Page 8 of Made for Us

“They got shit-faced two years ago,” Wilson adds. “We found them throwing up in the bushes.”

“Well, that sounds like a great time,” I say, “if it’s not too much trouble.”

Cooper picks up his phone and dials someone, and as soon as I hear Matthew’s voice, I just listen. “Dad, Tristan and Penelope are coming with.”

“Perfect, we have five extra houses, just in case,” Matthew replies, and I look over at Xavier.

“Just in case?” I whisper, and Xavier just shakes his head.

“Don’t make me judge my future father-in-law,” he says, and I laugh. It takes us about three hours to clean out the lockers, and the boys take one more picture before we all walk out.

When I finally pull up in the driveway, my phone pings with an alert and an email comes in from Matthew with all the trip details.

Grabbing the bag from the back seat, I walk up the path and open the front door. “I’m home.” The door to upstairs is closed, so I know she isn’t upstairs. I walk into the house, putting my bag right at the entrance to the dining room that we only ever use during the holidays. “P,” I yell her name and still hear nothing when I walk into the huge family room. It’s the whole reason I bought this house. It’s in the middle of the house, attached to a giant kitchen with an even bigger island. It’s where we spend most of the time.

The massive U-shaped couch in the middle of the family room took me six months to get since it was custom made, and it feels like you’re in a bed every time you sit on it. The whole reason for that was because we love to do movie nights, and if we fall asleep, she won’t get a sore back. I look over to the back door, seeing splashes coming from the pool.

I smile as I walk out and see her jump into the pool. “Hey,” I say to Roxanne, the babysitter, who is sitting on the side of the pool watching her. My parents just left after spending the past two weeks here. I hated to see them leave, but I know in a couple of weeks I’ll be with them for the rest of the summer.

“Hi.” She smiles at me. Roxanne has been with me for the past six years. My mother hired her when she came down, and she is the one who watches Penelope when I travel and for home games.

“Is she tired?” I ask, and she just smiles. I know she’s probably running on fumes at this point. “You can take off now,” I urge her, and she gets up, walking inside.

“Daddy,” Penelope squeals when she comes up from under the water, “did you see my jump?”

“I did.” I kick off my shoes and socks and walk over to the side of the pool, putting my feet in while she goes around in circles. “Did you pack your things for the lake?”

She looks over at me and just smiles. “No.” She shakes her head. “I thought you said we would do it together.”

“No,” I remind her, “I gave you a list of everything you needed to pack.”

She laughs. “I forgot,” she lies to me, and she smiles. “But we can do it together.”

“Fine,” I huff. “I was talking to Xavier, and he invited us to go to the beach,” I inform her, and her eyes light up even more. “You didn’t want to go to the beach, did you?” I get up, standing by the pool as she comes over to the steps.

She walks up the steps, leaking water everywhere. “I do, I do.”

“Good, because we leave in two days.”

“Yay!” She jumps into my arms like she always does, and I catch her, my shirt soaked from her. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” She kisses me on the cheek every single time she says thank you. She wraps her arms around me. “Is Parker going to be there?” She mentions Cooper’s daughter who she is always with.

“She is,” I confirm as she wiggles out of my arms. “Let’s go pack.”

She holds out her hand for me. “Can we have pizza?” she asks at the same time as she puts her hand in mine and looks up at me. Her blue eyes sparkle as her hair drips all over the place. “Can we build sandcastles?” I walk her over to the chair where her towel is. She lets my hand go to wrap the towel around her. “Can we do mermaid tails?”

All I know is I would give her my whole world. “We can do whatever you want,” I tell her, leaning down and kissing her nose.

“Is Abigail going to come also?” she asks, and I look at her.

“I think so.” I think about the picture I saved earlier today of the three of us. “ That would be nice,” I tell her, but she just ignores me and walks inside, leaving me with my own thoughts. “Yes, that would be nice.”

CHAPTER FIVE

ABIGAIL

“The car is going to be here in ten minutes,” Gabriella yells from her bedroom. “Which means we have nine minutes to get downstairs.”

I huff as I zip closed the suitcase. “Or we can get downstairs before the car gets here and be early,” I yell back at her as I pull my luggage off the bed and onto the floor. I push it toward the door and it stops right at the door.

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