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“Hey,” Velle called.

“Yeah?”

“This is big, man,” he said, reaching out to give my shoulder a squeeze. “It’s been nice, seeing Zoe and Lainey bring you out from behind your walls.”

As nice as it may have looked, it felt infinitely fucking better.

And better still to watch Zoe come into her own.

Her tension loosened. She smiled and laughed and made connections. She woke up early in the mornings to dance on the back patio.

We brought out the best in each other.

And Lil’ Bit brought out the best in us as a couple.

Velle turned in a circle as we made it back to the living room.

“Welcome home, Coast.”

Zoe - 10 months

“Beautiful. Just beautiful. Okay, now twerk!” Brooke called, making my leg drop from the piqué position as a laugh burst out of me.

“Come on. You’ve got an a-s-s. Shake it. For the views!” she said, wiggling my cell phone around. “We gotta get this account—baby, you can’t eat bird seed,” she called to Joshua, who was reaching a hand up toward a low-hanging bird feeder in our backyard.

“Yes, well, Ididtell you,” she added, rolling her eyes at me as she set down my phone then climbed out of her chaise to go over toward her son, who was crying loudly and trying to spit the seed out.

“I’m praying my genes kick in soon,” she said, handing Joshua a juice pouch. “That was pure his d-a-d-d-y.”

“How has that situation been going?” I asked.

“Go play with your sisters, baby,” she said, patting Joshua’s back until he grudgingly moved over to the twins. “Oh, you meanthe whole ‘my deadbeat ex and his mama are trying to suemefor alimony’ thing?”

“Yeah, that.”

Brooke blew out a breath.

She’d taken my advice and started writing. She had a book finished in six weeks then sent it off to edits with some extra money she made from taking over a couple of my old dog-walking jobs.

From there, it had been a whirlwind.

“Publishing is crazy now,” she told me as we sat at a park a few months back. “You can just slap a title on a picture of a half-naked man, upload the whole thing online, hit publish, and make a small fortune.”

To be fair, Brooke’s book was amazing. And I had a strong experience in social media virality, so we’d been teasing it across all the platforms and creating a buzz.

The next thing you know, she was out of the motel and in a charming little rental house with her kids.

But as it always happened when you made something of yourself, the leeches came out, wanting to suck you dry.

In Brooke’s case, those leeches were her ex and his mother. And they were being extra disgusting by telling Brooke that if her ex didn’t get generous alimony, that he was going to seek fifty-fifty custody.

Meanwhile, his son didn’t even know who he was.

“Thankfully, that lawyer Tasha’s man hooked me up with has not been playing.”

“Yeah, about that,” I said, giving her a knowing smile.

“Oh, don’t start,” she said, but the color had crept up into her cheeks.