With concern in her eyes, she touched his arm. “Hey, we’re just joking around, right?”
“Sure.” None of this should come as a surprise, so he swung around to drop his plate in the sink.
Chairs scraped back, and little feet hit the floor. “We want a snuggle movie night,” Paisley said.
“Let’s do it.” He was glad for the distraction. It sucked, her opinion of him, but he was mostly pissed at himself for not being authentic around her. Then again, as she’d pointed out a decade ago, who was he real with?
He’d thought about it a lot over the years.
With his teammates, he was a cheerleader, always rallying their spirits to win games.
He was an easy-going son, so his dad would want to spend time with him.
And around his friends…he was fun. He brought the good times and delivered experiences they couldn’t afford on their own… so they’d want to spend time with him.
Well, that’s fucked up. He’d even worked hard to get hisnanniesto like him.
He’d never been himself around anyone because he’d been working too hard to keep them around. He looked at the girls, jumping around with excitement.
I don’t want that for them.
Which meant Hailey was right. They needed more from him than a place to crash for a few nights and a college fund. “Come on, you little monsters. But I get to pick the movie.”
“No,” Paisley cried. “We get to pick it.”
“No way.” He headed for the stairs. “You’ll pick something with balloons in it.”
“No, I won’t.” Giggling, Paisley followed behind.
“Okay, but it’ll for sure have puppy dogs and peanut butter.” He opened the door and headed down the stairs.
“It will not.” Paisley practically shrieked, and he loved the happiness in her tone.
“Hey, do you have popcorn?” Hailey called.
“Yep. It’s in the theater.” He only noticed how far ahead he’d gotten when he was halfway down the stairs. He stopped and waited for them to catch up, and the sight of those bare baby feet and little pudgy calves nearly undid him. Evvie pressed her hand to the wall, dipping her toe until her foot hit the next stair. It might’ve been the cutest thing he’d ever seen.
But really, it was the innocence, the helplessness, that got to him. An intense sense of protectiveness surged through him, and he scooped her up. “I got you.”
Just as he started to turn back around, he caught Paisley’s gaze, caught the longing, the stark loneliness, so he picked her up, too, and held her tightly against him. “I see you, little one. And I got you.”
She cracked a tiny smile, and an unfamiliar emotion swept over him, loosening his joints and softening his bones.
One girl on each hip, he made his way to the theater and set them down in recliners. But he couldn’t get her expression out of his mind because this was what Hailey meant about having to be there for them. They were scared and lost and needed an anchor now. Not later, when the PI found the right family.
Yeah, he got it.
He picked up the remote and turned on the big-screen television. “Okay, so, what’re we watching?”
They started shouting out titles completely unfamiliar to him.
“Hang on. Let’s do this.” When he found a popular cable network, he clicked on children’s programming and then sat on the arm of Paisley’s chair and started scrolling. “Tell me when you see something you like.” These leather recliners were built for giant, muscled men—not these two little lima beans.
Damn, they’re cute.
Paisley pointed to the screen. “That one.”
“You got it.” Thinking of Hailey, he glanced at the stairs, but she wasn’t on her way down. As the kids settled in, he fired up the popcorn machine, and a few minutes later, the scent filled the large room that was illuminated only by the screen and the line of cinema lights on the floor. With a red and white striped box, he scooped out some buttered popcorn and gave it to the girls to share.