“Maybe?” I run my finger around the rim of my glass.

  “Something to consider, isn’t it? That way you could do what you love and have what you want, too.”

  It sounds so simple, but I know it’s not.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Birds and the Bees

  Dax

  The week following the alumni conference is busy, and Kailyn and I don’t have much of an opportunity for alone time. I pick her up for dinner one night—she’s practically on the way home—but Emme monopolizes her for the most part. On the upside, picking her up means I also get to drive Kailyn home. We have frantic, intense sex in the middle of her front entryway, Kailyn pressed up against the wall, both of us mostly dressed.

  It isn’t until we’re both sated and sweaty that I notice the hallway is lined with family photos chronicling her life with her mom and dad from childhood to college kid. She’s incredibly sentimental. And her cats are clearly very reliant on her based on the way they rub themselves all over her ankles as I kiss her goodbye.

  Tonight, Kailyn’s taking Emme out for girl time. Apparently, going to a dance means Emme needs her nails done and stuff. It gives me the opportunity to spend some time with my friends, which I admittedly haven’t done much of lately, too caught up in my sister and Kailyn.

  I follow Felix’s Porsche to a bar close to the office and we settle in, waiting for the rest of the guys to arrive. “So you and Fangirl, huh?”

  “Don’t call her that.”

  He gives me an arched brow. “She’s out with Emme tonight?”

  “They’re getting their nails done, I think. Kailyn said it was girl stuff and I wasn’t invited, which is fine by me.” I relax in my chair. It’s nice to be able to hang out after work and not worry about picking someone up for one lesson or another, or about making dinner that a thirteen-year-old won’t turn her nose up at. I’ve mastered spaghetti and grilled cheese, and that’s about it so far.

  “So what exactly is going on there? She’s a little stiff, yeah?”

  I flip him the bird. “She’s not stiff. You were a dick to her in school and she has a good memory. She also gets what I’m going through and she’s good with Emme.”

  He frowns. “So that’s what this is about? You two are friends and she’s, what, like a stand-in mom?”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Then what’s it like? You were together the entire alumni weekend. You gotta be banging her, right? She not really your usual type.”

  “I don’t have a usual type.” I avoid the other question. Besides, I’m not banging Kailyn. I like Kailyn. Actually, I more than like her.

  “If you say so.”

  A tall, leggy blonde with wide eyes and a smile to match sashays over, holding a pair of shots. “I’m sooooo sorry, but you’re Daxton Hughes, right?”

  I bite back a sigh and plaster a smile on my face. It’s an automatic response, one I learned from acting and photo ops. The last thing I want is for someone to catch me mid–eye roll with a fan. I just want to have a conversation with my friend and not be hounded. I’ve gotten a lot more attention than usual since my parents passed. I thought I was over that, but the entire alumni conference showed me very clearly that’s not the case. Thank God Kailyn was there to make it easier.

  “That would be me.”

  She screeches and does a little excited dance. “I knew it! I brought you a shot! Can I get a selfie with you? My friends aren’t going to believe I met you if I don’t.”

  “Yeah, sure, we can take a picture.” Hopefully she’ll go away after that.

  I shift to the edge of the booth so she doesn’t get any ideas about climbing in with me. She takes about five thousand selfies in the span of thirty seconds, all of them complete with that duck lip thing girls do. Once she’s done and decided she has at least fifty photos she likes, she hugs me, and I’m pretty sure she sniffs me. “Thank you!” She steps back and flails a little. “Oh! Let’s do the shots!”

  “Thanks, that’s really nice of you, but I have to drive later.” The last thing I want is to be roofied by a crazy fangirl. I smile, thinking about Kailyn’s reaction when I tell her about this.

  “You’ll be fine after one shot.” She gives me an exaggerated pout.

  “My buddy here likes shots.” I nod to Felix.

  “Oh, hi!” She extends a hand. “Are you an actor, too? I don’t recognize you from TV.”

  He shoots a look my way before he takes it. “I’m a lawyer.”

  She makes a face. “Oh. Well, wanna do a shot with me anyway?”

  Thankfully the rest of the guys show up and displace my new friend. I slide over, making room for them in the booth and putting distance between me and the fangirl. She disappears eventually and we talk sports and eat wings while we watch the game on the big screen behind the bar.

  It’s loud, and the game isn’t particularly exciting, so I check my phone. I have social media alerts, and new messages from both Kailyn and Emme. I check the messages first to make sure everything is okay. They’ve sent pictures of their painted toes and fingernails. Emme’s are dark sparkly purple with little jewels or something stuck to the tip. I hope like hell she doesn’t think this is going to become a regular thing.

  Kailyn has a French manicure.

  I send her a private message meant for her eyes only.

  Dax: You know what those pretty fingers would look great wrapped around?

  She responds with an eggplant emoji.

  Dax: I was going to say a glass of wine, but that works, too.

  Kailyn: Lies ;) Hope you’re having fun.

  More alerts come through for my social media so I check that, too, annoyed the fangirl has already posted the selfies she took on every single social media outlet she seems to have an account for, and of course I’m tagged in all of them. I untag myself where I can. It’s not like this hasn’t happened a million times before; it’s just been a few years since it’s been an issue.

  I get home to find Kailyn and Emme sitting on the couch, heads nearly touching as they peer at my sister’s phone. There’s a mostly eaten bowl of Sour Patch Kids on the table, a treat I’ve started stocking up on since both Kailyn and Emme love them. “What’s going on over there?”

  “Nothing!” Emme shoves her phone in her pocket and giggles, giving Kailyn a look I can’t decipher.

  “We were just talking about the dance.” Kailyn’s smile tells me there’s more to the conversation, but I’m not going to hear about it.

  Emme whispers something to Kailyn and she raises her brow. “You’ll have to ask him.”

  Emme gives her puppy dog eyes, the kind that make me fold all the damn time, but when Kailyn doesn’t relent, Emme sighs and crosses her legs, knees bouncing as she looks to me. “So Ainsley Baker is having a sleepover after the dance.”

  “Okay.” I wait for the rest.

  “And I’ve been invited.”

  “Is Ainsley a girl?” It’s a fairly androgynous name.

  “Oh my gosh!” Emme flings her hands in the air and gives Kailyn her seriously? face.

  “It’s a legitimate question, Emme. It’s both a girl and a boy name.”

  “I wouldn’t ask to sleep over at a boy’s house! Yes. Ainsley is a girl.”

  “How many friends will be at this sleepover?”

  “Um, I think there are three of us, plus Ainsley.”

  “Her parents will be there?”

  Emme nods fervently and glances at Kailyn.

  “Why don’t you give Dax her mom’s number so he can call and get the details?”

  “Oh yeah! I have that. Hold on.” Emme pulls out her phone, and a few seconds later mine pings. “So can I go? Marnie is going and her parents already said yes.”

  I trust it’s safe if Marnie’s parents have already said yes, but I still want to make sure. “Let me call and get the details. I think as long as it’s supervised and there are no older brothers, we should be fine.”

  “Ainsley is an only child.”

  “I still want to call.”

  “Can you do that now?”

  “It’s almost ten. I’ll call tomorrow.”

  “In the morning? Her mom works from home.”

  “In the morning.”

  “Okay.” She looks between me and Kailyn. “Well, I’m tired and I have to be up early, so I’m going to bed. Thanks for taking me out tonight, Kailyn, I had a great time!” She gives her a hug and then flits upstairs.

  “She had fun?” I stay where I am until her door closes. It’s a little less slam these days.

  “We both did. You didn’t have to pick up the tab for that, you know. I offered to take her. I was more than happy to pay for the nails and dinner.”

  “Taking care of my girls is the least I can do.” I tip my chin up. “Let me see those pretty nails of yours.”

  She lifts her hands and vogues them in front of her face, smiling. She’s wearing a pair of royal-blue skinny jeans and a very worn It’s My Life T-shirt. Based on the way it fits, I’d say she’s probably had it since high school and wearing it tonight was purposeful.

  She looks gorgeous, and I haven’t been inside her for more than five minutes in almost a week, which feels closer to forever. I stand in front of her and straddle her knees, leaning down so I can steal a kiss. It starts out chaste, but I’ve been thinking about her hand wrapped around my cock since she sent that eggplant emoji, so it escalates quickly.

  “Dax,” she mumbles around my tongue and pushes on my chest.

  I back off a little. “Wanna come up to my room for a while?”

  She glances at the stairs. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”

  “She said she’s going to bed.”

  Kailyn drags her nails down the back of my neck. “I think she suspects there’s more going on here. We have to be careful. I don’t want to set anyone up to get hurt here.”

  “I just want to get my hands on you.”

  She smirks. “I think it has more to do with getting my hands on you.”

  “That, too.”

  Emme’s door closes again and I take a few steps back, bumping into the coffee table. I rearrange my hard-on so it’s not obvious and make sure my shirt is covering the problem before I turn around. Emme appears at the top of the stairs. Her expectant grin falls a little.

  “What’s up? You need something?”

  “Oh. Uh, I forgot to give you my phone!”

  She rushes down, holding it out. “I already put it on Do Not Disturb so it won’t beep.”

  “Thanks, kiddo.”

  “’Kay, night!” And up the stairs she goes again.

  It’s something she has to do every night, pass over her phone until the morning. Otherwise I’m sure there would be text messages coming at all hours. Usually I have to go up and knock to get it from her. I sigh at Kailyn’s I told you so expression.

  “When am I going to get some alone time with you?” I sound whiny. I’m hard and I have some fantasies in my head that I’d like fulfilled courtesy of Kailyn.

  “This weekend, apparently, as long as you feel comfortable with Emme having a sleepover.”

  “That’s days away.”

  Kailyn licks her lips, and the hint of a smile appears. “Didn’t you say you had all sorts of memorabilia in the basement?”

  For half a second I don’t understand what the hell It’s My Life memorabilia has to do with my hard-on. It just goes to show how single minded I am at the moment.

  She stands up and does this little excited jumpy thing. It’s fucking adorable. “Why don’t you show me what you got?”

  Half an hour later—okay, it’s more like twenty minutes…fine, seventeen, but she came, too—she traipses up the stairs carrying an armload of It’s My Life crap, and I’m a much more relaxed man.

  It’s sleepover-dance night. My sheets are clean. I’m groomed, on my face and below the belt—and I’m stocked with condoms. I plan to get little in the way of sleep and lots in the way of Kailyn naked.

  “Time to go, kiddo!” I call down the hall. It’s already six thirty. The dance starts at seven and I’ve offered to drive. It’s my way of sussing out the girls Emme will be spending the night with. I did the legwork, spoke to the parents, gave them my contact information, and went through the list of questions Kailyn sent me. There were many.

  Everything should be good. Emme is excited and I get a night with Kailyn. It’s a win for everyone.

  “Okay! I’m ready!” Emme bounds down the stairs two at a time, backpack and overnight bag slung over her shoulder.

  I do a double take. “Are you wearing makeup?”

  Her cheeks flush, or maybe it’s blush, I have no idea. “Just a little.”

  “Right.” If she were auditioning to be a Kiss groupie, then maybe I’d say just a little, but Emme hasn’t ever really worn makeup before, so it seems like a lot. Her eyes are rimmed with black liner and I’m pretty sure she’s wearing mascara. And lipstick.

  “Do I look okay?” she asks, suddenly self-conscious.

  Her hair is perfectly straight and she’s wearing a pair of patterned leggings, a poufy black skirt, and an off-the-shoulder shirt that shows an inch or two of midriff. I want to make her go back upstairs and change. “You look great!” I choke out. “Can I take a picture and send it to Kailyn?”

  She waves me off. “I already sent her a selfie. She said I looked great, but she’s a girl and she either dresses really formal but, like, pretty, but business-y, or she wears funky jeans and shirts from your show, so I wanted to make sure.” She blows out a breath. “Can we go? I told the girls we’d be there before seven and we’re kinda cutting it close, right?” She says this like it’s my fault. I’ve been ready for the past fifteen minutes.

  As soon as we’re in the car, her phone starts going off. Boys’ names flash across her screen: Clark, Liam, Jimmy.

  I need to have the boy talk with my little sister. I remember being in eighth grade, not quite sure what to do with my hormones yet, or girls, but still a little interested. “What’s going on there?”

  Emme flips her phone over in her lap. “Oh, nothing.”

  “You have boys texting you now?”

  She sighs, as if she’s annoyed. “They all want to dance with me or something. I don’t know, it’s dumb. They stand on the other side of the gym and, like, wait for us to ask ’cause they’re all too chicken or whatever.”

  “I just want to make sure you know that you can say no. Boys your age aren’t very mature, and sometimes they might do things that make you uncomfortable—”

  “Oh my God, Dax! You are not trying to have the sex talk with me, are you?”

  “You’re too young to have sex.”

  “Um, ew. I know! Look, you can save us both the awkwardness. I already know all the technical stuff from the human anatomy and health class, and Kailyn and I have already talked all about this stuff.”

  “Kailyn talked to you about sex?” When the hell did that happen, and why didn’t she ever say anything about it to me?

  “Not like details or anything, just, like, the basics and how it’s my body and it’s special. Or something like that. She said it a lot better.” Emme’s cheeks are flaming and her eyes are on her lap.

  I guess I’ll have to thank Kailyn for having the conversation with her. “Huh” is my stellar reply.

  “Anyway, you don’t have to freak out, or worry, or anything. I’m not interested in, like, dating or anything. I’ve already had my first kiss and it was gross.”

  “You what?” I can almost feel hairs turning gray.

  “It was at the beginning of the school year. Chris Becker asked me to go steady and I said yes even though I wasn’t so sure I liked him like that. But then he kissed me and I was like no way ’cause he tried to put his tongue in my mouth.”

  I’m white knuckling the steering wheel, and I have to clear my throat before I ask the next question. “What did you do?”

  “I pushed him and he fell into a mud puddle. I told him not to talk to me anymore. Boys are weird.”

  “Yes they are. I hope you feel like that about them until you’re at least twenty-five.”

  “We’re down from thirty, so that’s an improvement,” Emme mutters snarkily.

  I have a feeling the next few years might give me an ulcer if this is just the beginning. I pull into the driveway of her friend’s house. It’s a nice place in a good neighborhood—I looked it up in advance.

  There’s a flurry of activity at the front door. Emme gets dragged upstairs to get rid of her bag but her backpack stays at the front door—I’m assuming makeup and hair stuff is in there. Lord knows she checked her reflection a million times on the way here. Her friends giggle and titter near the door, and Ainsley’s mom, Adele, fawns over me in a slightly awkward way.

  Ten minutes later I’m in a car with four very loud girls who smell like they took a swim in a lake of cheap perfume. Emme blasts the music in the front seat and they all try to scream over it to hear each other. When the chorus comes on, they sing together completely out of tune, except Emme—her voice is eerily on key. I have no idea how teachers manage a whole class full of this.

  I pull up to the school and the girls’ tittering grows louder. “Oh my God, Emme, look, Liam is waiting for you! Who’s with him? Oh! Oh! That’s Clark and Jackson and River.”

  “Who the hell named these kids?” I mutter.

  “Your name is Daxton,” Emme points out.

  “But River? After the dead actor?”

  “Who?” Emme asks. When I open my mouth to explain, she waves her hand around. “It doesn’t matter. Okay! Thanks for the ride. I’ll see you tomorrow!”

  “Thanks for the ride, Mr. Hughes!” comes from the back seat as the doors open and the girls all pile out of the car.

  Mr. Hughes? What the hell? The gaggle of girls meet up with the group of boys. They stand awkwardly with their hands shoved in their pockets, the girls looking over their shoulder at my car before they head into the school. I remind myself that it’s a school dance, chaperoned by teachers, and nothing bad can happen.