Page 69 of With a Cherry On Top

“They’re having some kind of recital for Mother’s Day in little over two weeks,” I explain.

Logan’s gaze lingers on me for a second, his lips pressing into a thin line. I can see his mind racing, thinking about Sadie’s situation, about Josie not being here. “Oh.”

“Do you want to see it, Uncle Logan?” Sadie asks as she holds the bag up higher.

“Duh! Go change in the bedroom.”

“Careful with the zipper,” I call after her, but she’s already bounding down the hallway.

I turn back to Logan, who’s bouncing the baby slightly to calm her down. The other twin’s cries only seem to get louder, so I move closer, taking the baby from his arms gently. “I’ve got her, man. You grab”—I glance down, but they look exactly alike—“the other one.”

Logan’s tired eyes flick between the baby and me before he exhales sharply and walks away.

I sit on the couch, adjusting the baby in my arms, and rock her, her tiny body warm and solid against my chest. Her cries turn into little hiccups, her face scrunching up like she’s trying to decide whether to keep being upset or give in to the comfort. Across the room, Logan is shaking up a bottle, more exhausted than I’ve ever seen him.

I get it. The farm doesn’t wait for anyone, and Primrose has a whole brand to curate—including events on weekends, like today—which means that the two of them haven’t stopped working through the pregnancy and the birth. And now they’re getting married in three weeks. It’s a lot to handle.

“You know,” I start, keeping my voice low not to disturb the baby. “This kind of reminds me of when Sadie was a newborn.” I adjust her in my arms, rubbing circles on her back. “On my first birthday after she was born, she had a blowout so bad I had tocut her onesie off with scissors. It was either that or risk getting it in her hair.”

Logan doesn’t react, still focused on testing the milk on his wrist. But I catch the slight twitch of his mouth, the ghost of a smirk trying to break through.

Encouraged, I keep going. “I was half asleep, covered in baby shit, and I remember thinking, ‘Man, this would be so much easier if she could just hold her own ass up for a second.’”

He chuckles, but just as quickly as he started, he stops. “I remember your first birthday after you and Josie got together.”

Yeah. I know why he’s bringing it up.

Since we were teenagers, Logan and I had this birthday tradition: sneaking out behind the house with a beer, sitting on an overturned crate, talking about dumb shit, big dreams, all of it. It started when I turned sixteen, my worst birthday ever—ironically, because I’d found out the younger girl I liked, Josie, had kissed a classmate of mine. I snuck out a beer and Logan, back then an eleven-year-old clingy brother, followed me.

I still remember running from Mom in tears when he vomited the two sips of beer I’d let him drink.

And then, it became our thing.

But the year Logan’s talking about—the first one after Josie found out she was pregnant with Sadie—was the first time we missed it. And we’ve missed every single one since.

Logan shifts, giving the baby her bottle. “Mom made me come over that day. Said she needed help with painting the garage and ithadto be done that day.” He exhales sharply. “By the time I was done, I was wiped.”

He doesn’t say anything else. But from the way his jaw tightens, from the flicker of something in his eyes, I can tell—he still remembered it was my birthday. He still hurt.

He looks at me then away as his fingers tap absently against the baby’s back.

“Josie wasn’t there,” I mutter.

I don’t know why I’m telling him this. Maybe because I want him to know that I wasn’t happy either. That I didn’t just walk away from our history into some perfect life. Or maybe my desperation to connect is making me fish for pity points.

“She got me a cake from the supermarket and we had lunch together, but that night, she said she needed to go see her mom, help her with some church event. I didn’t mind too much because I had Sadie but...” I clear my throat, adjusting my hold on the baby. “The morning after, I ran into her mom on my way to work. She mentioned she hadn’t seen Josie in a week. That she hoped she would finally make the time for the parish’s charity event.”

Logan twists his neck, looking at me. “She lied?”

I nod. “I eventually found out she’d gone out with a friend—probably just wanting to avoid me. I never confronted her about it, but I rememberthatwas the moment I knew. Somewhere down the road, we were heading for divorce.”

Logan studies me, like he’s processing. Like maybe—for a second—he sees something in me that isn’t just the guy who married his ex. The brother who betrayed him. Then his voice turns flat as he says, “I sat with a beer in the backyard.”

What?I meet his gaze, heart twisting.

Does he mean that? I...I didn’t know that was an option—hell, at that point, we hadn’t talked in months.

With a tender gaze on his daughter that doesn’t match his clipped voice, he continues. “Sat there for a while. When you didn’t show up, I poured it out and went to bed.”