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Clara June agrees, and we both like the idea of having family dinner around the table each night.

While Clara June cooks, I ask her if I might sneak away for a shower, if she doesn’t mind.

She rolls her eyes and waves me off, and when I get in the bathroom, I start the shower and do something I’ve been itching to do for the last day and a half.

The boys get home before I’m dressed, but I pull on track pants and a t-shirt, comb my hair, and saunter into the kitchen, my arm pressed to the doorframe, watching Clara June cook. She spins, noticing me with a gasp, then tips her head to the side.

“What’re you—” Clara June pauses, swiping her hands down her thighs.

She moves across the kitchen, rising to her toes when she’s at my chest. With her palms pressed against my pecs, her chestnut eyes narrow as they move over the smooth terrain of my upper lip.

“You shaved your mustache.” She smooths the pad of her thumb over the freshly shaved skin, and desire floods my spine, erupting in hot bursts, causing me to reach out and wrap my arms around her.

“I did,” I confirm, my cock getting stiff from her soft swipes.

She slides her palms up my chest, lassoing my neck to pull me into a kiss.

When her tongue slips into my mouth, tangling with mine, and when she feeds me one after another soft, sweet moans, I can’t help but tighten my grip on her.

She groans happily as I hold her in a tight hug, and when she breaks our kiss, I feel her smiling against my lips.

“I take it you don’t miss the mustache.” I bring one hand to my face, smoothing my thumb and pointer fingers down the newly bare skin. “I’m still getting used to it.”

She steps back, out of my arms, back to the stove, shaking the pan, making cut up red potatoes jump and sizzle. “I think you’re the sexiest man I’ve ever known, mustache or not.”

I arch a brow as my brain starts to get that fuzzy, tingling feeling. The way it gets when I can’t stand not pleasuring her for one more second. My toes curl in the privacy of my boots. “Is that so?”

With rosy cheeks, she smirks, and my heart stutters at the sight. She’s so beautiful, I cannot believe all these years we were just streets apart. I could’ve been here. Loving her. Loving them.

“Yes, Coach,” she says, tossing the potatoes one more time before tugging open the oven to pull out a tray of wings.

Fuck, she’s basically just rung the bell, leaving me a helpless drooling mess, calling me Coach like that.

She knows it, too, and she sends me another sizzling smirk before turning back toward the stove.

Steam and the scent of perfectly seasoned wings fill the small kitchen, and my stomach growls.

But right now, I have something better than wings on my mind.

With a brush, she starts to paint the wings with more buffalo sauce, sharing her attention with me. “You hungry? Here,” she says, passing me a cooled cookie sheet of warm biscuits. “Put those in the basket.”

She lifts the lid of her double boiler, checking her cobs of corn. While I’m admiring her, dropping biscuits into a basket, Tanner strides in. I sit down to finish my biscuit job, and he extends his rolled fist to me. I extend mine to him and we bump knuckles as he passes to the fridge.

“Don’t eat right now, Tanner. Dinner will be ready in less than five minutes!”

He retrieves a partially drunk Gatorade and closes the door, settling into the seat right next to mine. “I’m not.” He unscrews the orange lid and takes a drink, leaving a trace of blue on his top lip when he faces me. “What’s different about you?”

“I got glasses,” I deadpan.

Tanner rolls his eyes.

“I shaved my head.”

Another eye roll.

“I–”

“You shaved off your mustache!”

Rawley appears in the doorframe between the kitchen and living room, sniffing the air. “Damn, Mom, that smells so good.” He looks at me for a moment, but he knows why I shaved it. “That’s cool of you, man.”

I nod, and Clara June’s eyebrows pull together as she looks between us. “What’s cool?”

Rawley meets his mom at the stove and uses tongs to remove steaming ears of corn from the pot as he talks.

“Dean’s mustache. When Troy was here, he had a mustache.

And Archie told Dean that mustaches remind him of the scary jerk that came to the house.

” The two of them share a look, and I don’t know what passes between them, but when Clara June’s eyes drift back to mine, they’re wide and damp.

She smiles before turning back to Rawley.

“Put the corn on the table, and I’ll grab Archie. ”

It’s crazy how fast everything feels normal, as if I never spent a day of my adult life anywhere but this house.

It’s crazy to think a month has already passed since I moved in, since I slid a ring on her finger, since I promised them forever.

Yet the craziest part of it all isn’t how natural and easy things are with Clara June, but it’s how natural and easy it comes with the boys.

It’s Saturday afternoon and Clara June is at the salon getting a wax and highlights. I’m out back in a lawn chair, reading a book while Archie plays, when Rawley comes out and sits with me.

Rawley’s my guy, so him wanting to hang out or talk isn’t what shocks me. It’s what he wants to talk to me about.

“Hey, Dean,” he says, “is it possible to talk to you and have it not go straight back to mom?”

I squint sideways at him through the sun’s evil glare. “Depends.” Then I turn to face him. “Did you kill someone?”

He chuckles. “No.”

“Are you gonna?”

Another chuckle. “No.”

“Are you trying to score serious drugs?”

He makes a face. “No way.”

I sigh. “Those are the big ones I’d have to share. What’s up?”

He moves a rock around on the ground with the toe of his cowboy boot, then looks up at me. “Jo Jo wants to have sex.”

The way my chest goes concave at the gravity of it all in this moment; that Rawley and Jo Jo haven’t had sex yet (because honestly, I kind of assumed they had), how much thought he’s clearly given it (impressed me) and the fact that he’s come to me .

“Are you feeling like you’re not ready? Or do you think she’s not ready?

” I ask, taking a stab at what the issue could be.

I don’t teach health, but Riley Rivers Turner does, and I read her article in the paper a few months ago.

Usually, according to her, teens that lose their virginity in high school aren’t actually ready, and are pressured into it.

He shrugs. “I mean, I’m in love with Jo Jo, even though, you know, I don’t tell her.”

At that, I have to laugh because men of all ages really are cut from the same cloth. “Why don’t you tell her?”

Now his face goes red. Sex doesn’t make him blush, but love chatter does. Interesting.

“I’m scared she won’t say it back, and that it will mess everything up,” he admits. “Well, and, I don’t know. I don’t wanna take the next step unless we’re for real, you know? Sleeping together is serious.”

“I agree,” I tell him, absolutely amazed by his maturity. “Why is she eager to do it?”

“All her friends have had sex and they tease her about being a virgin,” he tells me. “I mean, I think she loves me, but I wanna do it because we’re in love, not because some girl on the cheer squad is a bully, you know?”

I nod. “I do, and I agree with you. My advice is to talk to her. Tell her what you told me. Tell her that you want to take the next step because of how you feel about her, not because everyone else is doing it.” I scratch my jaw, trying to think about what Clara June might say.

“If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would she?”

Rawley laughs. “You sound like my mom.” Then he takes a moment, staring through me as he considers my advice. “Yeah, I should just talk to her, you’re right.”

“Don’t take that step unless it’s what you both want. That’s the important thing.”

A week later, Rawley approaches me while I’m elbow deep in potting soil in the backyard. “I told her.”

“Huh?”

“I told Jo Jo, you know, that I love her.”

I nod, and smile when it clicks in place. “Good, man. How’d it go?”

His smile is from ear to ear. “She said it back. And she said she wants to wait, too.”

Another week later, he asks me for condoms, just in case.

That same week, Archie asks me to come to career day at his school because “all the other dads do.” And to really sock me in the emotional nuts and test my ability to blink away a cry, Tanner is featured in the Leader again, this time, citing me as his mentor and hero.

And the week after that, Clara June tells me she’s late.