“Fucking mouth!” Lachlan yells. Seriously, where the hell do all these people come from?

Lane kneels in front of him. “Don’t repeat what people say,” she says.

“Don’t repeat what people say.” He giggles.

“Cheeky boy.” She ruffles his hair. “Can you go up to your room and build me a skyscraper with your Legos?”

“Yes, ma’am!” And he’s off, and Logan’s up, and Laney’s checking on the cookies, and I say, “You’re going to be a great mom someday.”

She smiles. “Well, I have your mom to thank for that.”

It hurts my heart to know that she didn’t have that, that the little time she spent with my mom is all she has for guidance. “Hey, did your mom contact you on your birthday?”

She laughs once, bitter. “Did you expect her to?”

I shrug. “I was hoping.”

Her head tilts to the side and she watches me a moment, then she takes the chair next to mine. “We’re basically strangers now, and I think it’s been like that ever since I left but I didn’t want to admit it. Sometimes I think about her, you know? And I wonder if she does the same with me. I get this romantic notion in my head that one day she’ll appear out of nowhere and realize she misses me. It’s so pathetic.”

“It’s not,” I say quickly, settling my hand on her knee. “She’s still around, so it’s always a possibility. With my mom, it was like… one night I fell asleep, and the next morning she was gone.”

“I’m sorry, Luke,” she says. And I know she is.

“I have this fear,” I tell her, and I don’t know if I should, but I do. “That one day, I’m going to wake up and you won’t be here. You’ll be gone, just like she was. And I know it sounds stupid but losing her… you saw what that did to me. You were there. And if anything ever happened to my brothers or to you…”

“Stop,” she whispers, holding my head in her hands. “Nothing’s going to happen.”

I tilt my head, kiss her palm. “You know how I feel about you, right?”

“I know.” She smiles. “Me too.”

Once everyone’s down for the night, I call Dad from my old bedroom. I catch him up on what’s been going on, assure him that everything’s okay. He asks about the bake sale, and I tell him Lane took care of it.

“Is she staying at the house while I’m gone?” he asks.

“No. I know the rules.”

He chuckles. “I figured you’d know that the rules don’t apply to Lane.”

“What do you mean?”

“The boys see her as a constant around the house. If it’s going to help to have her around she can stay with you.”

“But—”

“Only if you want her to.”

“It would help so much.”

“I trust you, Luke, and I trust her. Just don’t give me a reason to regret that.”

“Okay.”

“And if Logan has something to say—if he thinks my decision is setting some sort of precedent, just get him to pee in a cup every hour. My orders.”

I laugh. “Okay.”

“I love you, son, and thank you.”

“Love you, too, Dad.”

The words are so simple, so rehearsed, and yet I can’t even say it to the girl who holds my heart.

I text Lane, tell her the news.

She sends me back a ton of emojis insinuating hand jobs and blowjobs and wild monkey sex. I write back: With my brothers in the house?

She replies: Gross. But cuggles?

All damn night, baby!

I’d love to say that cuggling Laney is amazing, but I wouldn’t fucking know because some seven-year-old germ keeps crawling into bed with us at night and my girlfriend keeps letting him. Five nights she’s spent with us, and all five nights there have been three in the bed and the little one said, “I’m in the middle!” But really, I shouldn’t complain because having her around helps a lot. I don’t think the house has ever been this clean and organized, and we’re eating more than just pizza and take out, and the twins ask her if she can move in permanently. Brian and Misty have checked in twice, probably hoping we haven’t killed her or scarred her for life, but I wasn’t kidding when I told her she’d be a good mother. The one problem would be getting her up in the mornings. The only thing that works now is a reach-over-Lachy vicious boob grab and even then, it still takes her three coffees to function as a human.

Now, we’re sitting on the dock, alone, for some much-deserved peace and quiet. I’m lying on my back and she’s resting on her elbow, leaning over me. She strokes my jaw, pouts down at me, waits for my anger to fade. That kid Evan from her work has been texting her, asking what’s up. Last night, I went to pick her up and he was in my booth with her.

“You’re being ridiculous, Luke!”

“Just tell me how far you guys went and I’ll stop,” I grumble, arms crossed.

Smiling, she says, “Trying not to laugh when you’re like this is like trying to keep it together when a toddler yells, ‘Fuck’ in the middle of a busy store.”

Next to us, our textbooks sit, open but forgotten. “It’s not funny, Lane.” I gently push her hand away. “You’re so secretive about it all. I don’t like Secretive Laney!”

After a sigh, she settles her head on my shoulder. “We didn’t even kiss, and just so you know, I hadn’t done anything but kiss with any other guy before you.”

“Not even a handy?”

“Oh my God.” She giggles. “No.”

“Dad’s coming home tonight, so maybe I can have one of those,” I try to joke.

She sits up again, looks down at me. “Not if you keep talking about guys touching me.”

“I didn’t say anything about guys touching you. I said you touching them! Did he touch you? I’ll kill ’em dead, babe.”

“Luke, stop.”

“Did they? Just a little tit tap?”

“Enough!”

I almost ask her about how far she went with Cooper, but I already know the answer and it’s making me want to jump in the lake and drown myself.

“Are you hungry?” she asks. “You always get cranky when you’re hungry.”

I cross my arms again. “A little,” I admit, then tug on her shirt for her to lie down with me again. She’s closer now, her arm and leg over me, her fingers tapping on my chest. I shift her so she’s on top of me, my legs spread, hers between them.

She says, her forearms on my chest and her fingertips stroking my jaw, “Do you know how many times I dreamed about this?”

“About what?”

“Laying here with you. This close. Having you touch me the way you are, being able to look at you and not fear getting caught.” She dips her head, kisses me once. “Being able to kiss you.”

“Same,” I admit. “Sometimes I’d see Cam and Luce out here and imagine it was us.”

Her lips twitch, curve up at the corners. “Really?”

I nod. “Really.” Then I look around, make sure we’re alone. “You want to fool around a little?”