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Logan blushes, and I sputter, trying to say Mom and River at the same time, and what comes out is something that sounds likeMiver.

“Awe, look at her, Logan. You got her all tongue-tied.”

Mom pats his face. Mom pats my boyfriend’s face. A six-foot-two grown man who towers over her, since like me, she’s just five-foot-three. She winks at him and then looks at me.

“All the best ones do. Leave your tongue tied, you know?”

Well, I can’t yell at my mom, so I find the next best thing. River.

“What?”

she says, like she had no hand in any of this, and the three of them walk away, leaving Logan and me behind.

“Gotta check that pot roast,” Mom says as she walks to the kitchen.

“Skye, you can put Logan in the room next to yours. It will make it easier to sneak in the middle of the night. But you’d better do it in your bed. The guest one is very squeaky.”

Logan’s wide eyes find me, and his face is frozen between embarrassment and a laugh.

“Now I know where River gets it from.”

Ugh.

“You have no idea.”

Chapter Fifty

We’ll be leavingin a few hours. Tomorrow is Monday and I’m back to work. The girls have school. Hopefully, things will be back to normal at Riggins.

I spent every night in Skye’s bed as per her mom’s suggestion. I still can’t believe she said that. I tried to be very discreet about it, but she had a knowing smirk on her face every morning. Skye is sleeping next to me, blond hair spread across the pillow and over her shoulders. She looks so peaceful. Just looking at her centers me and calms all the turmoil inside me. She has a quiet power about her and she doesn’t even know it.

The whole family has a strength about them I’ve never encountered before. They’re so completely different from mine. I had no idea there could be such love and trust. I mean, rationally, I know it. But to see it at work, it’s something I’ve never been exposed to.

Skye is more like her father. He has a quiet aura about him, but I’m not foolish enough to think it means he’s a pushover. The love he has for Serena, his wife, and the girls is clear in his every word and gesture. Time and again, I catch myself wishing my father could have been more like David. But my father loves power, not people.

Skye stirs, her eyes flutter, and she catches me watching her. A smile tugs at her lips.

“Good morning, Sunshine.”

The smile gets bigger.

As corny as it sounds, she is like sunshine. My life up to the moment I met Skye was rules, order, laws, gray. But on a cold September night, she decided to go out in tiny shorts and pink bunny slippers, and it was like seeing colors for the first time. She surprised me. I wasn’t ready for her. I thought I had my life all lined up. I never realized how much under my father’s influence I still was. Not until Skye showed me differently, and I can’t even pinpoint how. She just does. She just is. No reasons, no explanations, no justifications needed.

“Have you been awake long?”

Her voice is husky with sleep, and it makes my morning wood jump and move the sheet, which does not go unnoticed. Her eyes pop up and glance back at my face.

“Do it again?”

I indulge her and contract my stomach muscles, making my dick jump.

She reaches over and brushes her fingertips over me through the sheet with the lightest of touches, and my dick moves again.

“It’s alive!”

Skye says in a maniacal voice a la Doctor Frankenstein.

She giggles. The giggles turn into laughs. I can’t help but laugh with her.