet as she asks the question.
I hesitate. I know he’s just trying to be nice to us all, and I feel like we would be intruding if we went. “We’ll see, baby girl. We still have to celebrate Auntie Jay.” That’s as close to an answer as I can give her at the moment.
I look up at Declan, and he’s staring at me once again. When I feel like the air has been sucked out of the room, he gives me a small smile and then nods to my mom and dad, who tell him they’ll stop by.
“Bye, Dec!” Autumn says as he heads out the door. He turns, and his lips tilt up on one side as he gives her a little wave before finally leaving.
I feel like I can breathe now that he’s left the coffee shop, and everyone has gone back to chatting amongst themselves except for my mom and dad.
“You never told us you met your new neighbor,” my mom accuses me. “Autumn kept talking about a Dec, but we thought he was a kid at school because she called him her friend.”
I rub the bridge of my nose and sigh. “Yeah. We met him a few weeks back. We haven’t seen him since, though.” I shrug my shoulders. “It’s not a big deal.”
She leans into whisper in my ear. “It is when he looks at my daughter like she’s his next snack.”
“What the hell, mom. No, he didn’t,” I whisper back to her.
She smirks at me and pats my shoulder. “Keep telling yourself that.”
Luckily, Jordan walks through the door, cutting off our conversation.
“Surprise!” everyone yells. And for the next hour, we celebrate Jordan’s last day.
