Page 38 of Secret Daddies

“Hey!”

Maya’s voice pulled me from my reverie, and I looked up to see her smiling over at me. Fuck, that smile—even now, it stopped me dead in my tracks. I could still remember, all too clearly, what it had been like to fall asleep next to her. Even if she seemed intent on keeping her distance for whatever reason now, there was still a part of me that wanted to pick up right where we had left off.

“What is it?”

“You coming to join us, or are you just going to stand there?”

All four of them were looking back at me—Matty, still holding Devon’s hand, with a hopeful expression on his face. And damn, I knew better than to let the little man down, right?

“Coming,” I called back as I made my way toward them.

20

MAYA

“Mom, please!”

Matty gazed up at me with those huge puppy-dog eyes that he knew I couldn’t resist. He only pulled them out in serious circumstances, which meant that my chances of getting him to drop the possibility now that it had crossed his mind were next to zero.

“I don’t know, baby,” I told him, ruffling his hair lightly. “The guys have work to do, and?—”

“I’m free this evening,” Devon said, and I shot a look at him. He knew it was an overstep, trying to invite himself back to my place, but at the same time, I just didn’t know if I could say no to Matty when he was so insistent.

At the end of the set tour, Matty had started making some noise about bringing the guys back to ours for dinner. Which, in his kid mind, probably made the most sense in the world—they were his friends now, after all, and his friends came to visit our place all the time, right?

But bringing them to my home, that felt like it would change things. I’d been doing my best to avoid them lately, and it would break that rule, but more than that—it would be inviting them into my real life, and I didn’t know if I was ready for that. I didn’t know if I could really take the reality of having them there, in my house, where I lived my normal, everyday life. It just seemed like a risk I couldn’t take, overlapping the fantasy with the reality, the fun with the normalcy. Especially not when there was such a huge secret I was trying to keep from them.

“Me too,” Lee cut in, surprising me—he was the last one I would have expected to agree to this.

Taylor nodded along. “Martha’s staying over at a friend’s place today, so I can as well,” he offered. As I glanced between the four of them, I knew there was going to be no getting out of it. The decision had practically been made for me, whether I liked it or not, and if I tried to wriggle out of it now, Matty would sense that there was something more serious going on, and that was the last thing I needed.

“Fine,” I replied with a sigh. “But I need to pick up groceries on the way back. And?—”

“I can do that,” Lee offered at once. “Just give me a list, I’ll handle it.”

“You can’t just walk into a grocery store?—”

“I’ll figure it out,” he assured me, flashing me a grin. He was clearly taken with the idea of spending more time with Matty and me—well, I had to assume it was more about me, to be honest, given how hard he’d been flirting with me today. But if he wanted to help, shit, I wasn’t going to go arguing with that. God knew I could use all the help I could get.

“I’ll drive you over,” Devon cut in. “Taylor, you want to come with us…?”

Before I knew it, they had organized practically the whole night. Lee was going to pick up the food, and Taylor and Devon were going to head back to my place and start making dinner. To say it was surreal didn’t even come close to covering it. All three of them, coming back to my place, heading home with me and Matty… Having one man in my apartment would be weird, but the whole damn trio…?

But when I looked over in the back seat of Devon’s car and saw the grin on Matty’s face, I knew I couldn’t have denied him this, not even if I wanted to. He was so giddy at getting to spend time with all three of them, and I would have felt like all kinds of an asshole denying him more of that when they were all so willing, even if I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why.

I mean, with Devon, it made sense. But Lee and Taylor? I was sure Taylor was still mad as hell at me for keeping this from Devon in the first place, and Lee was about at the bottom of the list of people I would describe as a family man. But I guessed…I guessed, underneath it all, they cared about my little boy, and I appreciated that way too much to argue with it.

When we got back to our place, Matty insisted on dragging Devon through to his room so he could show him the action figures and comics I’d managed to pick up for him over the years—those things were damned expensive, so he treasured them like they were made of gold.

Taylor followed me to the kitchen, the first time we’d been alone together since that evening in the alleyway when we had sex. And, though I could tell he still had his doubts, at least he wasn’t as mad at me as he had been then.

“Are you…are you okay?” I asked him, slightly more nervous than I would like to admit. Taylor, being so much older than me, was kind of intimidating, and I had to remind myself that he was just a guy like the rest of them.

Taylor nodded as he headed to my cupboards to pull them open and see what we were working with.

“I’m fine,” he replied. “Glad that you’re letting Devon spend some time with Matty.”

I smiled, my chest tightening with warmth for a moment. It felt good, not to have him mad at me anymore, though I knew he hadn’t been entirely wrong for it. Whatever tension there seemed to have been between us, he was starting to let it go, and the comfortable quiet between us as we started to gather everything we’d need for dinner settled into me like a warm blanket.

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