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“Banana bags?”
“They’re IV bags with nutrients and vitamins to kick a hangover. All the residents use them, although they don’t cure a hangover, they speed up the recovery.” He winks at me and escapes out the door, leaving me to catch up with him in the second-floor hallway. I catch him at the top of the east stairs and pull him back before he can start down.
“I’m worried about all of you,” I tell him, grabbing his arm. “But I can’t lie—I’m also worried that Pike has a point and that we’re going to lose Lily.”
His jaw locks, and he steps back from the stairs, pulling me toward the bedrooms on the second floor. “Stop thinking like that, or you’ll just manifest it,” he tells me. My eyebrows shoot up. “Flint has the best lawyers in America,” he continues, and I wonder if he’s trying to convince himself.
“The law has to take the familial link into consideration, don’t they?” I insist. “I mean, if they’re putting the adoption on hold to consider it?—”
“They will do what’s best for Lily.”
“Are we what’s best for Lily?” I ask.
Caden’s eyes bulge in defiance, and I can see I’ve offended him. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Downstairs, a peal of laughter erupts, showing that some of the party has moved indoors, and I hold a finger to my lips, waving him toward my bedroom. Caden is reluctant to go, but I head inside, anyway, and he eventually follows. I secure the door behind me and face him.
“I don’t want to fight with you, Aspen,” he growls.
“I’m not fighting. It’s an honest question. Raya and Matthew aren’t the right place, either, but if you’re going to keep running off and trying to kill yourself, and Pike’s showing up drunk at her birthday party?—”
“We’re all under stress.”
“So am I!” I explode, unable to keep it to myself anymore. “I’m under stress, too, and I’m trying to keep it together. Flint is running himself ragged, and even when he’s here, he’s not here.”
Caden’s mouth slacks as the words pour out of mine.
“I can’t keep it together for all of you and keep smiling for Lily!” I rush on, emotion flooding me. “Maybe this isn’t the best situation for her. Maybe this is just a sign from the universe?—”
He grabs me then and crushes his mouth to mine, clearly to make me stop talking. I push him back furiously.
“Sex isn’t going to solve this!” I tell him, tears of frustration welling in my eyes. “We have to work together.”
“You’re right,” he tells me huskily, his hand reaching up to touch my cheek. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”
I feel myself succumbing to his touch, my face curling into his open palm. This time, when he kisses me, I don’t reject him.
“We’ll find a way to work together,” he rasps in my ear, his nose rubbing against my cheek and chin. “All of us.”
“Stop with all the daredevil nonsense.”
“I will,” I vow. “If that’s what you want.”
I pull back and look at him. “It’s what you need to want, Caden. I’m not your mother. Do it for yourself, not to appease me.”
He bobs his head again, raining kisses over my face. “I want to do it. You and Lily are the most important things in my life,” he murmurs, his hands cupping my ass to draw me against him.
We dance back against the wooden floor of my bedroom, landing against the wall, Caden’s lips at my throat now. My previous anxiousness melts away under his hot breath and skilled fingers.
“I love you, Aspen,” he murmurs, and my pulse rushes, the blood surging through me as he raises my thigh against him. “Never doubt that.”
“I don’t,” I mewl back. He loves me. Flint loves me. Even Pike loves me in his own way. And I love them, too. But is it enough?
Caden’s hard body presses against me, his cock poking through the material of his cargo shorts already. His fingers work up the hem of my skirt as my hands splay against his back, pulling his shirt free of his waistline. I undo his belt, suddenly just as eager to have him inside me as he seems to be in me.
Fingers find the cleft between my legs, sliding along the slippery middle, and I sigh, then yelp as he deposits a single digit inside me.
“You’re always so wet, so ready,” he mumbles as his shorts fall away. He arcs my thigh higher, my other leg spreading to push his dick inside me.
