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To strawberries and cream and all things sweet.

The way I wanted to lick her up and down. Go back to that night when she’d been in the palm of my hands and my name had been a whimper on her tongue.

A curl of lust threatened, and I tamped it down, refusing to go down that path, yet somehow, feeling like going there was inevitable at the same time.

Evan’s hand flew across the page.

Are you my mom’s boyfriend?

Okay, then. Apparently, I wasn’t doing that bang-up of a job keeping my thoughts to myself.

I stopped what I was doing and shucked off the gloves, eyeing him as I grabbed the pad.

Why would you say that?

His answer was swift and honest.

Because when you look at her, you smile like you think she’s pretty.

Damn, this kid saw things in a way unlike no other kid I’d ever met.

Keen and smart and discerning.

I hesitated for only a second before I wrote out my response.

That’s because she is pretty.

Evan was grinning when he looked over at her before scratching something on the pad.

My mom is the prettiest mom in the whole world.

“What are you two over there gossiping about?” Hope asked, leaning farther over the table so she could sneak a peek at our private conversation.

That subtle blush blossomed when she saw the truth of what her son and I had been discussing.

“Oh, you two stop it. Every eight-year-old boy thinks his mama is the prettiest in the world until he gets to be a teenager, and then he decides to pretend like she doesn’t even exist.” It was all a gentle chiding.

NO WAY, he signed. MY FAVORITE was as close as I could get to figuring what he’d said.

Which made perfect sense, considering her smile turned so damned soft I felt something inside me melt just looking at the two of them.

MY HEART. That I got, without question, Evan’s little lips moving as he looked at his mother, his little hand fisted over his chest.

Hope gestured the same, touching her chest, her gaze adoring.

My insides clenched almost painfully. Something that beautiful was hard to take in. The bond they shared. How was it possible I was goddamned terrified of it and drawn to it at the same time?

Evan looked back at me before he scribbled quickly.

Is she?

Was it regret I felt when I took back the marker and started to write?

No, Evan. We’re just friends.

Another pass of the marker.

Are you my friend?

This kid.

Yeah, Buddy. We are definitely friends.

Sitting there, I didn’t know why that didn’t seem like enough.

I shoved the feeling off and poked him gently in the side. “Now get to work, little slacker.”

He laughed, that rasping sound coming from his mouth, his smile so bright, his lips moving between the juts of laughter as he wrote.

I’m not a slacker.

No.

Not even.

But if I spent more time in their space, I was going to be a goner.

And I wasn’t sure my heart could take that.

“You were not joking.” I glanced over at Hope, who was standing hunched over the table and carefully winding the long ropes of colored candy into circles before she pressed sticks into their bases.

Why I was whispering, I didn’t know.

But somehow it fit the mood the long night had slipped into.

The quiet vibe that had taken over the space.

“Where’s that stamina you were bragging about a few hours ago?” It might have been a tease if the words hadn’t have been so strained, so weighted in her own exhaustion.

A light chuckle rumbled out. “Guess I shouldn’t be so sure of myself, after all. Some things are harder than they look.”

She flinched with the double-meaning of it.

Both of us painfully aware of the other.

Like each of our movements barreled across the table.

Ricocheting and compounding.

We’d been at it for hours.

My fingers were sore, and my back hurt from leaning over for so long.

Heating the sugar and corn syrup on the stove.

Adding the flavor and the colors.

Rolling it into ropes.

Twisting them into circles.

Pressing the sticks into the bases.

It was tedious and time-consuming, and we most definitely hadn’t come close to making the million Evan thought we would.

Still, we’d made a ton. Trays of them sat on every surface in varying degrees of readiness. Cooling before they could be wrapped in clear wrappers so the ribbon and stickers could be affixed, which was actually Evan’s job on this makeshift assembly line.

Evan, who was fast asleep on the couch. Three hours before, he’d claimed he needed a break. Thirty minutes later, I’d tiptoed to the living room to check on him, only to find him curled under one of the throw blankets on the couch, his glasses askew, mouth open as his small breaths filled the air.

I’d taken his glasses and set them on the coffee table, somehow knowing I was crossing far too many lines when I pulled the blanket over his shoulders, affection so thick in my chest I could almost taste it.


Tags: A.L. Jackson Fight for Me Romance