She nods, stroking her thumbs along the sensitive skin just behind my ears. “We’ve changed though,” she hedges. “A lot of time has passed, Lyle.”

“We’re the same in here…” I flatten a palm to her chest. “Where it matters.”

She brings a hand to my cheek, gazing deep into my eyes. “But what if love isn’t enough?”

“It’s more than enough,” I vow with a hard swallow. “It’s everything, Li’l Bit.”

Rising to her toes, she stretches her face toward mine. Without hesitation, I accept the invitation, meeting her halfway. My lips hover just a hair’s breadth from hers, twitching as they beg for her to close the distance.

Sammi doesn’t falter. Just like with our previous kisses, fireworks explode between us the instant our lips meet.

I wonder if it’s possible for it to always be so good between us. And if kissing her is this exhilarating, what it’ll be like when I finally bury myself inside of her. The mere thought has me hardening in my slacks.

I allow her to lead, holding myself back while she tortures me, peppering the softest whispers of a kiss across my mouth.

A groan slips out when she traces the seam of my lips with her tongue, ever so lightly.

“I wish this baby was yours,” she says pulling back, her voice weighted with regret.

“Hey,” I say, nipping at the tip of her nose. “This baby’ll be as much mine as I am my parents’.”

Having been adopted as an infant myself, I know better than most that it takes more than blood to make a family. I’ve never questioned my mom and dad’s love for me, and I’ll make sure this little one grows up feeling just as cherished as I did.

She nods, offering me a tense smile.

“I mean it. Biology doesn’t mean shit to me.”

“I know,” she says as the song draws to a close and our guests begin to celebrate with applause.

“It’s gonna be great,” I promise as her Uncle Bernard steals her away, pinning a crisp one-hundred-dollar-bill to her dress to commence the money dance.

Song after song, our partners switch out, each one pinning cash we don’t need to our clothing. It feels wrong to accept it, but you don’t mess with tradition.

It’s something my sister quickly learns when she adamantly refuses to dance with the broom my mother’s managed to find in a bathroom closet.

“You have to,” insists our Grandma Joyce, who came to live with them from Louisiana last year. “Your baby brother got married before you. Now you have to suffer the consequences like the rest of us had to.”