Page 288 of Trouble from Abroad
Lily yawns, already rolling to her side. “Don’t mess it up, Dad. I choose Mia. Go ask her to be your girlfriend.”
When I flick off the lights, I’m more convinced than ever that our home’s been rezoned to dreamland. Then I step into the hall, and there’s Mia. Toothpaste foam coats her wide-open mouth, toothbrush dangling from her hand. One look at her and it’s clear she heard every word.
I approach with caution, and she doesn’t budge. I pluck the toothbrush from her hand, return it to the bathroom, and when I come back, she’s still rooted to the spot. Mouth wiped clean now, eyes sparkling with unshed tears. Awe and panic flicker in there.
“Guess eavesdropping’s kind of our thing, right?” I joke, hoping to pull her out of her stunned silence. It doesn’t work.
“I love her so much,” she whispers, staring at Lily’s door. One lone tear escapes her effort and falls.
“I know. But thanks for saying it out loud.”
I weave my fingers through hers, tugging her softly toward the stairs. Her grip falters, as if one more step might make it all too real. As if she’s holding something back.
“Lily’s blessing is the only green light I’ll ever need. And now we have it.”
She doesn’t answer, her mind already somewhere far away.
Quiet settles between us—hope on my side, hesitationon hers—and I can only pray Lily’s words hit where mine couldn’t. Hope that she’ll stop fighting the inevitable—us—soon enough.
I need to tug again, coaxing a small step from her. “Come to bed, Trouble. My daughter wants me to ask you something.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
preston
I’mstunned into silence when I come back home from some last-minute shopping. In the span of an afternoon, Mia—flanked by April and Callie—has turned my house into the promised twelve-name party Lily wouldn’t stop talking about.
Rainbow streamers twist from the ceiling fans as if someone fed them sugar and let them loose. Balloons the size of small planets crowd the floor, most of them pearly purple with manatee faces scrawled in Sharpie. Glitter-coated cutouts of unicorns dangle from fishing line, turning lazily in the air currents, catching the light in a way that makes me certain I’ll still be vacuuming this mess when Lily heads to college.
The dining table has been sacrificed into stations: a slime bar that belongs in a hazmat lab, and a DIY bath bomb setup already dusting lavender into the air. Kids will make and take home their own unicorn poo bath bombs inside their party bags. Down by the living room, it’s a ‘decorate your toilet paper roll’ craft corner that I don’t evenwant to think about. It’s right next to the toilet piñata, of course.
April’s broom is mid-swipe across the glitter-slick floor, her face tight with regret. Liam stands in the corner, stiff as marble, staring at the sparkly carnage. That is, until Lily spots him.
He doesn’t see it coming. She charges across the room, latches onto his legs, and the man melts, softening as instantly as cup noodles in boiling water.
The billionaire drops to one knee, designer pants be damned, straight into a slurry of metallic dust, slime, and glue. His face transforms as he bends to her height, utterly undone by her grin. Lily crowns him with a unicorn tiara, and his face lights up, fool that he is for her.
Callie is cackling from the couch, phone up, documenting every crime committed against my walls and Liam’s wardrobe.
Lily hops from one station to the next with the kind of energy I’d swear came from illicit substances if I didn’t know better. She’s practically airborne, joy strapped to a jetpack. Everything and everyone in this room orbits around her.
Something pulls at me, a tug I can’t resist or explain. And then my eyes land on Mia. She’s by the slime table, watching Lily with this look—wide-eyed, soft at the edges, as if she’s memorizing every spark my daughter throws into the room. And when her gaze finally flicks up, it collides with mine across the chaos.
Everything else—the balloons, the glitter, the noise—it all fades. For a second, it’s just the two of us, her face flushed from laughter, mine still stiff in horrorand awe. And the only thought in my head is that she did this. For Lily. For us.
Her cheeks go a shade darker, and she casts her gaze down.
The party swells fast. Lily’s classmates and some neighbors pour in until my house feels one squeal away from collapsing. The kids are fine. Loud, sticky-fingered, already responsible for two shattered vases we should’ve had the sense to hide, but fine.
The single moms, though… are a different story.
“Preston, you didn’t tell us you can bake.” One of them slides too close to the snack table, fingernail tracing the edge of a cupcake I merely paid for.
I’m shaking my head, but another woman swoops in before I can voice my answer, hand catching my arm as if I might vanish. “Forget baking. Look at these balloons. Bet he blew them all up himself.” Her laugh lands too sharp in my ear, fingers still latched onto me.
A third joins, practically elbowing the second aside to take her place at my shoulder. “You’re blushing, Dr. Preston. That’s adorable.”
By the time they form a circle around me, their voices high and sugary, I’m halfway convinced there’s an unspoken competition to see who can plant their claws deepest. And if the kids are chaos incarnate, their mothers are a whole other brand of disaster—handsy, territorial, and with no sense of boundaries whatsoever. This is an ambush.
