Healing Hearts (New Hope Falls #6) - Kimberly Rae Jordan Page 0,65
of the pizza place. She’d parked but then left without coming inside.
“Ryker Bennett?”
He turned away from the door, then walked back to the counter. “Do you have an order for Sophia Haldorson?”
The teenage boy behind the counter frowned then turned to look at some slips pinned to a board. “Yeah. I’ve got one for her.”
“I’d like to pay for her order in addition to mine.”
The teen looked puzzled. “Her order won’t be ready for a few more minutes.”
“I don’t want to pick up her order. I just want to pay for it.”
“Oh. I don’t know if you can do that.”
“What’s the problem, Trev?” When a man in his twenties approached the counter, Ryker hoped he might understand the concept a bit better.
“He wants to pay for an order, but he doesn’t want to pick it up.”
The man looked at Ryker with raised brows. “I’m afraid I might need you to translate that.”
“He’s not wrong,” Ryker said with a laugh. “I want to pay for my own order and pick it up. However, I also want to pay for a friend’s order. She’s a single mom, so I thought I’d pay for it so when she comes in to get it, it doesn’t cost her anything.”
“Ah. Gotcha. We can definitely do that for you.”
“Excellent.” Ryker was relieved when the man sent the teen into the back and took care of things for him.
Even though he’d stayed away from the pair that week, he’d planned to see if he could stop by the next day to mow again. But now having seen them briefly, he wanted to go by their place right then. But he had promised Michael he’d bring pizza back to the house for supper so he couldn’t. He’d text Sophia later to see if the next day would work for her.
At least he felt good about having covered the cost of their meal. He knew that money was likely tight for them, so helping them out even just a little bit in that way felt good.
Back at Michael’s, he carried the pizza boxes into the house, holding the door so Wolfie could follow him in.
“You’re gonna wish you could eat pizza, Wolfie,” Ryker said as he set the boxes on the table. “And you too, Vivianne.”
“I’m hungry enough to fight either of them for mine,” Michael said from where he sat, feeding Vivianne her bottle.
Ryker was a bit surprised at how well Michael was managing Vivianne on his own. But while he was doing good in that regard, Ryker could see that whatever had happened with Lani weighed heavily on the man. He wished he knew what to say to help him.
He’d been toying with the idea of going by to see Lani. Was she doing any better than Michael? Ryker didn’t think he’d been mistaken in thinking that something more than just friendship had blossomed between the pair. He thought perhaps they’d each realized their own feelings for the other but were still oblivious to the other’s feelings for them.
Sometimes looking at a situation from the outside provided clarity that being too close to it obscured.
“Is Vivianne’s sleep schedule getting better?” he asked as he handed Michael a plate with a couple of pieces of his pizza of choice on it.
“Thanks.” He took the plate and set it down on the end table beside him. “No two nights seem to be the same, so I can’t really tell if it’s getting better or worse. I think I’ve just reached a point where I’ve accepted I’m going to be without sleep for the next eighteen years.”
Ryker chuckled. “My brother has two, and they’re both sleeping through the night now. One is eight, and the other just turned eleven. I think you’ll be fine in a few years.”
Michael stared down at Vivianne. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m going to be able to be a good father to her. A single dad to a daughter? What do I know about girls?”
“At this age, boys and girls aren’t really that different…body parts aside.”
“Yeah, but how am I supposed to do ponytails and braids and…makeup?”
Ryker smiled at that. “You can learn those things. YouTube is helpful. Plus, you might not always be on your own.”
“I was going to say that that was how I planned to live my life,” Michael said with a humorless laugh. “But I had also planned to never have kids, and I’ve got this little one now.”
Ryker found his thoughts drifting to Sophia and Bryson, and even Vivianne. It