“He is notold,” Willow defends, laughing. I roll my eyes again. Up until a couple months ago, she had hated the man with a passion. Now, they’re inseparable and sickeningly cute together after a St. Patrick’s Day hook-up that turned into more. “He’s younger than Hot Neighbor if you think he’s close to forty.”
“Is that what we’re calling him now? He’s graduated from Hottie Dad to Hot Neighbor?” I laugh, shaking my head.
“Did you catch his name?” Willow asks, raising an eyebrow.
“Well,no—”
“No, she was too busy groping the guy,” Liv giggles, and I glare over at her from behind my glass. “You know, Lou, you really should take him out to dinner—I mean at thevery leastget the guy’s name—beforeyou try to feel up his junk.”
“I hate you both so much,” I groan, tilting my head back so that it thumps against the wood slats of the chair behind me, but I can’t help but grin. “It was truly impressive.”
Liv groans and flops back into her seat. “God, I miss sex. Wils is the only one of us getting regular dick at this point. Can you just flirt with him and report back? I need to live vicariously through you since Willow won’t share details—”
Willow blushes and chokes on her wine. She’d lost her virginity to Luck during their St. Paddy’s hook up and has not been willing to share any information.
Rude, if you ask me.
“I am not telling you about mine and Reeve’s sex life—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Liv grumbles, but she winks over at us both. “Be that way.”
“Are you still on a boy hiatus?” Willow asks me, and I nod.
I’ve had a string of bad luck lately. Like, really,reallybad luck. And after catching feelings too quickly again just to be ghosted a week lateragain, I’ve sworn off boys.
Again.
Indefinitely, this time. And I’m sticking to it.
Hot Neighbor isn’t a boy, I tell myself though, trying and failing to stifle another grin. God, he is far from aboy. He’s all man. Sexy, mature, beefcakeman.
Maybe…
Ugh. Nope. Don’t even go there. Because at the end of the day, regardless of age, guys are all the same. And they all leave, eventually.
Four
Zach
Iswear, Chloe’s face is going to leave a permanent imprint on the window with how hard she’s got it smashed up against the glass. Peering out into the front yard, she’s watching for our new neighbor to make an appearance.
I’d like to think I’m a little more nonchalant, and I praise myself for not also having my face pressed against the window in the hopes of seeing Princess before she shows up out of the blue at our door.
But, admittedly, I’ve checked an unhealthy number of times.
“You left the note, right, Dad?” Chloe asks for at least the twentieth time, the words coming out slightly muffled fromwhere her cheek is still pressed to the pane. “Maybe it got lost. Or maybe she didn’t see it—”
“Yes, I left the note, you watched me do it, Chlo,” I assure on a sigh, just like I have the last twenty times. “It’s still early. Not everyone wakes up at the ass-crack of dawn.”
Chloe whips her head around from the window to glare at me. “Daddy, no swearing.”
I sigh again and shake my head. One of Britt’s many complaints about me always was my mouth and the amount of curse words that come out of it. I’ve managed to dial it back around the girls, but old habits die hard. Fucking shoot me.
Chloe’s cheek once again in place against the glass, I roll my eyes. Bailey has a mess of crayons and markers strewn across the living room floor where she’s on her belly, coloring in a giant coloring book. Abigail is in her bedroom upstairs in the loft—one of the two bedrooms upstairs—music playing from the Bluetooth speaker I’d gotten her for Christmas, being antisocial as usual.
Trying to get her to come out of her shell and process some of her grief through the separation and divorce has been… difficult, to say the least. I just feel so goddamn helpless. I’mDad; fixer of all things, kisser of skinned knees and stopper of tears… but not this time. I haven’t been able to help my eldest daughter through this and I fuckinghate it.
Abi saw more of Britt’s character slipping toward the end than Bailey or Chloe had, and as much as I tried like hell to shield my girls from it, there was just no stopping it. And as the oldest, Abi just… saw more. But it also meant that Britt tried to poison Abi against me more than the other two, playing us off each other. That more than anything makes me hot with rage; the way my ex had tried to manipulate her own children. Parents don’t fucking do that to their kids.
