Page 13 of Play Dirty

“Thank you.” She pauses. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Stevie.”

“That’s a boy’s name!” Emma giggles.

“It’s short for Stephanie.”

“I like Stephanie.”

“Do you want to help me write down the presents?” I ask her. She nods and before I realize what’s happening, she’s climbed into my lap.

Something inside of me squeezes painfully.

I always wanted to be a mother. Not right away, but in a few years, when I was ready to start thinking about retirement. I’m twenty-seven, but before the incident with Damien, I’d been at the height of my success. Not quite as well-known as Chey, but successful and wealthy, never lacking work.

Then everything changed.

Now I’ll never have children of my own, and my heart breaks a little as Emma nestles into my side. She’s so sweet and warm, it makes me want to cry, knowing I’ll never have this with a child of my own.

“Stevie, did you get this one?” Chey’s voice is soft as she reaches out to touch my arm.

I realize she’s opened another gift, and I haven’t written anything down.

“Sorry, just enjoying snuggles,” I respond, quickly making a note of the beautiful tapestry one of her friends that I don’t know brought her from China.

“I can take her if she’s bothering you.”

Marty’s voice is unmistakable, but I force myself not to react.

“She’s fine,” I say, scooping up the latest bow and handing it to Ally.

I avoided him after last night’s…moment. I’m not sure what happened, but it was a little awkward after he just walked away, so I figured I’d spare us both the discomfort by staying away from him. I’ll admit to being disappointed, though, because I’d been hoping we would dance again.

“I’m gonna have a special teacup!” Emma tells her father.

I almost groan but everyone around us chuckles.

“Shh,” I whisper in her ear playfully. “That’s our little secret.”

Emma giggles and I make note of the next gift before handing Ally a huge pink and green bow. The paper plate she’s using is already full and we’re not even halfway done with presents.

“What do I do?” Ally whispers to me.

“Use the back and then just start gluing them on top of each other.”

“Okay.” She gives me a soft smile and then focuses on her task.

Ally is a sweet kid that I’ve gotten close to over the last four or five months. Canyon is her uncle, and her mother—his sister—died of a drug overdose about five or six months ago. It took a while for them to locate her mother’s estranged brother, but once they did, Ally came to live with him. It was around the same time he and Saylor began dating, and Ally was resistant to having a mother figure in her life.

She latched on to me, though.

I became the big sister she didn’t know she wanted, and we spend as much time as we can together. Luckily, she’s started to understand that Saylor isn’t the enemy and they’re slowly finding their footing as a little family.

Something I’ll never have unless someone drops a kid into my lap.

I look down at Emma and almost smile.

I have a sister but we’re not close. We had a falling out when my fiancé cheated on me with her and they got married. He dumped her, which made me feel vindicated, but our relationship was never the same. We’ve been working on rebuilding things after I almost died last year, but she’s in Toronto and I’m always traveling. I don’t feel the need to force the issue and neither does she.

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