“She’d brought friends with her. Two other girls. One of those friends eventually told me how much of a dick I was by pressing up on someone who wasn’t feeling me. Basically called me a harasser. I was pissed, too. Notice how you get most mad when the truth is something you don’t like?”

My eyes flitted to Kiera, who’d taken a break from dancing to snuggle with her date, his arm looped over her shoulder.

“That girl did me a favor by checking me. She did me more favors by always telling me the truth. Got to a point where I couldn’t imagine her not being there to tell me the truth. Fast-forward, you’ll be meeting her and our kid later tonight.”

“Wow, MJ. That story is kind of amazing.”

“Yes and no. Yes, that I’m so lucky. No, in that it shouldn’t have taken me so long to see what was right in front of me.”

The crowd around the dance circle was going crazy. Clapping, cheering. Mya was in the middle, moving in ways that shouldn’t be possible in that kind of gown, but the girl was killing it.

MJ said, “I’ll hold her cup if you want to go. The question is, do you?”

The answer: Hell. Yes.

I passed MJ that drink, and worked my way onto the dance floor with my friends, and my enemies, and everyone in between. Mya saw me coming—there was a glint in her eye, as bright as the party lights sparkling off her tiara. And, I swear . . .

It was the purest thing I’d ever seen.

Can I get an amen?

Acknowledgments

Here we go again. It’s always nice to see you here, but I gotta admit . . . this gets harder every time. This is novel #6. You’ve probably seen this is a whole new direction for me. And when you’re on your sixth novel, trying to do a bunch of different things, you require a lot of help. Let’s see if I can do all my fabulous family, friends, and colleagues justice. I’ll try to be brief. Special thanks to . . .

Dear Wife Adrienne, Mom, the siblings, nephews, niece, and the rest of the family . . . I love you all. Thanks for the support.

The team that makes sure I’m getting the best possible opportunities: Jamie Weiss Chilton, Eric Reid, Carmen Oliver, and Jennifer Justman. You’re all godsends.

Team HarperCollins: Karen Chaplin, Bria Ragin, Rosemary Brosnan; Erin Fitzsimmons and Molly Fehr in Design; Mark Rifkin and Liz Byer in managing editorial; Andrea Pappenheimer and the entire sales team; and everyone in marketing and publicity.

The people who helped usher this thing from a seed of an idea to a fully realized novel: Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, Nic Stone, Sheri Reynolds, Janet Peery, and John McManus.

As always, the many, many, many, many friends I’ve made along the way.

About the Author

Photo by Adrienne Giles