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I had no doubt he could do it, too. He and Halley were connected on social media. I stayed away from all that shit minus the Instagram profile I had for The Walker Agency, but I imagined Lily had Snapchat or Tik Tok or whatever the hell Millennials were into these days. When Garrett pulled out his phone, I said, “Put that away, asshole. I don’t want you stalking my daughter’s friends.”
“Then tell us what she looks like,” he said, his thumb pausing over the screen.
An uncomfortable itch crept under my collar. The last thing I wanted to do was think about what Lily looked like, much less describe her. “She’s blonde,” I muttered.
“Of course she is,” Dominic said, and the others laughed.
“What the fuck does that mean?” I demanded. Then I was treated to an uncomfortable recitation of my dating history. All of them were blondes.
“It’s LA,” I defended myself. “Everyone is blonde.”
Garrett looked around theatrically at the table behind us. Just my luck, it was filled with brunettes.
“Fuck off,” I said, giving up. “It doesn’t matter what color her hair is. I’m not interested in her. She’s a kid.”
I could see them glancing at each other sideways, trying to figure out who had the balls to say it. Of course it was Landon, with his martial arts training and concealed weapon permit. “She’s not a kid though,” he said, scratching his chin. “She’s older than Halley, right?”
“And Halley is a kid,” I said through clenched teeth.
“Sure, she’s a kid to us,” Garrett stepped in. “But legally, I mean, she’s twenty-one. How old is Lily?”
“Twenty-three.” The syllables barely escaped through the tight clamp of my jaw.
Another long pause. Dominic stepped up this time. “When you were twenty-three, you had a four-year-old.”
And I was pulling six figures. But that was different. I’d had to grow up fast when Kim came to me with that positive pregnancy test. I’d had to leave all the friends I’d had behind to do it because they were still fucking around in college when I was heating up bottles at three am and working seventeen-hour days. Me at twenty-three and Lily at twenty-three were a world apart.
It was too hard to explain though, so I just said, “It’s different.”
“Undoubtedly,” Julian said smoothly. “But we’re just saying–”
“Well don’t,” I cut him off. “It doesn’t matter how old she is. She’s Halley’s friend, so she’s off limits. And that goes for all of you.” I narrowed my eyes and moved my gaze to each of them in turn.
Garrett held up his hands innocently. Landon gave me a dead-on stare that told me he’d do whatever the hell he wanted. Julian shrugged like it didn’t matter to him one way or another. Dominic looked at me a moment longer, like he was trying to see what I wasn’t saying. I glared at him for an extra moment.
“Okay,” he said finally. “She’s off limits.”
Each of them nodded, even Landon. The band of tension around my chest loosened slightly. I hadn’t even realized that I had stiffened, but the irritation was still pulsing through me. I knew my friends would keep their word–they’d keep their hands off Lily.
Now I just had to make sure I could keep mine off, too.
