“Good morning, Angel.”
My lips lift at the smirk peeking past his beard.
“Good morning, Cam.”
“I’m confused…” Tahli’s voice reminds me that she’s here.
Jesus, Ringo has the power to make me feel like it’s just me and him in a room sometimes. It’s a dangerous thing.
“What are you confused about?” I ask my little sister as she glances between me and Ringo.
“Is your name Ringo or Cam?”
Ringo smirks, stepping closer and bending down to Tahli’s height, bracing his hands on his knees.
“My real name is Cameron Musgrove, but most people call me Ringo.”
“Why?”
“Well…” he sighs, his whisky eyes flicking to me briefly before returning to my little sister and giving her a one-shouldered shrug. “I used to be in a band back in high school. I was the drummer, and I also wrote some songs and sang lead vocals sometimes. Just like Ringo Starr from the Beatles. So, my mates started calling me Ringo.”
“The Beatles?” Tahli screws up her face. “Aren’t they all dead? Are youthatold?”
A laugh bubbles from my lips while Ringo’s sisters burst out laughing, along with his mum. Meanwhile, Ringo shoots me a glare, shaking his head.
“Actually, kid. A couple of them are still alive.” He shoots her a wink. “But I guess to you they are old. I’m not that old though.”
When Tahli’s eyes narrow, I know her sass is about to come out.
“Old enough. I bet you were a teenager when Abbey was a baby.”
I stiffen. “Tahli! Don’t be rude!”
“What? It’s true, isn’t it? I wasn’t trying to be rude.”
Ringo chuckles. “She’s not wrong.” He straightens and ruffles her hair. “When Abbey was born, I would have been around fifteen years old.”
I inwardly cringe.
That sounds so bad, right?
“Does that make you her sugar daddy?”
“Tahli!” I screech in mortification, slapping my hand over her mouth so she can’t say anything else as Ringo’s sisters laugh again, but the man himself just shrugs.
“If that’s the easiest way for you to wrap your head around me and your sister, then sure.” Ringo smirks, shooting me a wink this time. “I’m her sugar daddy.”
I gasp, and Tahli shoves my hand away from her face.
“Next time you see my mum, can you tell her that and then take a photo of her face for me? I wanna see how crazy that makes her.”
“Oh my God, Tahli.” I giggle, gripping my little sister’s shoulders and steering her to the couch. “What has gotten into you? And how do you even know what a sugar daddy is?”
“Sally’s big sister is eighteen, and she has this app where she has three sugar daddy boyfriends who send her money and gifts. Sally was telling us at school that her sister only has to talk to them over video call for thirty minutes a week. She doesn’t know what they talk aboutbecause her sister locks her bedroom door so Sally can’t go in, but a few weeks ago she listened at the door, and she thinks one of them must have sent her a lollipop because she heard a man tell her to suck it and—”
“Okay, that’s enough!” I slap my hand over her mouth again as the room fills with hysterical laughter.
Tahli shoves me off her again, glaring at me, and I sigh.
