I would scare her if she actually saw how much turmoil there is deep down in my soul. If she encountered the depth of my rage, she wouldn’t look at me the same. None of them would.

I sit down next to Emilio, Finny’s adoptive father. He holds his fist up like he wants to pound his fist against mine, like men often do, so I touch mine to his gently. “Nice job,” he says quietly.

I don’t say anything.

“If you hadn’t done it, I was going to.”

I look up at him, but still don’t speak.

“I’d fight to the death for my daughters.” His voice is low and gravelly.

“I’m glad Star and Wren have you.” It’s true. So glad. I am grateful that they didn’t end up where I did. Because where I ended up was so much worse.

“How’s your hand?” he asks.

I flex my fingers again. “I’ll live.”

“Felt good, didn’t it?” He watches my face closely.

“Not really. I don’t like fighting.” I lean forward and balance my elbows on my knees, and let my hands hang down.

His eyes ghost over the shadow of a scar on my upper eyebrow, and then slide across my chin, which is a crisscross of webbing from all the times I landed on my face. “Right,” he says quietly.

I watch Fin as she dances. She’s graceful and so very beautiful. And so far outside my league.

“You’re going home with the girls tonight?” Emilio asks.

I shrug. “They invited me.” I look at him, finally, and find him studying me intently. “You don’t mind, do you?”

He shakes his head. “My girls are strong women. They can take care of themselves.”

My eyes go back to the dance floor and land on Finny again, where she’s in the arms of another man. He’s looking down at her like he wants to have her for breakfast. Or a midnight snack.

“Don’t let Finny’s one-night stands bother you,” he says.

I jerk my head up. “What?”

He nods toward her. “She brings them home sometimes, but she kicks them out soon after. I don’t think she’s ever had one stay the night.” He shakes his head.

“Does that worry you?”

“Nah,” he says. “It would worry me if one ever did stay the night.”

“What do you mean?”

Emilio shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter.”

I wonder if he would feel so nonchalant about it if he knew I was one of her one-night stands and that she didn’t exactly kick me out of her bed at the end of the night.

He gets up and goes to get Marta to dance. She puts Benji in his carrier for me. He’s sound asleep, but I still start to rock it with my foot.

Emilio whisks Marta out onto the dance floor. She giggles and lets him draw her close.

I wonder to myself what he meant by saying he would worry if she did let one stay the night. Strange.

***

Benji wakes me up in the middle of the night four times. I am blurry-eyed and staggering when I smell the coffee start to brew. I lift my head and look around. Coffee? There’s coffee?

I toss the covers back and pull on a T-shirt and some jeans. It would probably be prudent to go to the kitchen in clothes. I immediately wonder if Fin will be up and if she’ll still be in her jammies. Is it disturbing that I would love to see her in her jammies, looking all rumpled and sleepy-eyed? Probably.

I start toward the kitchen and Wren calls out, “Don’t get between Finny and the coffee pot!”

I stop and rub my eyes. “Huh?”

Fin walks toward me, shooting daggers at me with her eyes. I step to the side and let her walk by me. She’s wearing loose-fitting pajama pants with the top rolled down, and a thin camisole with skinny straps. And, holy hell, she’s not wearing a bra. I look away. My dick is already paying attention. I’ve never seen her when she first wakes up. Damn, she’s pretty.

She stumbles blindly toward the coffee pot and stops in front of it. She fills a mug, and my mouth waters. I want coffee too, but she’s taking her own sweet time about filling her cup.

“Don’t touch my coffee,” she mutters as she shuffles past me, dragging her feet.

I’m already reaching for a mug, but I stop. “What?”

“You heard me,” she snaps, but she doesn’t look at me.

I put the mug back.

Wren gets up from her spot on the couch and stomps into the room. She takes down a mug and fills it for me, then presses it into my hands.

“Thank you,” I murmur. It’s all I can do to get the words out. I usually don’t speak until I have finished a pot.

“I wouldn’t drink that if I were you,” Lark says as she comes into the room.

I’m already blowing across the lip of the mug. I look up.

“She’ll knife you in your sleep, dude,” Lark says. “She’s a bitch about her coffee.”

“I’ll make more,” I say. I go to the kitchen table and sit down. There’s a newspaper lying there, so I open it and I immediately see a picture of the Zeroes. They’re candid wedding shots, obviously taken from a tree or a tall building near the venue.

I stop and read all the articles about Star’s wedding, the Reeds, who were in attendance, and all the celebrity gossip about them. Some of it is ludicrous. Other parts are laughable, and even more are just sad. They can’t possibly get a lot of privacy.

“Oh, shit,” Wren says as she looks over my shoulder at the pictures. She jerks the paper from my hand. “They got pictures of them. Those assholes!”