cheered. “Boxes boxes boxes. Can we have the boxes, Daddy?”
“Once they’re empty, they’re yours. Zach, grab Beth for me.”
Zach rolled his eyes and picked up his niece. “Keep those hands away from me, B. I’m too beautiful to be buttered.”
Beth snickered and wiped a sticky hand over her uncle’s cheek.
“Ugh! Nate, control your creatures!” But Zach was already leaving the kitchen with a grin on his face, swinging Beth through the air while she squealed.
Which left Nate with a squirming, slippery Josh. He turned to his mother. “You gonna be okay?”
She gave him a look so mocking, it almost transported him back through time. For a second, he was 16 again, and she was giving him that you-think-I-was-born-yesterday? look while he tried to pretend he was visiting London instead of outright running away.
What a cocky little fuck he’d been. Here he was, years down the line, right back in the town he hated, with too much loss behind him and more lurking ahead. His mother’s arch looks might be the same, but the rest of her was so very different. She was rail-thin instead of comfortably plump. Her curtain of black hair was gone, replaced by a bright silk headscarf. And she was shivering—shivering—in May, in the house, under three blankets.
But if he thought about that too hard, he might do something terrible. Like cry.
So Nate focused on the reassuring derision in her words as she replied. “I’m not one of your littlies, Nathaniel,” she sniffed. “Stop checking on me.”
He winced. “I worry.”
“Yes. I noticed that when you sold everything you owned and moved back home in less than two months. Now go. Josh is dripping all over the floor.”
Oh, fuck. Nate looked down to find gleaming yellow droplets spattered over the kitchen tiles he’d just mopped.
Business as usual, then.
“So,” Zach said. “You—”
“Hold on.” Nate swung around and picked up his damp, naked son, cutting off the poor boy’s lap of triumph. “Joshua. Put your clothes on. We talked about this.”
Josh screwed up his face. “But I don’t like my pants.”
“What’s wrong with your pants?”
“Baby pants. I want my big boy pants.”
Nate sighed. “I don’t know where they are, sunshine. But if you get dressed, we can check the laundry room and find them, okay?” He put Josh down. “Does that sound good?”
“No. No pants.” Josh skipped off down the hall.
Nate ran a hand over his tired eyes and checked his watch. Only… twelve more hours until he could go to sleep. Or at least, until he could lie in bed and enjoy the silence and stillness while his mind refused to rest. Wonderful.
“So,” Zach repeated, leaning against the bedroom wall. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re kind of a mess.”
Nate shrugged. “I think we’re doing okay.”
“Mate. You’re not wearing a shirt.”
He wasn’t? Nate looked down at his own chest. Oh. Right. He wasn’t.
“Jesus,” Zach snorted. “I can’t believe you just had to check. You think tattoos count as clothes now?”
“Fuck off,” Nate muttered, hunting down the boxed-up contents of his wardrobe. The kids’ stuff was mostly unpacked, but he didn’t have time to waste on his own shit.
“You’re only wearing one sock,” Zach said.
“Now you’re just being picky.”
“I think the kids are actually trying to torment you.”
“That is correct.”
“Do you even have food in the house?” Zach demanded.
Nate sighed. “I have bread, butter, beans, and frozen nuggets. The four pillars of any child’s diet.”
Zach arched a brow.
“Oh, fuck you. I was planning on shopping today.”
Josh and Beth ran past the door, both butt-naked, screeching out a tune that Nate vaguely recognised as something from Moana.
Zach smirked, opening his mouth.
“Don’t. Don’t say a word.” Nate glared. “I have it under control.”
“You absolutely do not have it under control. You’re going to call Hannah, right? Because Evan said she has all kinds of fancy kid-related qualifications and about a thousand years’ experience. And I happen to think that she’s a really nice girl.”
Something about Zach’s tone snatched Nate’s attention. He paused in his hunt for a shirt and glared at his little brother. “You’re trying to get into her pants, aren’t you?”
“Obviously,” Zach said. “Have you seen her?”
Yes, Nate had seen her. He wouldn’t mind seeing her again, in fact. Repeatedly.
Which was a realisation so disturbing, he actually had to sit down.
After a second, he picked up his thread of conversation again. “I’m not about to hire her, let her live in my shitty new house and watch my hyperactive children, just so you can wheedle your way into