Page 32 of Never Stop

He laughed. “I like your thinking.”

In a month, my peanut was going to be eleven.Eleven!Time was flying by. It seemed like just yesterday when I’d held Cheyenne in my arms and swore I’d never let anything happen to her. I had no idea then that Dana would die, but since that time, I’d made sure that Cheyenne’s only heartbreak. Now she was turning eleven, and in a few years, some boy would break her heart. It was a fact. No one went through life without having their heart broken. Mine was broken in sixth grade when my neighbor Paige decided she wanted to kiss other boys and not only me. I was elev—

Fuck!

Well, Cheyenne had already had her first kiss and thankfully wasn’t heartbroken. But she would be in middle school in a few months—kissing more boys.

Nope.

Nope.

Nope.

I needed a gun.

“Remember when I took Cheyenne to dinner?” I asked Brooke as we sat on the couch with her head in my lap.

“Yeah.”

“I asked her what she wanted to do for her birthday.”

“What did she say?”

“That she wants to have a sleepover.”

Brooke chuckled. “Most girls do at her age. Well, until we’re twenty-one. After that, we usually only have sleepovers because someone is too drunk to drive home.”

I grimaced. “You’re not making this easy on me. I already fear the day I have to shoot a boy.”

Brooke full on laughed and turned on her back so she could see my face. “You’re not going to shoot a boy.”

“I will when he breaks her heart.”

“And then we’ll all move to Canada?”

I shrugged. “Yeah. We’ll go on the lam and I’ll forbid her to ever date again.”

“So this is what it’s like to have a dad.” She frowned.

I grinned down at her. “Well, if you’d had a dad, then we would have never met because you would have already been in Canada,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.

“This is true, but I also wouldn’t have let Jared string me along for so long.”

“We’ve been through this. Things happen for a reason.” I brushed back her dark brown hair from her forehead.

“I know.” She sighed. “But I might know if there’s colon cancer in my family.”

“All right, we are not talking about this right now.” I stared into her eyes trying to convey I meant it. “We need to plan for this twelve girl sleepover.”

“Twelve girls?” she screeched and sat up.

“I know. I’ve been trying to process it myself.” I closed my eyes briefly and thought about twelve young girls screaming through my house.

“Why did you agree to have twelve girls sleep over?”

I shrugged. “It’s her birthday, and I want her to have whatever she wants.”

She grinned. “You’re such a sucker.”