Page 19 of Accidental Mile High Daddy
“Okay?”
“Yeah. We’ll do it. Fuck him.”
He chuckled, just lightly, just enough that I could hear it. “Atta girl.”
My eyes narrowed into the nothingness of my comforter. “But just so we’re clear,” I started, hating how unsteady my voice was, “I’m not sleeping with you again.”
“Understood.” I couldhearthe grin in his voice. “I won’t point out the irony of you calling me from your bed.”
“You literally just—wait, how did you know I’m in bed?” I pulled the sheets down immediately, sitting up in a huff.
“You sounded like you’d just woken up, and I could hear your blankets moving,” he said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Another logical conclusion.”
“I hate you,” I grumbled, pulling the comforter up to my chest.
“Are you trying to hurt my feelings?”
“I’m trying to—fuck, I don’t know, I’m hungover,” I admitted, rubbing my eye with the base of my palm. “It’s not my fault that you’re trying to frustrate me.”
“It’s not my fault that you’re cute when you’re frustrated.”
“Do not flirt with me at eight in the morning after too many martinis, Matt,” I grumbled. “I just told you I’m not sleeping with you. Was that not clear?”
His answering laughter was soft, but it was cut short when a higher-pitched voice, too quiet for me to fully hear what they were saying, bled through the phone. For a second, a familiar feeling that I didn’t dare give a name to swirled in my gut, but then Matt spoke, and it disappeared instantly.
“I know, bud, just give me a minute,” he said, all the patience in the world evident in his voice. There was a shuffle on the other end, the sound of a phone shifting slightly. “Yeah, I see it. That’s a lot of syrup you’re trailing. Did the waffle survive, or should we call time of death?”
“It’s okay. I only dropped half of it. The good half is fine, I think.”
I blinked, sitting up a little straighter in my bed. That was definitely a kid’s voice—young, boyish, completely matter-of-fact in the way that only children could be.Matt said he had a kid. What was his name?
Matt chuckled as a faint thud made it through the phone, like metal on tile. “That’s good triage,” he said, his amusement so evident I could hear it without seeing the smirk on his face. “You want me to come help or are you staging a full, syrup-covered recovery mission solo?”
Zach. That’s what he’d said.
“I think I got it, I just need a new fork,” Zach said, accompanied by the sound of a piece of metaltinklingagainst a plate. “Do I put the bad part of the waffle in the trash?”
I didn’t know what I was expecting when Matt said he had a son, but it wasn’t…this. Not a syrup-covered breakfast war being fought at eight in the morning with calm, collected dad energy and a tiny voice chirping back with good grammar and total confidence.
“Yeah, tiger, just—actually,shit, you’ve got syrup all over you,” Matt laughed, full andbright, and that was probably the most surprising thing about this.
“You said?—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Matt grumbled, but there wasn’t a bit of bite to it. “Don’t repeat it.”
The phone shifted again, rustling like he’d had it wedged between his shoulder and his ear, and when he spoke again, it was clear he wasn’t speaking to Zach anymore but was speaking to me.
“I’ve got to go,” he said. “I’m about ninety-nine percent sure there is maple syrup trailing through half of my house.”
I snorted into my palm, trying to suppress my grin before realizing there was zero point in that when he couldn’t see me. “Good luck with that.”
“Yeah, yeah, thanks. I’ll text you.”
“Okay.”
“And Sienna?”
“Yeah?”
