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Mylo audibly swallows as his heavy-lidded eyes remain on my upper thigh. The tension in the room is thicker than blood, and I worry I’ve taken this game too far. But then Mylo shakes himself free of my spell and stands. “Your dress could be covered in a million thumbtacks, Samantha,” he rasps as he steps closer, “and one moment alone is all I’d need to turn it into a pile of rags on the floor.”
Fuck, I curse silently, knowing my panties are probably soaked. He’s better at this than I thought. Never underestimate a librarian. I need to remember that.
“Your date to this wedding is quite a lucky fellow,” he says, shooting me a wink that only I can see and returning to his seat next to the crib.
“She’s actually going with her brother,” Vanessa points out.
“What a shame,” he says. “You should’ve asked me.”
Okay, this is getting too real. I need to dump a metaphorical bucket of cold water on this whole conversation. And yet…teasing Mylo is just too much fun. I can’t seem to help myself. “I don’t know. I can’t picture you as much of a dancer. Any wedding date of mine will need to dance.”
“I’m an excellent dancer,” he replies, leaning back in the chair and putting his hands behind his head. “You might struggle to keep up with me, in fact.”
Zev and Kyan both let out a comical “Ooh!” as if Mylo has delivered a soul-crushing retort.
That sound, not just a reminder of their presence in the room, but their active participation in the flirtatious exchange between me and Mylo is what brings reality crashing down. If they were suspicious of us before, they must be certain of it now. How could they not? Mylo and I have teased each other in the past, but never like this. Never with such heat, and never blurring the line between truth and fiction like we just did.
I need to get out of here before I let something slip. “I guess we’ll never know,” I mumble as I grab my purse and dress off the floor of the nursery. Pulling Vanessa in for an awkward hug that she wasn’t expecting, I say goodbye to her and the boys before racing out of the room.
“Wait, didn’t you want a ride home?” she yells after me.
“Nah, I’ll walk!” I shout back. “I need my daily walk.”
Exhausted and embarrassed, I cut through the cemetery and make it home before the sun sets. I kick off my white platform Keds by the door and find the living room empty. Then I climb the stairs with a huff, and upon unlocking my bedroom door, I toss my purse on my desk chair, carefully hang my dress in the closet, and connect my phone to the charger on my nightstand.
Marty is just coming out of the bathroom when I step out into the hall, and before I can say anything, he puts a finger to his lips. “Shh, Ma’s still asleep.” Then he looks down at my empty hands. “Bring me anything?”
“No,” I say with a groan as I follow him downstairs and plunk down on the couch. “I don’t know why you expected me to after I told you I wasn’t going to.”
“Eh, you know. Expect the worst, hope for the best.” He takes a seat in Mom’s chair and flips through the channels aimlessly. “You ready for the wedding?”
I let out a sigh. “I guess.” His mention of the wedding reminds me of something. “I’m taking your plus one, by the way. I was going to let Nate know that I was bringing a date, but you RSVP’d with Holly coming, right? And now she’s not?”
“Yeah, that’s true. I guess you could just take her spot. But…who are you taking?”
“Mylo Monroe,” I reply easily. “The guy who runs the library.” Since my siblings don’t often interact with Vanessa and the guys, and since Marty is about to meet him in a matter of days, there’s no point in hiding it from him.
“The story time guy whose shirts are too tight?” he asks with a sneer.
“His shirts aren’t too tight.” It’s not Mylo’s fault if the largest size offered at most stores is still too small to accommodate his spectacularly large body.
“Oh, by the way,” Marty says, clearing his throat. “What do you think about adding a gate to the top of the stairs?”
“A gate?”
“Yeah, like a baby gate. For Mom. Jackie and I were talking yesterday about putting in a few safeguards around here. As…you know, Mom progresses.”
“I mean, I guess we could do that.”
I understand the need to make this place a little safer as she often gets confused about where things are, but when I picture her reaction to a baby gate, I see only frustration. “Don’t you think a baby gate would just be a glaring reminder of her disease?” I point out.
“Well, today I put a mini-fridge in her room, so she doesn’t have to go up and down the stairs whenever she needs a sip of water from the Brita,” Marty says. “She seemed happy about that change.”
Looking at the position of her favorite chair, she’d be able to see the gate clearly at the top of the steps whenever she’s watching TV, which is most of the time. “Yeah, well, that makes sense and makes her life easier. The gate is different. It’ll upset her. Do we really want to create more opportunities for her to be upset? I thought we were trying to reduce her stress.”
“Hmm,” Marty mutters as he considers this. “That’s a good point. Though we’ll probably have to revisit this.” He runs a rough hand through his wavy black hair. “There’s gonna come a day when we’ll have to put her safety above her happiness. We can’t avoid it.”
I stare at the edge of the carpet as I let his words sink in. It’s really only going to get worse from here on out, isn’t it?
