Page 108 of Claim to Fame

“He won’t,” Tessa insisted. “If Dad had another kid, I’d be happy he was happy.”

Ethan’s stomach somersaulted. “You would?”

“Yes, of course! Why is that so hard to believe?”

He could picture it—a little girl with big blue eyes and an upturned nose, a baby asleep on his chest, Hannah singing a lullaby, all the little moments he’d missed the first time around.

“Julie would be older than her uncle or aunt,” Gavin said.

“Just one more way our family would be unique,” Tessa said.

“For someone who married his son’s ex, you’re way too concerned about age,” Baz said to Gavin.

Six weeks, three days, five hours, and forty-three minutes.

Ethan pushed back from the table. “I need some air.”

He stumbled from the house onto the front porch, drawing in huge lungfuls of crisp spring air. He could see it all so clearly, the way things could be, the holes in his life even the best friends couldn’t fill. His chest ached with longing, and he braced himself against the railing.

“Dad?”

“I’m okay,” he said, forcing himself to breathe.

Tessa’s hand fell on his forearm, squeezing lightly. “She’s going to be so glad to see you, I know it.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Chapter Thirty-One

Hannah scrolled past another lackluster job posting. It turned out finding a decent-paying theater teacher job was harder than she’d thought, especially since she was limited to private and parochial schools until she completed an alternative teacher certification program. Apparently her Broadway credits didn’t override the minimum qualifications.

Of course, the posting for the perfect position had been forwarded to her two weeks ago. A decent salary, a beautiful location close enough to the City she could visit on weekends, and a friend already on the staff. But she couldn’t apply for the job at St. Anthony’s High School, not when Ethan hadn’t even texted her in days…could she?

Ever since his first message, he’d taken to sending her photos every few days of things that reminded him of her—Terrence McFancyCock, the sunset over the vineyard, a tattered copy of an old school romance novel. She wanted to believe it meant something, but days at a time would pass without a new message and they still hadn’t talked about what happened, or where they went from here.

As much as she missed him—and she did, so much that she felt like an actual part of her had been severed and left behind in Aster Bay—and as much as she loved him, she couldn’t sit around and wait for him to decide to pull his head out of his ass.

And if he never gets his shit together?

She should give that part time job on Long Island another look. Or she could take her parents up on their offer to move back to Philadelphia, even if the idea of moving home at thirty-two made her sick to her stomach.

Her phone dinged with a new email and Hannah thumbed it open. The familiar header of AK Wild’s newsletter filled her screen and she skimmed the email quickly. A surprise sneak peek at AK Wild’s upcoming dragon shifter’s romance audiobook available to newsletter subscribers only. Hannah’s finger hovered over the download link, the name Slade Hardcastle seeming to dare her to do it.

As if there was ever a chance she wasn’t going to listen.

She watched impatiently as the story downloaded, shoving her earbuds into her ears. She could go back to doomscrolling the job postings after she listened. The audio was only a few minutes long anyway.

“The Dragon Dukeby AK Wild, narrated by Slade Hardcastle.”

Ethan’s voice filled her ears and she leaned back, sinking into the deep timbre of it. This was the only time she felt close to him lately, when she listened to one of his books. Someday, she told herself, she wouldn’t need to listen to them anymore, wouldn’t keep torturing herself with the reminder of the way his chest vibrated when he talked low like that or the memory of the heat in his eyes when he got all growly. Someday she’d move on.

But not today.

“You will submit to me, mea dulcis, on your knees, on your back. Any way I desire you. Every way,”Ethan rumbled through her earbuds.“You will know what it is to be mated to the dragon duke, to surrender your body and heart to my keeping. And when you have done that, little one, oh how I shall reward you.”

There was a crackling in the audio, an almost imperceptible shift in the white noise, and then—

“Hi, city girl.”

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