Page 46 of Secret Daddies

“And look at where my wants and needs have gotten me,” I joked, gesturing to my stomach. She raised her eyebrows at me.

“Hey, now, don’t play it off like that,” she chided me gently. “I’m serious.”

“I know you are.”

She gave my hand another squeeze, and then reached back for her coffee, leaning back in her chair and eyeing me for a moment.

“So,” she wondered aloud. “What exactly are you going to do?”

“Trust me,” I promised her. “When I figure it out…you’ll be the first one to know.”

23

DEVON

As soon asI stepped into the makeup trailer, I stopped dead in my tracks. Because there was someone there who I hadn’t expected to see—but someone I’d been hoping to get more time with ever since I snuck out of his apartment in the early hours of the morning the week before.

“Hey, Matty!” I greeted him, crouching down to give him a wave. He was sitting up at once of the makeup counters, a comic in front of him, and he lifted his hand and gave me a shy wave in return. Maya glanced around, and when she saw me there, she hurried toward me.

“I’m sorry he’s here,” she told me, pulling a face. “My childcare pulled out at the last moment, and I didn’t have anyone to take care of him. Paula said it’s okay if he just stays in here, but I’m going to need someone to watch him when I head to set?—”

“Nothing to apologize for,” I assured her at once. “It’s good to see you again, little buddy.”

“You too,” he replied, a slightly crooked smile spreading over his face. I glanced up at Maya, and she offered me a quick, slightlynervous grin. I could tell there was something on her mind, but whatever it was, she clearly didn’t want to get into it.

“Come on, sit down,” she told me, hustling me toward the makeup chair. “I need to get you ready for your next scene.”

“Sure, sure,” I replied, but I couldn’t help but glance over once more at Matty. He was kicking his legs back and forth beneath the chair, totally engrossed by his comic—by the looks of it, it was one of the retro Trio comics, before they changed their likenesses a little to look more like Taylor, Lee and me. So, he was a hardcore fan, huh…?

Maya set about doing me up, moving her hands with deft precision over my face, her tongue bitten between her teeth as she focused in on me. I had always thought she looked cute like that, so engrossed in her work. Or maybe I just couldn’t stop thinking about her in a certain compromising position, since that insane hookup I’d had with her and the other guys the other night.

It had been on my mind nearly nonstop—I had never imagined that I would be into something like that, but there was no denying it, how much I enjoyed it. Sharing her with Lee and Taylor was so fucking hot to me, seeing her completely spoiled with all the attention she deserved. I was already craving a do-over, and though she seemed to have been going out of her way to keep herself to herself recently, I figured it was only a matter of time before we picked up where we had left off.

As she worked on me, Paula burst into the makeup trailer, striding right toward us with a furrow in her brow.

“Sorry, Maya, we need you on set,” she told her. “Devon, you’ve been pushed back a couple of hours. We’ll finish you up later…”

Maya parted her lips in surprise and glanced around at Matty. It was clear she didn’t want to leave him alone, but by the sounds of it, she wasn’t going to get much of a choice. Before I could think about the implications of what I was coming out with, I stepped in.

“I’ll watch him,” I offered, and Maya looked around at me—I could tell she wasn’t entirely taken with the idea, but in that moment, with Paula tapping her foot beside her, it wasn’t like she had much of a choice.

“Okay,” she replied. “But I’ll be back as soon as I can. Matty, you be good, okay?”

“I will!” Matty replied, his voice almost bubbling over with excitement. Maya paused for one more moment, but then, clearly figuring that it wasn’t worth the battle, she shook her head and rushed for the door to follow Paula to whatever needed to be taken care of.

And that left Matty and me alone together, for the first time. Matty lifted his comic, peering at me over the top of it, but trying to pretend like he wasn’t staring. His eyes, I noticed, looked so much like mine. I had been struggling to see the similarities between us since we met, at least physically, but now they seemed to jump out like they were the most obvious things in the world.

“You like the Trio comics, huh?” I remarked, and he nodded, dropping the comic a couple of inches, as though he was willing to listen to what I had to say.

“You know, these are probably the same ones that I read when I was growing up,” I continued, rolling the chair toward him and tapping on the pages of his comic book.

His eyes widened. “They’re thatold?”

I couldn’t help but bust out laughing.

“Yeah, buddy. They’re that old, just like me. Hey, can I see that one…?”

I held out my hand, and after a moment, he handed it to me. Sure enough, when I flipped the comic around to get a better look at it, it was the very same series that I had picked up when I was a kid—the Silver Age comics, right at the height of the arc that brought the Trio together to fight an intergalactic threat.

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