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Ava plants her elbow on the table and sets her face in her hand. “We were expecting you to be here much later.”
“Much, much later,” Oakley adds from behind me. He claps my shoulder before walking around me and to where his wife and daughter sit.
Adalyn grins and waves her hand excitedly when her dad kisses the top of her head and tugs gently on the tiny tuft of hair at the top of her head. “Daddy!”
“Hey, baby girl,” he murmurs before bending down to kiss Ava’s head. She looks up at him with a smile.
“When are we picking up Braxton, Dad?” Maddox asks while swiping a finger across his syrupy plate and bringing it to his mouth.
Oakley flops down in the chair beside him. “When do you want us to pick her up?”
Cooper snorts a laugh, and Maddox pinches him under the arm. “Ow!”
“After lunch,” Maddox says.
“Wow. I get it. You’d rather spend time with a girl than with me,” Cooper sighs.
Maddox shrugs. “She’s funnier than you.”
“She smells like flowers.” Cooper scrunches his nose.
“I like how flowers smell.”
“Since when?”
“Since I decided I like flowers.”
“Oh, what a coincidence.”
“Shut up, Cooper.”
“Make me, Doxxy Poxxy.”
Cooper cries out when Maddox shoves him off his chair, and he falls to his butt. I stifle a laugh behind my fist when Cooper reaches up from the ground and grabs Maddox by the arm, pulling him to the floor.
They continue to poke, pinch, and hit each other as Ava sighs and looks at me, exasperated.
“God help us all when they get old enough to do serious damage to one another.”
Oakley laughs. “I don’t think we’ll be waiting too long for that.”
“Especially not when they seem to love beating on each other,” I add.
“Great,” Ava huffs.
“Gweat,” Adalyn repeats. Her mom curls an arm around her and bounces her leg.
“You’ll stay away from the boys when you get older, right? For my sake? Maybe you’ll like music like your brother Noah,” she says, sounding far too hopeful.
The toddler shakes her head and points to the two boys now spread out on the floor, catching their breath. “Play!”
“Music’s mine,” Noah states, not looking away from the drawing in front of him.
“Music isn’t yours to guard, bud,” Oakley tells his son.
Noah ignores him.
“Anyway,” Ava says. She looks at Oakley and then down at the girl in her lap. “Adam and I should get started on these plans.”
