Page 57 of Yes, Love

Sienna gave me a sour look but returned my embrace.

“I’m so damn excited to spoil baby boy! He’s going to get all the latest and best everything from aunt Ava. I’m going to be his favorite aunt. It’s already decided.”

Sienna laughed and shook her head while we walked to an empty table for lunch at our favorite seafood bar. “I think you’re going to have to fight Charlie for the position of the favorite aunt. She takes that responsibility pretty seriously.” Then she winced, “And you can’t spoil him too much, or you’ll make Evan and me look bad.”

I sighed and pursed my lips. “Fine. I will spoil him a reasonable amount.”

Sienna raised an eyebrow. “Define reasonable.”

“Ugh!” I groaned. “You know me so well. I was going to pay one of the best interior designers to swing by your place and completely furnish and decorate your nursery, but I’m guessing that’s too much?”

Sienna gaped at me. “Holy shit! Yeah, that’s too much!”

I sank into my chair and tapped my foot while I carefully considered my next words. Ava Mills Official would have laughed and bulldozed, sending the designer over anyway. But Sienna didn’t want that. I would listen. “Fine. What about a newborn photo session with one of my fav photographers?”

Sienna smiled and awkwardly lowered herself into her chair. “That sounds amazing. Thank you, Ava.”

I bit my lip and scrunched up my nose. “And maybe a few outfits that I already bought that were cute enough to make my ovaries scream!”

“Aves…” Sienna rested her forehead in her hands. “Are we talking a few outfits or an entire wardrobe?” She glanced up at me with a soft smile.

I sighed. “I’ll send all but the five cutest back.” Did I spend ten grand on baby clothes last weekend? I mean, yeah. But it was nothing. It was all for a baby that I was sure I’d love like he was my own the minute I saw him. How could I not? He was Sienna’s son.

Sienna reached across the table and took my hand. “Thank you.”

After we ordered, she asked, “How’s the launch going?”

I grinned back at her and hugged myself. “Better than I imagined.” I’d finally started my own cosmetics line, just like I’d always wanted to. After I killed my beauty blog, Dom and I took a few weeks for ourselves. We traveled and stayed out of the spotlight, and once the world forgot about all of our drama, we doubled down on our real dreams. He opened a gym that offered free self-defense classes on Thursday nights, and I worked my little ass off to develop my own cosmetics.

I lost myself in hues, glitter, and cruelty-free formulas and emerged with a makeup line that filled me with pride. It wasn’t cutesy and full of bright colors like the world would expect from Ava Mills. The colors were dark and raw but rich and beautiful. The edgy, purple lipstick was Dominic’s favorite. “It’s very you, love,” he’d said when I first showed him.

“That’s great, Aves!”

“Oh! I brought you samples!” I dug around in my bag and covered the table in more lipsticks, eyeshadows, liners, and mascaras than Sienna would ever use. I hesitated before I handed her the last tube. “This is the one I really want you to have, though.”

I pressed it into her palm, and she smiled back at me as she pulled off the aged nickel cap. Sienna rolled up the tube of rosy-bronze lipstick and gasped. “That color is gorgeous! I love it!”

“Read the name.”

Sienna flipped the tube upside down and grinned at me. “Sienna. You named a lipstick after me.”

I shrugged. “That stunning color needed a name to match.”

“Love you, Aves.”

“Love you more, Si.”

I’d also named a bold, vampy red after Lucy and sent it to her in England. We weren’t friends and rarely communicated at all, but her strength in the aftermath of Will had inspired me, and my makeup collection was all about the strong women in my life. I created a silvery pink for my mom and a plum pink with gold shimmer for Dominic’s mom. They’d each been through their own kind of hell and risen to meet it.

Because that’s what strong women did — rose to meet their pain — and that was what I wanted to be.

***

“Hey, baby.”

Dom looked up from the stove when I walked into the kitchen and gave me an adorable grin. “Hi, babe.”

I’d sold my mausoleum last month, and Dom and I bought a smaller place together, one with black marbled countertops and only three guest rooms. It still had a pool, though. That was really the only thing I liked about my old place.

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