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“You’re going to give me a complex,” Stone said, his eyes bright with humor. “I thought I was your favorite old man?”
“Sorry, Kai. You’ve been bumped.” I held out my arms for a hug. “Come here, pops.”
Stone laughed and hugged me tight. “Happy birthday.”
When he stepped back, I did a quick sweep of the room. Caleb stood chatting with Sloane, Aimee, and the others from the hospital. Lyla was still on his hip and was carefully eating her cupcake with a spoon since she didn’t like getting food on her hands.
He caught my eye and winked, then turned back to his friends.
“Did your man tell you we’re kidnapping you after the party?” Nick asked.
“What?” I looked at him.
“Oh yeah. He told us to plan something epic.” Nick grinned and rubbed his hands together. “Let’s just say we let this one”—he hooked his thumb at Zane—“have some fun with the planning.”
I met Zane’s eyes. His mouth tilted up in a rare smile.
“Am I getting chloroformed again?”
“Nah.” Zane grinned wider. “And you never actually got chloroformed.”
“Only because he shook you off and you missed your shot.” River elbowed his brother in the side. “But you might want to make sure you’ve got full-coverage manties on before we leave.”
“Never say manties again.” Kai grimaced.
“What?” River grinned. “Don’t like the word manties? What aboutmoist?” He put as much inflection on the word as humanly possible, making it sound even worse than usual.
“Ew. No.” Nick slapped his hand over River’s mouth. “We’ve talked about this.”
River winked but didn’t try to shake off Nick’s hand.
“Anything else I should know about?” I asked the group.
“I’m in charge of collecting phones.” Stone grinned. “Take that however you want.”
I looked around at my friends. A year ago we’d all gone out to celebrate Stone’s retirement from porn and had agreed that from then on we’d put the most responsible of us in charge of phones so we didn’t have to worry about pictures and videos of our escapades.
“What about work?” I asked Stone.
“Boss knows we won’t be on site.” He winked. “It’s fine. I’ve got guys covering you.”
I glanced at West and Eli. “Are you coming out with us?”
Eli couldn’t drink because of his diabetes, and as far as I knew, West only drank socially now.
I didn’t drink often, but I’d gotten over my complete aversion to it with Caleb’s help. I wasn’t my father, and I was no longer afraid that I’d turn into him when I did drink.
“For a bit.” He poked Nick in the ribs. “We’ll bail when this one switches to shots. That’s usually the sign that things are about to get weird.”
“Probably a good call.” Nick poked Eli back.
Eli and Stone locked eyes for a moment. Stone smiled, and Eli blushed.
Stone turned his attention to me. “You should do some rounds.”
“Sorry?”
“You should do some rounds and say hi.”
