Laughing.
Chatting like she’d known them for years.
Ryland was on a blanket, kicking his little arms and legs, and Rynna was propped up on an arm, sitting protectively at his side.
Nikki, Lillith, and Hope had gathered around the little makeshift play area, lounging on chairs and sharing a bottle of wine.
Frankie Leigh and Evan were still racing around the yard, playing hide and seek, Milo basically giving them away each time, all too quick to sniff them out.
Broderick had to bail to take a conference call with his office in New York.
Rex tipped the neck of his beer bottle out toward the yard. “This is all so very domestic of you,” he said, broaching the subject I’d felt coming all afternoon.
He cut me a glance from the side, taking a long pull of his beer as he studied me.
“You about ready to talk about what’s going on? Because this is so far out of left field, I’m wondering who you are and what you’ve done with my friend.”
His brow lifted. “You know, the one who’s insisted since he finished medical school that he didn’t need anyone in his life other than his patients and us. A warm body without a face to keep him company on the nights he wants to get his dick wet right before he goes on his merry way.”
He gave a sharp shake of his head. “Then my wife shocks the shit out of me last night by telling me you’re coming over with some chick and her kid. That’s enough of a one-eighty to make any man’s head spin.”
Wasn’t that the truth.
I drummed my fingertips on my knee. “It’s complicated.”
Apparently, I had been hanging out with Hope too much.
Rex’s expression turned incredulous. “Think you’d better figure out exactly what that means, because there isn’t room for fucking around when there’s a kid involved.”
His words were hard, and there was no mistaking it was fueled by a threat.
He got it on a level many couldn’t.
“You really think I’d fuck around with her if I didn’t get that?” My tone was a little harsher than I’d intended.
But fuck.
His warning hit me in all the wrong places. In those places where my own terror was held. The worry that I might fail this kid.
“No. I didn’t think you would,” Rex said with a shake of his head. “Which is why I’m wondering what the hell is going on in that head of yours.”
Ollie rocked forward in his chair, leaned his elbows on his knees as he looked over me. “Last time I talked to you, you were still hung up on the past. Thinking you didn’t deserve the chance. That you couldn’t take it.”
His brows drew together. “That neither could she.”
My attention landed on Evan, who was in the middle of the yard. His arms were thrown up over his head and he was spinning in a circle as he let the sun rain down on his precious face.
My heart throbbed. Pulsing and pressing and pushing.
“They happened.”
A snort puffed from Rex’s nose. “Women. When we meet the one, they make us forget ourselves, don’t they?” he mused as he sipped his beer.
Ollie scoffed. “Uh . . . no. I can assuredly say I don’t know what that’s like, man. But this fucker sure seems to have caught the same plague that your sorry ass did.” He hooked his thumb my direction.
I smirked at him. “Hey, man, go ahead. Rub it in. Know you’re just jealous.”
“Fuck no,” he said with a laugh, not even realizing his attention immediately drifted to Nikki, who was cracking up in her chair, rocking forward as she clutched her stomach.
Her eyes flashed up to meet his like she felt the weight of his stare.
Just as fast, he jerked his attention back, the way he’d done for too many goddamned years.
Asshole didn’t know what was right under his nose.
Or more likely, he just did a damned good job of ignoring it.
Ollie scrubbed a tattooed hand over his face like he was breaking himself from the trance.
I didn’t think he knew how he’d gotten there in the first place.
“But seriously . . . are you ready to let it go? Give her up? Because you’ve been clinging to her memory for years. And that girl . . .”
He pointed at Hope, who’d taken Ryland in her arms.
She stared down at the tiny thing as if she were looking on beauty while at the same second it broke her heart.
Ollie’s features shifted, not even a remnant of a tease. “She doesn’t deserve to live in the shadow of Melody’s ghost, man. She doesn’t. And neither do you.”
Unease slithered beneath my skin. Melody’s face a sequence of flashes in my mind.
Stark, blinding lights. Compression after compression. That fucking flat line.
Smiles and laughter and grief.
Never thought I could love anyone again.