CADE
“Mom said you’re staying for good,” Belle said from beside me on the couch. I hadn’t moved from the time I walked in the door, and she’d accosted me to watch a horse cartoon with her.
“I am,” I told her, shifting to the side and turning to face the living room door as Asher screamed from upstairs. The kid was only four, but he was full of sheer determination—he knew what he wanted, and he didn’t shy away from demanding it.
Belle dipped her hand into the bowl of chips on her lap and stared up at me as she brought one to her mouth and crunched slowly. Lola would kill me if she knew I’d allowed Belle to eat junk food this close to bedtime, but big brothers were allowed to bend the rules for their little sisters.
“And you’re a teacher now?”
“Yep.” I grabbed a chip from the bowl and raised my hands in surrender when she narrowed her eyes at me.
“You’re meant to ask, Cade,” Belle reprimanded, sounding more and more like the perfect mix of Lola and my dad.
“May I have a chip?”
Her screwed-up angry features relaxed back into the sweet girl she was half of the time. “You may.” She stared back at the TV, chowing down on her chips as the horse made a jump and everyone clapped. “I hate my teacher.”
“You do?” I frowned. How could she hate her teacher after only one day? And what was there to hate about someone who taught a group of eight-year-olds? It was my idea of hell but to each their own and all that.
“Yeah. Henry pulled my hair at lunch, so I told him I was going to call the cops.” She threw her hands up in the air, the bowl of chips wavering precariously on her lap as she blinked at me. “Miss Ferry said I couldn’t call the cops, so I told her my dad is in the PDA, and so are my uncles, and they’d arrest her for telling me what to do.”
“DEA,” I corrected, trying my utmost hardest to keep a straight face, but it was so hard with her serious expression. Thank god she didn’t have access to a cell because I had no doubt she’d call them from her school to come and rescue her, and what was even scarier was that they’d probably do it.
“What?”
“Dad’s in the DEA, not PDA. PDA means something—”
“Whatever,” she cut me off and waved her arms in the air, obviously having had enough of me correcting her. “She sent me to the principal”—her eyes widened in horror—“and now I have to miss recess tomorrow.” She groaned and pushed herself lower on the sofa. “School sucks.”
“I’m sure it’s not that bad, PB. Your teacher—”
“Ugh! You don’t understand—”
The doorbell rang out, and I was literally saved by the bell. PB’s face was becoming redder and redder the more she talked about her day at school, and I was hoping whoever this was would make her forget about it, or at least stop her from taking it out on me because I didn’t “understand.”
“I’ll get it!” Belle shouted, throwing her bowl of chips off her lap and showering me with them. She made a mad dash for the door and was pulling it open before I even got the chance to stand up. “Finally! A girl who will understand!”
“Hello to you too, Belle.” Aria’s voice was the first thing I heard, and then I saw her smiling face. She looked different outside the classroom. More relaxed and…I couldn’t put my finger on it, but she appeared to be more like the Aria I’d known. I still couldn’t believe how much she’d changed. It hadn’t felt like I was gone that many years, but evidently, I had.
“Hi,” Belle replied as she walked back over to the sofa and threw herself down onto it.
The door clicked shut and Aria followed her in, flashing me a smaller version of the smile she’d sent Belle’s way. “Hey, Cade.”
“Hey,” I replied, trying to get all the chips back in the bowl before Lola came downstairs from putting Asher to bed and found out what I’d supplied her only daughter with.
“Aria, you’ll understand.” Belle pushed up off the sofa and pointed at the seat she’d been sitting in. “Sit, let me tell you about my day.”
Aria did as she was told but leaned closer to me and whispered, “I see Bossy Belle is present today.” Her flowery perfume drifted toward me, and I raised a brow. That was something new, but then, the last time I’d seen her she’d been an awkward teen, and now she was so much more than that. She was practically a woman. I dipped my gaze to her chest and the rainbow on her T-shirt. She was definitely a woman.
Shit, I did not need to be looking there.
“Yeah, maybe I should change PB to BB?”
Aria turned to face me. “What does PB mean anyway?”
“Princess Belle,” I told her. I’d given her the nickname when she was a baby, and it had stuck.
Belle cleared her throat, and we both whipped our head around to face her. She pulled in a dramatic breath and blurted out, “So Henry pulled my hair—”