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“Bye, Mom!” Garret called, slinging his backpack over his shoulder and grabbing his packed lunch off the counter. “Love you.”
“Garret Hannigan!” I raged, following after him.
He froze less than two feet from the back door. Sighing dramatically, he turned and slowly walked back to me. I bent, hiding my grin as he kissed my cheek.
Max snickered on his way past. “Bye, Aunt Flick. See you later.”
“Bye, Max,” I called without taking my eyes off my son, who looked so much like his father, it literally made my heart ache. “I love you, mister.”
Since he was nine, I was fairly sure having anyone hear that his mother loved him was embarrassing. I didn’t care, though. He’d hear it a million times in the coming years. I wasn’t going to stop saying those three words because he didn’t like it.
“I love you too, Mom,” he grumbled. “Can I go now?”
I blew out a sigh. “Go. Have a good day. Don’t get in any fights.” I knew I was wasting my breath. At least once a week, I was at his school, trying to talk the principal out of expelling him because he’d gotten into yet another fight. My third-grader was a hothead, but I was hoping he’d calm down eventually.
“Mommy!” I shut the door to find my daughter storming into the room, her iPad in her hand.
I stayed by the door, watching her with concealed amusement as she stalked toward me with attitude. Nova looked more like her Aunt Raven than me, and her personality was one hundred percent my best friend’s.
“What’s wrong?”
She thrust her iPad into my hands. An iPad neither her father nor I had given her. It was a present from her best friend, the boy who would have been attached to her hip if he didn’t live on the other side of the freaking country.
Nova met Ryan Vitucci when she was three and Ryan was eight. Jet and I took the kids to visit my aunt Mary, and we’d spent a few weeks in New York one summer. It had been a great vacation, but Nova had thrown a fit when we told her we had to return home. As a going-away present, Ryan had given her an iPad.
So they could video chat.
They’d stayed in touch ever since. She saw and talked to Ryan more than she did her own brother. It was amusing, and I loved that she already had a friend she couldn’t seem to live without.
“Take my iPad and hide it!” she commanded, crossing her arms over her chest.
I lifted a brow at her tone, and she quickly added, “Please, Mommy.”
“Why should I hide your iPad?” I questioned, noticing the thing was turned off. Holy crap. I didn’t know it could do that. It was never turned off. If she wasn’t talking to Ryan on it, she was playing one of the hundreds of learning activities Ryan had helped her download before we left New York. Those games were annoying to hear at times, but they’d also been a godsend. She was beyond ready for kindergarten next year, and she was probably even more advanced than some second-graders. “You’ll just whine for it in like ten minutes.”
“No, I won’t. I’m mad at Ryan! I’m not talking to him ever again.” Her little chin trembled, my only warning before she burst into tears.
Startled by her sudden change in emotions, I scooped her up. She was so tiny, it was hard to believe she was about to turn five in just a few more days. Having a birthday in November kept her from entering school for another year, but I was glad for the extra time. I needed it more than she did, because I wasn’t sure I was ever going to be ready to let her leave my side.
Nova was my baby, and after how difficult my pregnancy had been with her, she was our last. I’d had a hysterectomy the moment the doctors pulled her from me via C-section, something that had saved my life. I hadn’t had a choice because I was bleeding out so badly. Jet had been a mess, but we’d had other things to worry about at the time since Nova was eight weeks early.
Thankfully, though, her small size was the only issue she now had. But fuck, it had been scary for that first year.
Cuddling her close, I carried her into the living room and sat on the couch with her in my lap. “What’s wrong, sweetie?” I asked, getting more than a little emotional myself because her tears always wrecked me.
“Ry-Ryan is so mean!” she cr
ied, pressing her snotty nose into my shoulder and using my shirt as her tissue.
I blinked down at her, unsure she was talking about the same Ryan who was her best friend. Maybe she’d met a new Ryan, because the one I knew adored her too much to ever make her think he was mean. Perhaps he was—hell, I’d never seen him around any kids other than my own and his cousins, but what I had seen of his interactions with them showed me he was a nice enough boy.
“Okay, maybe you should tell me everything that happened, Nova.”
“He’s supposed to come to my birthday party, but when I talked to him just now, he said he couldn’t.” She scrubbed at her eyes, getting mad all over again.
“This is the first I’m hearing that they’re canceling,” I told her. “Maybe you heard him wrong.”
Her birthday party had been all she could talk about for the past few months, ever since Ryan and his mother had flown out for a few days so Ryan and Nova could spend a little time together. They’d promised to come back for the party in November, and she’d been meticulously planning it ever since.
