Page 1 of Sunshine
one
Dylan
I twist a little,trying to find a more comfortable position next to my daughter on her tiny twin mattress, then risk a whisper in the darkness. “Are you asleep, Little Bee?”
“Not yet.” Izzy opens her big, brown eyes, and her sweet breath caresses my cheek. “Don’t go, Daddy.”
“It’s okay.” I press my lips to her forehead and move my palm in circles over her back while ignoring the cramp in my calf and reminding myself that she won’t be six years old forever. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Twenty minutes later, I still haven’t moved. My arm is numb where it’s been wedged under my head for too long, there’s a twinge in my neck from the odd angle of Izzy’s pillow, and my abdominal muscles ache with the tension of keeping myself balanced on the edge of the bed. When the rise and fall of her chest is slow and even, and when her death grip on her stuffed bunny finally slackens, I extract myself with ninja-level care and crouch beside her bed.
I tuck the blankets up under her chin, and as my chest tightens at the picture of her sleeping face on the pillow, I brush a straylock of her dark hair from her sleep-kissed cheek. It’s a new thing, this staying with her at night until she falls asleep. At first, I assumed it was a phase. Just a game that’d pass in a couple of weeks. But it’s been two months without any sign she’ll give it up, and I’m not about to tell herno. If that’s what she needs from me, that’s what she gets. I’ll snuggle her to sleep for as long as it takes to reassure her that she’s safe. Protected. Loved.
“What’s going on in that clever little head of yours?” I ask in a whisper, speaking into the night all the hopes and fears I can’t face in the day. “What more can I do to make sure you’re okay?”
It’s no surprise that the answers don’t miraculously come to me, so I tiptoe from her room and close her door, pausing with a grimace as I try to stretch out a persistent knot in my trap. Curling my six-foot-two body into Izzy’s little bed every night might explain the tension in my neck and shoulders—and long hours running the kitchen at my family’s restaurant certainly don’t help—but it’s more than that. It’slife. I’m so fucking stressed. All the fucking time.
Running a business is hard. Being the only man to live on the family ranch for most of the last nine years was hard. Single parenting is hard, and raising a daughter on my own has me questioning my judgment every day. I want to believe that Izzy’s anxiety isn’t my fault and that it’s only a coincidence it started after her mother’s most recent visit, but the worry gnaws at me constantly. Izzy’s well-being is on me, and if my daughter has any shot of having a happy, well-adjusted childhood, I’ve got to pull my head out of my ass and make some changes. Fast.
The house is as quiet as it can be when I live with my two sisters in our old family home. It’s after nine p.m., so the lights are low to make it easy for Izzy to sleep, but a golden glow leaks out from under my older sister Charlie’s closed door, and the sound of a shower running tells me that my younger sister Daisy’s home too. So, like I’ve done every night this week, I headdownstairs to where my stresses lay strewn across the kitchen table.
With a resigned groan, I jog down the stairs and cross the living room, round the corner to the kitchen, and freeze on the spot. With her reddish-blonde hair piled in a messy knot on her head and her small yet curvy frame swamped by a sunshine-yellow hoodie, my sister’s best friend sits at my dining table as if she lives here. She doesn’t notice me at first, her dark lashes lowered as we both watch a spoon piled high with Froot Loops disappear between her pillowy pink lips.
My heart thuds, and my throat catches when I try to swallow. I tell myself it’s because I wasn’t expecting to find anyone in the kitchen. It’s got nothing to do with the fact that even though I’ve known Poppy Golightly all her life, she’s only had the power to make my stomach flip since she returned to Aster Springs last summer. It’s been six months, and my nervous system is still at the mercy of her eyes. Her skin. Her curves. Her lips. She’s more captivating than she was all those years ago. Brighter and softer. Almost incandescent. And all I keep thinking is…was she always this pretty?
“Hey, Pippi,” I say as I pass behind her and tug her hair loose on my way to the fridge. I grab a beer, crack it open, then take a chair on the opposite side of the table.
Poppy tries to smack me as I pass, misses completely, and then rolls her gray-green eyes as she reaches up to reassemble her messy twist. “Are we still doing this? Seriously?” Her mouth twitches, and I pretend she likes it when I tease her. “I wore braidsonce. You really should be over it by now.”
I shrug and open my laptop, the screen buzzing to life as I recall the afternoon twenty-odd years ago when she showed up at our house rocking twin braids, a gap-toothed grin, and a spray of pale freckles that made her look like Pippi Longstocking.
“Guess it stuck. Sucks to be you.”
She huffs out an amused breath. “What’s your age again?”
I ignore the question. I turn thirty this year, and I’m still not sure how I feel about it. Unfortunately, the subject of my age isn’t so easy to dodge.
At the exact moment I notice my reading glasses still sitting where I tossed them carelessly on a stack of paperwork, Poppy sees them, too, and she snatches them up a second before I can get my hand on them.
“Oh, my God.” She laughs musically as she balances the black frames on the tip of her narrow nose. “Are these yours?”
I glower and extend my hand, ignoring the flush creeping up my neck. “They’re for computer work.”
Poppy pretends to be contrite as she takes off my glasses, slowly folds in the arms, and places them on my upturned palm.
I tuck them out of sight under a stack of paperwork. “Thank you. Now quit being a brat.”
“Quit being a buzzkill,” she retorts. “And what is all this anyway?”
Poppy gestures to the piles of papers and folders and sticky notes covering the kitchen table, an oversized and well-worn timber piece that seats twelve and has been here since I was a child and my parents were alive. We needed something this big to fit our family—Mom and Dad and the five of us kids, plus the friends and teammates and variety of strays we’d bring home for dinner. Poppy never counted as one of those strays. She’s been a fixture at this table since the day she was born—literally. Our moms met at the hospital when Daisy was born two days before Poppy, and she’s been part of our lives ever since.
“It’s— Wait.” I glance at Poppy’s almost-empty bowl of cereal, the loose-fitting sweats, and the fuzzy blue slippers on her feet. “What are youdoinghere?”
It’s funny how Daisy and Poppy went out into the world to search for adventure, but ten years later, it’s like they never left.Sometimes, I forget we’re not kids anymore and that these two aren’t eight years old jumping rope on the porch. Or twelve and sneaking field mice into my gym bag. Or fourteen and setting the curtains on fire trying to cast spells in Daisy’s bedroom. Sixteen and asking me to pick them up from parties they aren’t supposed to be at. Seventeen and expecting me to cover for them while they cut class to get high in our old barn. Half my life was spent keeping the girls safe, and it drove me crazy, but I cared too much not to be there when they called.
When the girls left Aster Springs not long after they graduated—Poppy almost the moment her diploma was in her hand, Daisy a year later after our dad died—it should have been my ticket to freedom. I was only twenty then, young enough and dumb enough to get into plenty of trouble on my own, but with Mom and Dad gone and my two brothers off chasing dreams of their own, it fell on me to run the ranch with Charlie. More responsibility. More stress. More people depending on me to be the man they needed me to be.
And then Izzy came along—precious, precocious, and proof that I can be reckless sometimes too. She’s the best thing to ever happen to me, but having any freedom as a father? Forget it. Every thought and action and spare minute I have belongs to that little girl.
