Only One Regret (Only One 5)

"Better than five o’clock," I reply, and she laughs.

"True that," she says, and her voice goes soft. "What’s up?" It’s been three days since I signed my divorce papers.

"I’m going to pick up the girls," I say, looking at the clock and seeing I have twenty minutes before I can pick them up. They hate when I get there before four thirty since it’s playtime after a nap. "Then I’ll swing by and get you."

"Are you sure you don’t want me to take my car?" she asks.

"What are you doing ?" I ask, and she huffs out.

"I’m closing down everything," she says, and I have no idea what that even means.

"Can you leave the office?" I ask, turning my SUV in the direction of her office. "The girls would love to see Auntie Erika.”

She groans. "You can’t use the girls as bait, Cooper," she says, and I hear papers shuffling. "Call me when you’re downstairs."

I laugh when she hangs up on me. When I pull up to the office building, I don’t have to call her because she is on her phone walking out. I spot a couple of men turn their heads when she walks to the vehicle like she’s on a fucking runway, and the best part of all of this is she doesn’t know she’s doing it. I get out of the SUV, walking around to greet her as she hangs up the phone. "You look like a garden," I say, and she looks down at her tight floral skirt.

"If that is your way of saying I look nice"—she shakes her head—"you have to do better." She leans in to kiss my cheek. "We have to stop at Starbucks," she says when I open the door for her, and she gets in. "I’m not going to show up to pick up the girls without a present, and if you gave me a warning, I could have gotten them something cooler." She reaches out and closes the door for me.

I walk around the SUV and get in. "It was a spur-of-the-moment thing," I say. "Dinner is at five thirty."

"When you say dinner, do you mean?" She looks over, knowing that my family is in town.

"They have arrived," I confirm, and she closes her eyes.

"The last time, we almost got kicked out because of the noise factor," she reminds me. "This would be better to do at a home. We could have done it at my house."

"Maybe Sunday at lunch, then," I say, and she doesn’t even care. If I would have told Julianne that, she would not have allowed it. When my family used to come down and visit, she would have one meal with them. One. That was her cap, and she made sure she chose the shortest dinner. If it was up to her, she would not have even come.

The minute the girls see Erika, they forget I’m even there. She buckles Mia in while she talks to Emma and shows her the pink drink she got both of them. She spends the whole ride looking in the back and asking them questions.

I pull up to the restaurant at the same time as my parents do, and the girls squeal when they see them. I don’t even have time to put it in park before they are opening the back door. "Where are my babies?" my mother says.

"Right here," I say, making her laugh. I look over and see that my uncle Max is parking the car with my aunt Allison and my cousin Michael in the back seat.

"Uncle Max came?" I look over at my father.

"He had a meeting with Erika today," he says, and I look over at Erika.

"You didn’t tell me," I remark, shocked that she knew he was here.

"Because it’s none of your business who I meet with." She grabs her purse and gets out of the SUV. She goes to my father, and he gives her a side hug and a kiss on the cheek. She scrunches up her nose at Mia, who leans in and rubs her nose with hers. I get out of the SUV in time to see her share a big hug with my mother, and Emma wraps her arm around her also.

"Hey there, big guy." My uncle Max slaps my shoulder. "You don’t look so bad," he says, and I glare at him. "You look about a hundred and twenty pounds lighter."

I roll my eyes when my aunt Allison slaps him away. "Too soon," she scolds and then gives me a hug. "How is my favorite first nephew?" I laugh when I have to bend to hug her.

"Shit, you grew." I look over at Michael and see he’s almost as tall as me, but he bulked up. I give him a hug. He’s going to be drafted this year, he and my cousin Dylan. Dylan is going to go first. There is no denying that. When my uncle Justin opened up his hockey camp for underprivileged kids, Dylan was one of the kids who got a spot. He then fell for Dylan’s mom and adopted him. There was no stopping him back then, and he just got better because he was born with it. He was going to kill it, and I couldn’t be prouder of him.