“Is my daddy going to be okay?” she asks quietly, hugging her doll tightly within her arms.
“I think they’re just deciding what color bandage to put on his leg right now. Your dad is going to be just fine,” I tell her with a smile. Tyler releases one hand from her doll and wraps it around my leg. “Thanks for helping my daddy. He told me you’ve always been there for him.”
I kneel down in front of Tyler and place my hands on her shoulders. “Your daddy has always been there for me too. That’s what friends are for. Don’t forget that, okay?”
Her big, brown eyes blink once and her dark ponytail whips around as she looks up at Sasha. “I think Auntie Sasha needs a friend like that,” she giggles.
“My goodness, y’all! Hush up, Tyler.” Sasha takes Tyler by the arm and tugs her over to the chair beside me.
“I get the sense you have a few people who are worried about you,” I say, nudging Sasha in the shoulder.
“All of them are bananas,” she says playfully so Tyler laughs.
“Well,” I sit back down. “I’m not a banana. I’m more like a large zucchini or an eggplant, you know?”
Sasha rolls her eyes and smirks as she takes a seat on the other side of Tyler. “I offered to stay home with Tyler, but Cali wanted her here, in case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t wondering,” I tell her. “Although, I know you were looking for another excuse to see me. Or you changed your mind about lending me your charger. Either way, it’s cool.”
“I told you you could keep the charger,” she laughs.
“Good, because my phone is just about dead.”
“Give me your phone and the charger,” she demands.
I do as the lady requests, and she squats down in front of the chair, reaching underneath to plug the charger into the wall. I can’t help but notice the fairness of her skin when her shirt separates from the waist of her pants. And I can’t miss the hot pink lacy thong she’s wearing. For someone who seems so damn innocent, I think Sasha has been keeping secrets.
I’m too busy staring at her panties when I hear her clearing her throat. I look over at her face angled to look up at me. “You like what you see?” she asks, mimicking my joke from this morning when I was looking for my charger under her bed.
“Well, I’ll be damned, Miss Sasha. You got me. And ‘yes’ is the answer to that question. I definitely do like what I see. I like pink panties.” While I get the sense this isn’t like her to be so risqué due to the dark red coloring on her cheeks, I think it’s damn hot she was playing with me like that.
“I have pink undies on today too!” Tyler shouts.
Realizing Tyler was listening in on this whole conversation, Sasha stands up quickly, knocking her head under the chair while doing so. Her hand cups around the back of her head and her eyes and nose scrunch. Man, she’s cute. “You okay?”
“That hurt,” she laughs.
“Shouldn’t be flirting so much,” I tease her. “See what happens?”
“You’re a pain in the butt, Mr. Jags,” she says, sitting back down.
I so badly want to tell her I can fix the pain in her butt, but I’ll refrain from my dirty jokes. For now.
CHAPTER SIX
SASHA
WE’VE BEEN PACING in the waiting room of this hospital for two hours with little to no information, and I can tell Cali’s about to blow. They won’t tell her what’s going on. All we know is what Jags has told us. Tyler finally fell asleep on Jags’s lap and it’s just about the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen. He must be like this great big teddy bear to her. A hard muscly teddy bear.
Jags sees me smiling as I watch Tyler sleeping on his lap, which I can see is generating another pick-up line. “My other leg is free if you need a place to sit,” he whispers over to me as if he were gently offering me something nice. Saw that one coming a mile away.
I take a look around the room, spotting at least twenty open seats. “I think I can find somewhere a little less bony to sit, but thank you,” I reply.
“Oh there’s no bone here, doll-face. This is all one-hundred-percent pure muscle,” he says, grinning, then continues to whisper, conspiratorially, “but if you sit here, that might change.”