Page 45 of The Dating Pact

For a grumpy son of bitch, he could be quite perceptive.

“Look at you being all philosophical,” I said as Sebastian reached us.

“I have my moments.” Dylan held out his fist to my son for a bump. “Nice work today.”

“Thanks.”

I ruffled Seb’s hair. “You have fun today?”

“Yep.”

“I’m gonna drop you two off at Nana and Pop’s to sleep over.”

“Again?” he whined. “We were there the other day.”

Dylan deliberately turned away as I explained, “Yeah, but I’m going out for a bit, and Nana said she’s got everything for fancy grilled cheese.”

Fancy grilled cheese because it had lots of different cheeses in it, and the kids loved to pull it apart with all the ooey-gooey strings.

Sebastian didn’t care. He rolled his eyes, grumbling something about me going out a lot, and I chose to ignore him. Once he stomped off, Dylan pivoted back around to me, brows drawn together in question. I shrugged. “Gotta pick my battles, right?” He nodded and walked with me over to the stands, where Amelia threw herself at me. “Daddy!”

Gen greeted me with a smile, holding up a small pink backpack so Scarlett could gather up all her toys and put them inside. “Thanks for taking Amelia today.”

“It was fun. Whenever you need to, drop her off.”

I tickled Amelia’s side. “Say g’bye. We gotta go.”

She hugged Gen, Dylan, and Scarlett each, thanking her aunt and uncle. Even though we weren’t related by blood, all of our children called each of us aunt and uncle. At this point, I believed the more family my kids had, the better.

I ushered Amelia away, and Sebastian caught up to us with his bag, ignoring me as we all settled in my car.

Amelia chatted the whole ride, bouncing one of her unicorns along the window and her car seat, annoying her brother, until he finally yelled at her to knock it off, which led to an argument I chose to ignore. I rolled down my window, letting the warm summer air drown out their fighting.

Arriving at my parents’ house, I dropped them off with a few words to my mother. She told me to take my time with my “errands,” though her over-the-top wink let me know she guessed I wasn’t heading to Target.

“Have fun,” she practically sang, following me to the door, pushing me to go.

Little did she know, I’d already been on my mildly terrifying date.

Fifteen minutes later, I pulled up to Brooke’s farm as Gunner was on his way out. He’d been Brooke’s right-hand man for a while. An ex-convict who’d applied for a part-time position after he’d been released from serving time on felony drug trafficking charges when Brooke had first opened Fraserbrooke Farm. She’d once told me how she felt compelled to hire him because she couldn’t believe a white woman like herself could buy and use marijuana without repercussions, while a brown kid whose home circumstances forced him to be the moneymaker at seventeen years old would be thrown into jail for years, perpetuating the cycle. Hiring Gunner was her small way of trying to right the world.

“Hey, man.” Gunner greeted me with a dap. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Been busy.”

He aimed his thumb over his shoulder, toward the farmhouse. “That why she’s been in a bad mood lately?”

I blinked. “She’s in a bad mood?”

“Spittin’ fire all afternoon,” he said with a shake of his head. “See what you can do about that, huh?”

“I doubt I can.”

Gunner sucked air through his teeth. “Yeah. Right.” He wiped his forehead with his T-shirt sleeve then offered me a head nod. “Later, Gray.”

I headed to the farmhouse, contemplating Brooke’s supposed bad mood. She hadn’t seemed like anything was wrong during our text exchange.

Unless…

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