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“You have a complicated family,” Ara said, sitting down at the desk in front of me.

And here it was—the conversation Elora warned me about. “I do?”

“Yeah. I met your sister the other day.”

I made myself look shocked. “Where?”

“Um…” She clearly didn’t want to mention the barn. “At the café where she works.”

“Oh. Right.” I nodded, looking down at my desk. It must have seemed complicated to her. After Elora and Mike filled me in on the chance meeting with Ara, I was irate. They could have ruined everything I’d been working toward with her, and I was immensely glad they hadn’t told her I was once a vampire. I liked being human in her eyes, and I wanted to know, as much as anyone else, if she truly could love me this way.

“So how can you live with your mom but be raised by your uncle, who you both see as a father?”

“It’s pretty complicated,” I said drily, practicing the cold shoulder routine I’d give her until she was guilted into liking me again.

“I’ll say.” She leaned in. “And you have a son.”

I jerked back, rubbing my neck nervously.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad about it.”

“I don’t,” I assured her, wishing I could tell her how much it meant to him to hug her the other day, and how it changed him—made him smile all weekend; took away the bad dreams that had left him sleepless for so long; made him happy to go to school today, knowing that she would be a part of his life again. And if not for my sake, I knew that I had to win her back for Harry’s sake. “But I don’t really want people knowing, so please don’t say anything.”

After locking her lips, she handed me the key.

I put it in my pocket and added, “Not even to Cal, okay?”

She clearly hadn’t thought of that, and it hurt me to see her hesitate before making a promise to keep something from him. She was starting to develop feelings for him—real feelings that went beyond friendship. I’d truly believed that, by now, she’d feel that way about me.

“Hey, David.” She reached over and put her hand on mine. I looked up from my broken heart and into her pale blue eyes. “He’s adorable. Your son. You should be really proud of him.”

“I am proud of him,” I said. “You’re the only person that’s ever made me feel ashamed.”

Ara paled, turning away then as Cal came in. It worked. The guilt embedded itself deeply, so much that she barely smiled as Cal rubbed her head like she was a puppy greeting him at the door.

“Hey, Dave?” he said, making a racket with his chair, clunking and clattering against the desk legs. He turned to me then. “You coming to Bree’s party Friday night?”

“I wasn’t invited.”

“I just invited you.” He finally got his ass in the chair, clearly on some kind of high, natural or not. “You can’t leave me stranded in a house with a bunch of girls on my birthday!”

Ara sat taller, clearly just realizing that Bree shared the same birthday as her twin brother. “How come the party isn’t for you as well?” she asked.

Cal bumped his shoulders up like it didn’t bother him. “What can I tell ya? My parents don’t really know I exist.”

I groaned to myself, wishing I could knock him into the next room. Ara would completely fall for that. Sad thing was, Cal wasn’t trying to win her over with that statement. He genuinely believed his parents didn’t care about him.

In her compassionate manner, Ara slid her hand across and put it on his knee, and he looked at her as he laid his over it, the touch between them as comfortable as if they’d been dating for a few weeks. I wanted to kill Cal then and I wanted to slap Ara.

“I’ll be there, Cal,” she said.

“That’s the only reason the whole night won’t suck.”

“No,” I cut in, “that’s because I’ll be there.”

Cal laughed and actually lifted his hand off Ara’s to cup mine in a manly brotherhood shake. I hadn’t done one of those since last time I was pretending to be a student. It felt oddly including, and while Ara had managed to make me feel like a complete loser, not worth her time, strangely, Cal had managed to make me feel like a part of the club.

Three injections of guilt before lunch and Ara was a very different person. Anyone could see how heavy she felt, battling with the way she saw me now after learning I have a son and realizing how mean that actually was. In truth, she was probably giving me as much space as any sane teenage girl should, given all she knew about me so far. But I didn’t need her to be sane. I needed her to see me as someone she could be with, and if guilt made that happen, then so be it.

Yet guilt didn’t bring her any closer to me either. I think, in many ways, it pushed her closer to Cal, as if she needed his opinion of her to reinforce her own—needed him to make her feel like less of a monster. Until now, my mission had been clear: win Ara over and then tell her who she is. Step three would be to move on with our lives.

But as I sat eating my sandwich and watching her with Cal, I could feel my age tearing new pathways in the miles between us. I wasn’t trying to win my wife over now; I was trying to win over a teenage girl, and I knew nothing about teenagers—didn’t care for their plights, nor did I want to be one. Once, I might have found the childish giggling and the fooling around—the way she chased Cal to steal his hat or the way she’d talk loudly with her friends—adorable, but it only irritated me to see my forty-year-old wife act like such a child.

By the time school ended for the day, I wasn’t certain I could handle another one in this juvenile institution of torture. I’d bring Ara out to meet Ali, and hopefully they’d forge a friendship from there, because after that, I would leave school and my only contact with Ara would be through her new friendship with our daughter and her best friend.

“David!” Ara called, running ahead of Cal to catch up with me.

I slowed down but didn’t stop, eager to get to the car. “What is it, Ara?”

“I need your help.”

This time, I stopped and looked at her, trying to hide the desperation on my face, holding back from saying, ‘Anything. You name it and I’ll do it. Walk across fire? Build a pyramid? Rob a bank?’ I’d become a pathetic lovesick puppy and I hated it.

“Sure,” I said instead, dropping the teen façade for the mature adult I was. “What can I do for you?”

“I don’t know much about birthdays—”

“Oh.” I nodded. So it was about Cal. Again. I was so sickened by her relationship with Cal that I was ready to end our own right now.

“What do I get Cal?”

“You should know,” I said, curling my lip in disgust as I turned to walk away. “You know him better than I do?”

“Yeah, but… what’s… I mean.” She grabbed my sleeve and stopped me. “There are gifts that family buys and gifts that friends buy, and they differ, right? I read that on the internet.”

“Okay, first of all.” I tugged her sleeve this time, drawing her from the path of oncoming teens. “Stay off the internet. It will taint your mind.”

She laughed through her nose, wiping her hand across it after.

“And second, I don’t know what to get Cal.” I softened then as I accidentally met her eyes. It was all it took, and the entire cloud of my rage and hatred evaporated, leaving me desperately lonely without her. “I thought you might have some ideas.”

“How come you didn’t ask me then?” She glanced at the parking lot. “You were just gonna leave.”

“I’m not really sure I…” I bit my tongue, saddened by how much truth there was to this.

“Not sure you what?”

“Not sure I want to be your friend.” Perhaps it was for the best. Maybe some distance would be good for us—give her time to grow up—then I could come back into her life.

“Why?” She sounded genuinely hurt.

“I have a son, as you so bluntly pointed out,” I said, leaning closer. “And as soon as you found out, you asked me to take you home and you didn’t talk to me after that, didn’t even say goodbye.”

Her throat moved as she swallowed.

“I’m the same guy I was before you knew about Harry.” And here was the perfect spot to insert some more guilt. “What kind of a person stops liking a guy because he has a kid?”

The horror coated her face and made her cheeks sink, her mouth turning down on the corners a little. She was about to cry, anyone could see that, and I felt a little guilt. “I’m not intentionally being a bad person…”

“I didn’t say you were bad, but if you can’t accept me for who I am then—”

“That’s just it,” she said, grabbing both of my arms in her tiny hands, “I do accept you. I’m sorry I freaked on you, but I don’t want to stop being friends just because you have a kid.”

I stood a little bit taller, and she laughed like it was the most radical thing in the world for me to have thought.

“I did tell you I just needed time to process,” she reminded me. “But I was never going to stop being friends with you.”

“But you didn’t even talk to me at lunch. I—”

“I thought you didn’t want me to.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because you ignored me when I asked you for help!”

“Help with that?”

“With Cal!” she demanded, laughing. “I asked you to save me when Cal was trying to lift up my dress, and you just turned away.”

I grabbed her arm, my eyes wide with disbelief. “I didn’t hear you, I swear, because if I did, I would have been the first person on my feet.”

She laughed, her blue eyes so bright that suddenly all my worries fell away. So much so that when a text came through on my phone from Elora, saying that Ali couldn’t make it and that they’d left my car out front for me, I wasn’t the least bit concerned.

I put my phone in my pocket and smiled down at Ara. She looked pretty today. Her hair was growing faster now, and she even looked a pound or two heavier, and much healthier, enough that the melted wedding band had moved from her thumb to her ring finger, on the right hand. For whatever reason, she did seem to be flourishing, and it had happened without my help. In a lot of ways, I think I’d panicked when I first saw her—so thin and so scared—that maybe I thought she needed me to make her okay again. But she didn’t, and looking at her now, I relaxed a little about everything, realizing that things could just take their course after all. I didn’t need to force them so much.

“Wanna come shopping with me now?” I asked. “We can pick something out for Cal together?”

“Yes! You’re a lifesaver!” She linked arms with me, and my heart soared, changing my mind right there and then about leaving school. Perhaps I could endure this for another few weeks.

I stood back among the crowd of teenagers and watched as she weaved through to find her friends. She hugged each one at length, excited and animated, and as she wrapped her arms around Cal, giving him what I assumed was a birthday kiss on the cheek—the same one she’d given him before class this morning—she then moved on and did the same with Bree. I analyzed her body language, how she pressed her entire front to theirs as she hugged them; how she squeezed her arms, twice wrapping them—how she did the same with the guys as she did with the girls. All the times I’d seen her hug Cal lately, I never paid much attention to the fact that she hugged everyone that way, or that she did, in fact, hug everyone. I guess it just hurt that she didn’t really ever hug me.

“David!” She popped up right in front of me, her face bright and her cheeks pink with the flow of blood through her overly-excited little veins. “You’re here! I’ve been waiting for you.”

“You have?”

“Yeah.” She took me by the hand and dragged me through the crowd. “We have to give Cal and Bree their presents.”

“You waited?”

“Of course.” She looked back at me, scrunching her nose up. “Silly. Why wouldn’t I?”

I’d had to forcibly rip my eyes away from her legs when she looked at me, laying them back there the second she turned away. As we made our way through the crowd, I only half waved or nodded at friends, completely lost in the outfit she was wearing—obviously donated by a friend. Maybe Kenna. The black skirt was just slightly too short, but not too short if I was a teenage guy, while the flat shoes retained the innocence of this girl in their lack of height, and the loose white top flowed with her every move, gently hugging the curve of her body before flowing away. I traced those curves with my mind, reliving the last night we spent together making love. I could almost taste her mouth, feel her hands purposefully touching my chest, her breath across my neck as she begged me for more. I missed that version of her, and it made my dick hard to think of it, knowing she was right in front of me.

We stopped by a dining table shoved into a corner and packed high with gifts, most of them wrapped in pink with only a few in colors that indicated they were for a boy, and a part of me did feel sorry for Cal. In a lot of ways, he reminded me of my brother, and I too easily related to his plight, which made it increasingly hard to hate him.

“They’re going to be so excited when they open these,” she said, digging through the pile. As she leaned to the back of the table, her skirt came up, revealing her childish pink cotton underwear—the kind my Ara would only wear on her period.

I had to laugh, hiding the smile as I politely looked away. But as my eyes moved across the room, they met with the six other pairs looking right at her, pleasantly surprised, obviously, by the subtle curve of her bottom and inner thigh.

“Ara.” I grabbed her skirt, making her yelp in shock as I pulled it down. “Your ass is showing.”

“Oh my God.” She spun around, her cheeks and chest bright red. When she noticed the guys across from us turn suddenly and laugh, she went even redder. “I’m so embarrassed.”

“Don’t be,” I said, “they were checking you out—”

“But they laughed.”

“Only because you caught them, and they were probably laughing at the fact that I pulled your skirt down.”

“Why?”

“Guys don’t really do things like that,” I told her.

“Why?”

“Because most guys would rather look, you know—point it out to their friends.”

Her shoulders relaxed a little and her color returned to normal. “But not you?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I…”

“Is it… do you think I’m gross?”

“Ara!” I laughed. “Why would you think that?”

“Well, if they want to look”—she pointed at them—“why wouldn’t you?”

“Because it’s disrespectful—to you.”

“Why?”

“Because…” God, she was like a child in so many ways. “Did you want them to look at your undies?”

“No.”

“Right. Well, then why would I want to do something to you that you don’t want done?”

Her eyes changed as that made sense. “Okay. Then… I guess that means you’re one of the good guys?”

I put both hands out as if to say ‘are you kidding me?’. “What do you think I’ve been trying to tell you all along?”

She laughed and turned back to find the presents again, this time pulling her skirt down before she leaned over the table. After she found Cal’s present, and I gave a nod of approval for how well she’d wrapped it—she was always good at that—I stood watching the scene for a moment as she dug around for Bree’s, making sure no one was checking out my wife’s ass again. For the most part, this seemed like a pretty sterile party—no drunkards, yet—and I only noticed one or two couples sneaking upstairs with lustful grins. But when I noticed Cal notice them, and then move his eyes around the room until he found Ara, my blood boiled.

“Hey, Ara.” I leaned in, keeping my voice low.

“Yeah.” She found Bree’s present, tidied the bow, and then looked up at me. “Have you… did your brother talk to you about parties?”

“Um…” She looked around, a little worried. “Why? Should he have?”

“It’s just…” I jumped up to sit on the table, patting the spot next to me. She needed a bit of help in that skirt, but settled in beside me without protest. “Just don’t go up to Cal’s room, okay? With him—alone.”

“Why?”

“He might ask you, that’s all.”

“Why?” Her eyes moved to the couple heading upstairs then, and her little mouth rounded. “Oh. Wait, you think he wants to take me up there to have sex!”

“Maybe—”

“Gross! David, he’s my friend. Friends don’t have sex with friends!”

I laughed. She was just so naïve and so innocent it was almost adorable—if it wasn’t so damn dangerous.

“And what makes you think I’d go if he asked?” she added. “I’m not ready to do that with anyone yet.”

My whole body slumped with gratitude.

“I don’t get it,” she said, looking out over the crowd. “Why do people like sex so much?”

“Because it feels good.”

“How?” Her nose crinkled. “Kenna told me where the penis really goes. I think it would hurt.”

I laughed once. “Why do you think that?”

“I’ve seen a penis before—”

“When?” I asked in a high voice, as if I didn’t know.

“Shaun—he wanted to go skinny dipping. And it was weird.”

“What was?”

“His penis,” she said, as if I should have guessed. “I don’t ever want one of those in me.”

I laughed louder this time, probably making her feel silly, but I couldn’t help it. When we first met, she was the same innocent and naïve girl about sex then too, and I loved that it hadn’t changed. “I wouldn’t want his penis in me if I were you either.”

She managed a small laugh then. We sat quietly for a moment. I felt a bit nervous having spoken about sex with her, so I reached down to the bucket of ice nearby and pulled out two cokes, offering her one. She took it, clearly in no hurry to move away. I figured she had more questions, and I was only too happy to answer them. I just hoped no one came over here to say hello, but we were pretty out of the way and not really in a thoroughfare. We’d be safe for a while at least.

“Hey, David?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I ask you something?”

Jackpot! “Sure. Anything.” I sipped my drink to distract my warming blood.

“What do girls do at a sleepover?”

All right! This conversation was taking an awesome step sideways. “What do you mean? What do you think they do?”

“Sleep, right?” she said. “But I don’t get it. Why would you want to sleep at someone else’s house? I like my bed—”

“Have you been invited to a sleepover?” I asked, my blood cooling. This clearly wasn’t going in the direction I thought.

“Yeah—tonight. But I don’t really want to.”

“Why not?”

“Like I said, I like my bed, and I don’t really see the point in sleeping on someone’s floor.”

“It’s fun,” I offered, not really all that sure it would be. When I was a kid, sleepovers weren’t a thing. “You know, you do things like give each other makeovers and talk about boys—”

Her sweet mouth moved into a timid smile, long lashes hiding her eyes.

“And you eat pizza, I guess—and watch scary movies.” I shrugged. “I don’t really know why they do it. But I guess you could give it a go and find out.” And as soon as I said that, I regretted it. I should have talked her out of it, because sleeping at Bree’s meant spending the night in a house with Cal. My stomach muscles tightened with worry.

“So… if that’s all we do, why did Cal’s mom tell him he has to stay at Thomas’s house?”

“She did?” I grinned.

“Yeah. He’s not allowed to be here. What did he do wrong?”

She looked genuinely upset by this—as if Cal’s mom was being cruel. “It’s not to be mean, sweetheart,” I said, biting my tongue as that sentiment slipped out. “No parents trust their daughter alone with a boy, or maybe it’s the other way around, I don’t know. But it’s not a good idea to have a boy at girls’ sleepovers.”

“Why?”

“Because they might have sex, I suppose.”

“What!” She giggled. “Why would Cal do that? He doesn’t like any of us that way.”

“He likes you that way.”

“Yes, but I don’t want to have sex with him, so it doesn’t matter what he wants.”

My cells soared with pride. “The thing is, though, when it comes to the raging hormones of a teenager, parents don’t trust your judgement, no matter how mature you might be.”

Her eyes narrowed into thoughtful slits. “Why?”

“Because, with all the changes a teenager’s body goes through, one of the biggest being sexual changes, it can be really hard to make smart choices when you get horny. And teenagers”—I laughed—“are pretty much always horny.”

Her mouth pressed into a thin line, eyes traveling downward.

“What?” I said. “You don’t understand something. What is it?”

“What does horny mean?”

“Seriously?” My neck jutted forward. “You don’t know?”

She shook her head innocently. I was kind of glad, on one hand, that she didn’t know, but also angry at Falcon for not preparing her for all of this. Then again, being under her curse, it might have been a very difficult subject for him to broach without losing control. “You know how we were talking about the release of hormones when you hug?”

“Mm.” She nodded.

“Well, like we said, your body releases other chemicals and hormones for different reasons,” I said simply, sounding like one of those sex educators on radio talk shows. “When your body, or your mind, wants to have sex, it gets horny.”

“What is horny, though? What happens?” She shuffled forward a bit and pulled her skirt down. “Will I feel like hugging, or—”

“You’ve never felt it before?” My eyes subconsciously moved to the bare patch of skin between her thighs.

“No. I mean…” She looked down at her lap. “I don’t think so.”

“Do you remember Cal talking about ‘awakenings’ on your first day of school?”

“Yeah.”

“You get a kind of pulsing down there; it makes your whole body warmer, and you feel more open to touch.”

I expected her to know what I meant, but her brows pulled in, making a little line between them.

“Can I demonstrate?” I asked, hopping down off the table.

“How will you demonstrate?” She looked nervous but also excited.

“I’ll touch you—as friends,” I reaffirmed, putting my drink down and then taking hers, placing it beside mine. “And you can tell me to stop at any point if it gets awkward.”

“What are you going to touch?”

I smiled, seeing her cheeks change color again, but for a different reason. “Do you feel that change in your body now?” I gently lifted her hand and placed it against her ribs. “A fluttering maybe, like excitement?”

She nodded, her breath shaky.

“That’s the first change.” I cupped the side of her neck with the full weight of my palm and brought my lips to her ear, my breath hot and human against her soft, sweet-smelling skin. “Now how do you feel?”

“The feeling in my stomach is getting tighter,” she said. “And you smell nice.”

I laughed into her skin. “Thanks.”

She readjusted her seat then and crossed her ankles. I knew it was time to push this a step further.

“I’m going to touch you now, and you’ll notice that heat, that tightness, move down.”

“Down?”

“Yeah.” I turned my back to the crowd to hide us, and reached down between her knees, parting them around me. She collapsed into me, her spine rounded, her soft warm breath falling against the center of my chest. When I was certain no one could see where my hand was going, I softly cupped her breast, my dick going instantly harder. She wasn’t wearing a bra and I could feel the full, very physical weight of her flesh in my hand. They felt the same as they always had, and it was so familiar to me that I nearly cried.

Her shoulders lifted with each deepened breath and she started to shake. “You’re my friend, David,” she said softly. “I don’t even want to have sex with you, so why do I feel like this?”

“Because that’s just it—that’s what I tried to tell you.” I stood a bit taller and pulled her in for a hug. “When you get horny, it’s easy to make poor choices, and that’s why boys aren’t allowed to have sleepovers with girls.”

She nodded against my chest, making no effort to move away. “My arms feel weak, like I just drank alcohol.”

I laughed, holding her tighter. “That’s normal. Mine feel like that too.”

“Why are yours weak? I didn’t touch you.”

“Because… I touched you,” I said, my voice low and seductive. “And I liked it.”

She jerked back a little and her voice sounded panicked then as she said, “Hey, David?”

“Yeah.”

When I looked at her confused face, her eyes falling on my groin, I laughed again, hiding myself a bit closer to the apex of her thighs. “Yes, that happens when a guy gets turned-on.”

“What does?” She went to reach for it but I stopped her, tucking her hands around my waist.

“Don’t touch it. I haven’t had sex for over two years; you’ll make me ejaculate in my pants right here.”

“What’s ejaculate?”

“Oh God.” I buried my lips in her soft hair. “You really don’t know anything about this, do you?”

She shook her head. “I was afraid to look it up on the Internet—”

“Yes, don’t do that,” I insisted. “If you have questions, ask me. I’ll tell you all about it without making you feel silly—or trying to seduce you.”

Her arms went back around my waist. “Thank you, David.”

I kissed her head, not meaning to. “Any time, sweetheart.”