Iwas in hell. Barbie pink, sickly sweet, candy-coated hell.
Half a dozen first graders hyped up on sugar tore through Brooks’s backyard like monsters, each one smeared with more frosting than they had managed to keep on their cakes.
The party had started out well enough. The tent we had rented, a gleaming white beast with bunting strung along the edges, looked like aBake Offfever dream come to life. Three folding tables had been lined with mixing bowls, piping bags, and sprinkles of every shape, size, and color. And at the center of it all was a slightly saggy banner—thanks to Pink’s questionable knot-tying skills—that read “Carolina’s Star Baker Birthday.”
Everything had gone according to plan. That was until the great frosting apocalypse had broken out. One second, we’d been decorating cupcakes, and the next, a buttercream war had broken out near the drink station.
After that, it had been every star baker for themselves.
Piping bags had turned into projectile weapons, sprinkles had been scattered across the grass in pastel swirls, and from my vantage point, there were at least two kiddos belly-sliding across the lawn to dodge buttercream bombs, leaving neon-green smears in their wake.
Talk about a showstopper.
And it wasn’t just the kids; the Roasters had gotten in on the action, too.
Matty had a streak of neon-blue icing across his cheek like war paint, courtesy of a sneak attack from some kid from Carolina’s gymnastics class. Bennett was crouched over a table, painstakingly rolling out fondant flowers with a six-year-old like it was the most serious thing he’d ever done. Tucker was doing his best to “referee” the war, booming out rules that nobody listened to. And Soren, of all people, was seated in a folding chair the size of a booster seat, solemnly judging a plate of cookies presented by three kids who had declared themselves a baking team.
Nessa had taken up perch in one the lawn chairs off to the side, sipping a vodka soda like she was above the chaos, only to shriek when Pink nailed her in the shoulder with a dollop of neon-blue buttercream. Her revenge was swift and merciless, a piping bag blast that left his beard stained like he’d lost a fight with a Smurf.
“Chaos,” Clarke muttered from beside me, filming the whole circus for posterity. “Pure chaos.”
“You can say that again.”
“And to think, you’ve got another one of those monsters cooking up in your coochie.”
Maybe I should have been mortified. Brooks and I had worked so hard on this party, down to the matching aprons and tablecloths. Instead, my cheeks ached from smiling. That was the moment it hit me, somewhere between the shrieking and the frosting-splattered chairs. This wasn’t chaos at all; it was family.Messy, loud, ridiculous family, the kind that found its rhythm somewhere in the sugar rush and laughter.
And they were all mine.
Yours, too, baby girl.
I rubbed my hand over my belly, calming the flutters coming from inside.
Every kick reminded me I wasn’t alone—that I would never be alone ever again—and that she was here, with me, steady and sure in a way that anchored me when the world spun too fast. No matter how loud it got outside, she gave me quiet on the inside, a reminder to breathe.
She must get that from her daddy. And speaking of daddies . . .
My gaze found Brooks on the opposite side of the tent.
And he wasn’t wielding frosting like a weapon. No, he was surrounded by a gaggle of kids—Carolina and two others hanging off his shoulders like he was a human jungle gym. His laugh carried over the chaos, deep and warm, the kind of sound that vibrated low in my chest.
My thighs pressed together almost on instinct.
Fuck, I wanted him. Bad.
And I wasn’t talking about some cute make-out session behind the coffee roastery or a goodnight kiss after one of our dates. No, I wanted to drag him inside, drop to my knees, and lick every ounce of royal icing off his royal cock.
Then again, that might permanently scar a few of the kids, and that was not a conversation I wanted to have with any of their parents. Alas, the royal cock sucking would have to wait.
We hadn’t had sex in weeks—not since my stupid suggestion to slow things down, which I had regretted every day since—but we had slept together. Nearly every night the Roasters were in town, and even a few away series, too. What a waste of a hotel room. To think, we could have been smashing all of those headboards—
Don’t go there.
This was Carolina’s day. The last thing I needed was to spontaneously combust from horniness in the middle of a first-grade birthday party.
It was getting obscene, the way I couldn’t stop thinking about him, staring at him. Brooks had always been handsome—annoyingly so, in fact—but there was something about him here, surrounded by frosting-streaked kids, that just undid me.
The way he crouched down until his eyes were level with theirs, patient and kind. The way he didn’t flinch when Carolina smeared a cupcake across her hand before giving him her version of the Paul Hollywood handshake. The way his laugh rumbled, warm and genuine, like this—chaos, sugar, and squealing children—was exactly where he belonged.
