Page 23 of Well Aware

Boone’s grin made his eyes crinkled. “Yes, ma’am, Worm.”

Boone left, and I said to Iris, “Want to go to my office and get some ice cream?”

She answered by going to the door and waiting for me to put the pass code in to get back inside.

I led her to my office.

We were eating ice cream—our fourth tiny cone—when her mother found us.

FIVE

I say fuck so often that I forget that it offends people. Sorry, fuckers.

—Magnolia’s secret thoughts

MAGNOLIA

I wasn’t surprised to find my child missing from the daycare.

The first day it’d happened, I’d had a minor freak-out.

However, I was so used to it now that I didn’t hesitate on trailing back the way I came.

I should’ve just checked to see if they were in his office before walking all the way down to the daycare, but it’d been so quiet that I hadn’t thought they were there.

But as I got to the office door, I realized why it was so quiet.

They were sitting on the couch eating the small ice cream cones you got out of the freezer section at the store, watching a television program on mute.

Well, Iris was watching it and reading the subtitles.

Beau was on the couch next to her, snacking on his own ice cream, while doing something on his computer.

“I thought we decided no more ice cream?”

Iris shoved the entire cone into her mouth.

Granted, it was quite small, but it was still too much for her mouth.

Beau did the same, but hid it a lot better with his big ass mouth.

His big, kissable, I want to devour the hell out of it mouth.

They both looked at me guiltily.

I barely smothered my smile.

“Is it time to go?” he asked after he finished chewing.

“Yep,” I confirmed.

Iris sighed, as if she was fit to be tied to be leaving before her program was over.

I didn’t usually let her watch television unless it was something informative, which Beau knew.

That was why it was on the National Discovery Channel, which happened to be her favorite.

She signed to me and asked for more time, just like I knew she would.