snorted. “They could just stash it in their foam finger. At least, a handgun anyway.”
Hayes’ hand tightened on mine.
“I wonder if they’ve thought of that,” Hayes rumbled, looking at all the foam fingers.
“They do a bag check now,” Kincaid said. “We went in through the express lane, where the people with no bags can zip through.”
“Ahhh,” I said. “Well, then they’d just have to conceal it on their person. Unless they’re getting patted down.”
Hayes’ hand covered my mouth. “Careful, your police dad is showing.”
I licked his hand, causing him to chuckle and pull it away.
“I’m just sayin’,” I said. “Unless they start using a metal detector, it isn’t going to matter if they check bags.”
Alec sighed. “All the sense of security I felt as I came in is long gone. Thanks, Negative Nancy.”
“Ares,” I corrected him. “I think you mispronounced my name.”
Hayes squeezed my hand and tugged me sideways to miss a mother on her phone that wasn’t paying attention to where she was walking, or where her toddler was walking.
The toddler went under Hayes and my conjoined hands, and I just barely missed hitting the mother with my shoulder.
Instead of leading us to the bleachers, though, Hayes took me to the hill that was clear across the stadium. Alec and Kincaid went to the seats in the stands, and I couldn’t say I was upset by this. Especially not when he pulled me down between his thighs and wrapped his arms around me, my back to his front.
We watched the game like this until halftime when I went to gather drinks and popcorn.
When I got back it was in time for the man holding the gun that shot the shirts out into the crowd to walk up aiming his pipe toward us.
The gun went off, and Hayes jerked like he was shot for real, and not just shot at by a t-shirt.
I pulled the t-shirt into my hands and turned to Hayes with a smile on my face. That smile quickly dropped off my face when I saw him looking glassy-eyed down at his hands.
“Hayes?” I asked, patting his leg. “What is it?”
He blinked a few times, his eyes coming back into focus, and said, “I…nothing.”
I swallowed, worried now that something had happened that I had no clue why it was important.
But I knew it was.
Whatever had happened, wherever he’d gone? It’d been somewhere I didn’t want him to be.
Which was why I started talking about stupid stuff—babies.
Not that babies were stupid. The idea of having one right now was stupid.
“I knew from when I was a young girl that I wanted to have babies,” I said. “Eventually, I’d like to quit my job and be a stay-at-home mother.”
His body loosened infinitesimally behind me, letting me know that my talking was working.
“I want ten kids.”
He drew in a deep breath, then released it, his hot breath blowing against the back of my neck.
“Five boys and five girls,” I continued.
He bent down and rested his forehead against my shoulder. “Why ten kids?”
I snickered. “I don’t know. I guess I just always had a nice, even number. And ten seemed like the perfect amount.”
He pressed a kiss to my shoulder.
“I was lost just a second ago,” he murmured. “Thank you.”
I smiled as I watched the second half kick-off.
“They should really be careful about where they were aiming that sucker. What if it’d hit me in the face? My nose bleeds easily,” I teased.
He chuckled and moved until his chin could rest on my head.
“Did you ever get that checked out? It’s not normal for a nose to bleed like that,” he murmured.
“I had some arteries in my nose cauterized when I was younger because it was so bad. But even the slightest bump now still causes massive bleeds,” I said. “Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I look like a murder victim.”
He hummed something that sounded like ‘son of a bitch’ but I didn’t ask him for clarification.
I enjoyed where I was sitting until the very end of the game.
When I went to sit up, fireworks started to go off above my head, and I gasped.
“Oh, look!” I pointed.
But the body behind my back was gone, and when I looked back, it was to