Page 35 of Right Next Door (Stone Family #3)

Ian

I surreptitiously rub my palms on my jeans as the server sets down our plates. It’s the usual breakfast with my kids, but I’ve got a knot in my stomach, knowing I have to tell Jasper, Jaybird, and Juniper about Nicole.

I don’t know why I’m so nervous. It’s not like they think I’m a monk. I’ve dated before—some women they’ve known, some they haven’t. But what I have with Nicole is special, and I need my kids to know this time is different.

And, truth be told, I am worried about their reaction. I think any single parent has a sticker in the back of their mind, a thought that hangs around, making itself known every so often that their children won’t approve of their new partner.

I poke at my pancakes. “So I, uh, got something I wanna tell you three.”

“You took us out for breakfast to give us bad news?” Jaybird readjusts his black-framed glasses, a smirk on his face. “Bad form, Dad.”

“It’s not bad news, and I don’t know why I take your unappreciative ass out at all. Next time, I’m leaving you home.”

“He’ll just follow me,” Jasper says around a bite of bacon. “Like a lost puppy. I can’t get rid of him.”

Jay tosses his arm around his brother’s shoulders. “You love me.”

Jasper doesn’t push his arm off, but he also doesn’t answer. This is how it’s always been between them. Jaybird desperate for his older brother’s attention, and Jas begrudgingly giving it to him. Then again, my middle child is desperate for anyone’s attention.

A puppy is an accurate description.

“So, what’s up?” Juniper asks, smiling. She’s my favorite child for a reason.

For a second, I lose myself in her dimples, the same ones as my mother, and stroke my hand down the back of her head.

I’m tactile with all of my children, but especially Juniper.

I need to remind myself that she’s here.

My baby is still with us. She steals a bite of my pancakes because she can never not eat other people’s food and always just wants to try it .

And maybe that’s why my eldest child is my favorite.

I clear my throat and move my plate farther away from my daughter. “I wanted to let you know that I’ve started dating someone.”

The three of them blink at me, completely unsurprised, and when I raise my brows expectantly, Jay’s the one who gives me a reaction. He throws his arms up. “Oh my god! I can’t believe it!”

I heave a sigh and rub at my forehead. Honestly, I don’t know why I take him out in public.

“You’re dating ?” he goes on, garnering the attention of every single other patron in the place. He places the back of his wrist against his head like a Victorian woman about to faint. “I cannot believe you would keep this from us.”

Jasper shakes his head. “Shut the fuck up, man. I’m trying to eat, and you’re making it weird.”

“ I’m making it weird?” Jay motions to me. “ He’s the one being weird. Announcing he’s with Nicole like he needs a kidney.” He turns to me. “Do you need a kidney?”

I ignore him. “So, you know already? You all know?”

Jasper barely glances up from his omelet. “Yeah.”

“Kinda hard to miss the way you’ve been acting lately,” Jay says around a bite of toast. “All smiley and shit.”

I huff, leaning back in my seat. “Well, damn. Thought I was being subtle.”

Jay snorts. “As a sledgehammer.”

I turn to June for confirmation, and she shrugs. “I could tell something was going on. You were extra diligent about making sure everything was clean.”

“That’s because of you.” I aim my fork at her. “For someone who’s never home, you still somehow leave the place a mess. And why the hell do you need so much makeup? There are bottles all over the counter. I’m gonna throw them in the trash.”

She shoulders me. “If you throw them away, you’ll be throwing away your money.”

I hit her with a glare. A real one. “I gave you that credit card for emergencies.”

“My primer being discontinued is an emergency.”

“Primer?” I ask at the same time Jaybird says, “Like for paint?”

“You put primer on before foundation,” she explains, and Jasper curls his lip.

“I still don’t understand. What’s the point of all of it?”

My daughter waves her hand at the three of us. “What’s the point of your tattoos? Because you like them? They make you feel pretty?”

When Jasper and I don’t answer her rhetorical question, Jay shrugs. “I think I’m pretty without them.”

She rolls her eyes. “Nothing can help cover up your face.”

Jay throws a sugar packet at her, and I put my hand out, stopping the fight before it can begin because even in their twenties, they still act like toddlers.

I get back on track. “So you’re really cool with me and Nicole?”

Jas nods while June smiles. “Of course. We’re happy for you.”

“As long as you keep all your kinky shit away from us,” Jay mutters, and for a moment, I lose my breath, afraid I’ve accidentally let something slip or given them a peek into my sexual lifestyle, but no. He’s merely being a turd.

I’ve always been open with my kids about sex.

A person has to be, raising two curious boys, let alone a girl.

The nightmares of what women have to deal with keep me up at night.

But I’ve never discussed my sex life with them, and I wouldn’t.

Though I have shown them pictures of a dick infected with gonorrhea.

Gotta know what they’re dealing with if they don’t take their shit seriously.

“If you’re referring to what happened the other day, that’s your fault for walking into my house,” I tell my troublemaking son.

“What happened the other day?” June asks around a bite of French toast.

“I walked in on Dad in a… delicate situation.” Jay puts on a French accent, and Juniper gasps.

“He’s overexaggerating, and it would never have happened in the first place if you didn’t walk into people’s houses without knocking,” I say, lifting my coffee cup to my mouth.

“That’s my house,” he replies, offended.

“It was never your house since you never lived there.” June and I moved in to the apartment when I bought the building. By then, Jay had already graduated high school and was well on his way to living independently.

“You live there, ergo, it’s my house.”

I polish off my coffee and set the empty cup on the table. “You are exhausting.”

Before he can respond, June perks up. “I think I should move out.”

I whip my head to her. “What?”

“I think I should move out.”

“And go where?”

She lifts her shoulder. “Things are getting serious between Easton and me, and?—”

I shut that idea down. “No.”

“Absolutely not,” Jasper says in follow-up.

“I don’t think so,” Jaybird agrees.

She frowns at all of us, color rising in her cheeks. “Why not?” She gestures at her brothers. “You two were living on your own, and?—”

“You’re not moving in with Easton,” I say. “You’re not even done with school yet.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“You’re too young,” Jasper replies.

“I am not.”

Jay nods. “Junie, you?—”

“Don’t call me Junie,” my daughter snaps. “Don’t tell me I’m too young when you guys are the ones treating me like I’m five. I’m a grown woman.”

“You’re twenty,” Jasper points out, earning an irate huff.

“And what were you doing at twenty? Driving across the country on your motorcycle? Fucking strangers? Selling drugs? No one knows because you won’t ever tell anyone, so don’t come at me like I’m a child when you refuse to be an adult.”

Jasper told me what he did in those years after he graduated high school, which was mostly a lot of soul-searching, but I doubt June wants me to point that out at this particular moment.

I drape my arm on the back of her chair. “Juniper, I understand you want to move out, but I’d like you to?—”

“Oh, you can stop patronizing me, Dad,” she says, pushing her plate away and crossing her arms over her chest to fume.

“But keep treating me like a know-nothing child, and one of these days, you won’t be able to say shit to me about it because I’ll go off and do something without saying a word to any of you. ”

Admittedly, I’m a little overprotective of her, as are her brothers, but it’s hard not to be, with her past. She’s my little girl, and she’s their baby sister. There’s no way for us to shut off our instincts. But I could listen better.

“Can we talk about this later?” I try, moving her plate back in front of her. “After your school year starts. We’ll talk about it. I promise.”

She eyes me suspiciously, though the hard line of her mouth melts easily when I poke my fork into a piece of her French toast and hold it up like an airplane. “Stop,” she says with a laugh, smacking my hand away as I fly it to her mouth. “Dad!”

I eat the French toast instead then I tell my boys, “Your sister is smarter and more mature than either one of you was at her age. Don’t be dicks.”

Jasper inclines his head in agreement as Jaybird raises his hands, so full of innocence. “It’s not her. It’s Easton.”

“Jaybird,” I warn as June kicks him under the table.

“You’re such an asshole.”

Jay snaps back. “You know how it is between him and Cash. I still can’t believe you’d ever go out with him.”

Putting my hand over June’s mouth, I stop the argument by asking, “Speaking of, where is Cash this morning?”

“With his grandma,” he says, going back to his breakfast, so I let go of June.

Cash’s grandmother lives in a nursing home, but he visits her regularly.

He’s a good kid, dedicated and loyal, and basically one of my own since he and Jay first became best friends in elementary school.

He also happens to be the guy my daughter has had a crush on since she was little, although she doesn’t know I know.

Whatever she’s got going on with Cash’s stepbrother Easton, I don’t get, and clearly, I won’t.

So I keep my mouth shut and hope everything will turn out all right.

“What about you?” I motion to Jas with my fork. “What you got going on today?”

“Not much. Working on some stuff.”

“New pieces?”