Page 68 of Finding You

That was all Kylen needed to hear.

The drive to Adele’s place was the most reckless Kylen had ever been behind the wheel. He took turns a little too fast and pushed the speed limit almost to the point it might have been a felony, but he made it without incident. He followed Dallas’s instructions to park at the neighbor’s—Lane, he said, who was also in the dad club—and then he crept over the lawn and knocked gently on the door.

It took a while for someone to answer, and Kylen sucked in a breath when a muscular, shirtless man in low-hung sweats appeared. He had tattoos on his arms, and half his face was covered in shaving cream, the other half freshly shorn.

“Kylen,” he said, his voice a soft rumble.

“Hey. Hi. Sorry to show up here so late, but Dallas said I could come by.”

“Don’t worry,” Adele—he assumed it was Adele—said as he ushered Kylen inside. “We were expecting you. Audra’s asleep, and Dallas is in the guest room. Second door on the right,” he told him, gesturing down a dark hallway. “I’d be happy to give you a tour if you want first, but I need to get this beard off my face.”

Kylen grinned at him and shook his head. “Please don’t worry about me. I’m the one disrupting the harmony here.”

“You’re not doing anything of the sort,” Adele told him. He locked the door with a firm click, then added the chain at the top, and Kylen couldn’t help but wonder how bad things really were. Adele seemed to have caught his expression because he sighed and rubbed at the clean side of his chin. “I’ll let Dallas explain it all, but if it’s all the same, I’d prefer no one else leave tonight.”

Kylen’s stomach twisted. “Is he in danger?”

“No,” Adele said. “But he is waiting for you.”

Kylen understood the dismissal and hurried down the hall. He could hear soft music coming from the first bedroom—’90s rock, he was pretty sure. If that had been his room back in the day, the music would have been followed by the faint scent of incense trying to cover up weed.

The thought made him smile a bit, but his grin disappeared quickly when he pushed on the half-open door and found Dallas perched at the edge of a large bed with his face in his hands. Kylen’s heart ached almost like the pain was his own.

“Can I hug you?”

Dallas didn’t look up, but he nodded. “Yeah. Yes. Please.”

He wasn’t going to make the man wait a second more for the comfort he clearly needed. He slipped between Dallas’s parted thighs and wrapped his arms around him, pulling him to his middle. Dallas went loose against him apart from stiff arms, which held Kylen’s thighs.

“I’m so sorry,” Dallas murmured against his stomach. He rubbed his face back and forth, sniffing. “I didn’t mean to fuck up your night.”

Kylen touched the side of his face, urging him to look up. “You didn’t fuck up my night. I don’t care what’s going on. Seeing you will always be one of the best parts of my day.”

Dallas’s eyes shone in the dim light. “My ex got served.”

Kylen sucked in a sharp breath. “She didn’t take it well, I assume?”

“She lost her damn mind. Monty called about twenty minutes ago. He’s been on the line with her attorney, and they got her calmed down. They said she went home, but Monty told me I should stay here for a few days. Adele thinks she’s afraid she’s going to lose all of her custody to me, and she snapped.”

Kylen didn’t want to agree with that, but he couldn’t help it. He’d seen what stress could do to people. His sister was unkind and made his life hell, but a small part of him wondered if Grace was under some kind of pressure he didn’t know about. His family was prone to irrational fits, and in those moments, they never cared who they hurt.

Afterward, they were always sorry, and Kylen could understand. But he was also tired of being cannon fodder. It was why he left. It was why he wasn’t talking to any of them now.

“At some point, she’ll see reason,” he told him. He released his grip on Dallas and kicked off his shoes, crawling onto the bed. Dallas followed, and a moment later, the two of them were curled together against the headboard. “You have a good lawyer, and you have good friends. You’re both safe.”

“I know. I think what sucks the most is that I don’t know how bad it really is. I don’t want to give Audra back, but I also know what it feels like to have someone keep my daughter from me. I don’t think I can be that person.”

“What does Monty think?” Kylen asked.

“He’s going to call in the morning with what I should do. There’s a chance I won’t see Audra again until the hearing if I give her back. But there’s no telling what Katie will do if I don’t.”

Kylen squeezed his eyes shut and buried his nose in Dallas’s soft hair. “I’m sorry you have to make this choice.”

“Me too.” Dallas held him a little tighter, and for a while, the two of them just sat and matched breath.

The room was quiet. The house was quiet. Kylen had never had peace like this when Flora was a baby. She was up every two hours until she was a toddler, and even now, she struggled to make it all the way through the night. He wondered if he’d have been able to handle his family better if he’d been allowed to get more than a few hours of sleep at a time back then.

“How’s Granny?” Dallas asked. The sound of his voice in the silence startled Kylen, who grinned and turned his gaze up to the ceiling fan.

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