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“Please, please, please, Daddy?” she begged. She was too young to be so good at manipulation. She knew exactly how to work me to get her way. The last thing I wanted was for her to get used to seeing my parents together. This wasn’t a big, happy family. It was a broken one.
“Okay,” I relented, unable to tell her and my mother no.
She beamed brightly at me then grabbed my dad’s hand. “Let’s go!” she told him then pulled him down the hallway toward the kitchen.
“Life happens, honey. One day you’ll understand,” Mom told me.
I shook my head. “No, Mom, I won’t.”
CHAPTER TWO
RILEY
“You need this table under the tent?” Nash asked me as I was putting cotton-candy-pink covers over the chairs, then tying them with purple bows.
I glanced back over my shoulder. “Yes, please, and can you hang these paper lanterns from the middle up there?” I asked, pointing to the center of the tent.
“Yup,” he replied.
“Gunner! Get your ass in here. I need the ladder!” he called out.
I continued with the chairs, wondering why Brady wasn’t here yet with the helium. Leaving Bryony with him was a bad idea. She’d probably talked him into stopping toget ice cream. That girl had him so tightly wound around her little finger it wasn’t funny. He was going to have to learn to start telling her no.
“What the fuck you need a ladder for? It’s a tent,” Gunner called back.
“Gotta hang lanterns from the top of it,” Nash replied.
“Lanterns?” he asked.
“Just bring it here,” Nash yelled back at him.
Those two were comic relief. This was the third birthday of Bryony’s that they had come to help set up. It had become tradition. It was three birthdays ago when Bryony had first called Gunner “Uncle Gunner.” The way his face had looked in that moment had been priceless. He still got teased by Nash and Ryker for tearing up.
Bryony had no relationship with her biological father, and I doubted she ever would. But Gunner was her blood, and I had wanted her to know he wasn’t just a friend of Brady’s but her uncle. He was here because of her. Not Brady.
“Why are we hanging paper lanterns from the ceiling?” Gunner asked, staring up at the top of the tent with a frown.
“Because we were told to,” Nash replied.
“What’s the theme of this party again? Rumpelstiltskin?” Gunner asked me.
I laughed out loud and shook my head. “No. Rapunzel,” I told him.
“She was the one who ate the apple and went to sleep?” he asked.
“No, dumbass, that was Snow White. Even I know that,” Nash said, shaking his head in disgust.
“Who the fuck’s Rapunzel, then? Sounds like Rumpelstiltskin. Did they hook up?” Gunner asked me.
Still laughing, I shook my head and stood up from tying the last bow on the chairs. “No. That’s not even Disney.”
“Disney? I thought you said Rapunzel? Where’s the mouse ears?”
“God, I hope you have a girl one day,” Nash said, chuckling.
“Don’t wish that shit on me,” Gunner shot back at him.
The world as we know it would change if Gunner Lawton ever had a daughter. I walked over to the table Nash had brought under the tent to start to set it up when Mom walked out of the back door holding a tray with drinks and snacks.
