Tristan shifted Nia to the other side of his body so he could get a better grip on the dead weight his daughter had become after falling asleep on the car ride home. He snuggled her close and ran to her mother’s front door, hoping to spare his sleeping baby girl a little bit of leftover chill from the unexpected snowfall that had covered Maryland earlier that week. He’d go get her coat and other belongings later. Lorraine answered the door before he knocked, so Tristan assumed she was watching from the front windows. He moved to offer the four-year-old to her mother, but his ex-wife shook her head and said, “Bring her in and put her to bed. I need to talk to you.”

Tristan paused for a split second before he followed Lorraine into the house, walking down halls he hadn’t been privy to until that point. She stopped in front of an open door. He took his first step into his daughter’s room, smiling at the pops of pink and purple and immediately knew how much the little girl must adore her room. He laid her down on the double bed with the fluffy purple blankets and planted a kiss on her forehead. Lorraine came up behind him and helped remove Nia’s boots before gesturing for him to meet in the hallway. He took in his little sleeping beauty with her smooth dark skin, a nose that reminded him so much of his own mother’s, and the way her thumb found her mouth even as she slept. He kissed her cheek once again before his curiosity had him following the path back to the living room while trying not to be nosy about Lorraine’s space. The entire interaction was weird. Tristan wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. He took a seat on the brown couch opposite where his ex-wife sat in a turquoise armchair, trying to decipher what the hell was going on. Lorraine, for her part, was behaving like it was normal for her to invite him in when he dropped Nia home and normal to offer him “something to drink?”

“Look,” he said with a small chuckle, “I’ll have you know I changed the beneficiary of my life insurance policies as soon as the divorce came through.”

Lorraine’s deep brown eyes widened with amusement as she sucked her teeth. “Shut up, Tristan. You play too much.”

“Me? Play? You telling me this is normal? Feels kinda setup-ish…”

“Because I invited you in?” Lorraine drawled. “Boy, please. I just need to run something by you.”

Maybe it was the way she could no longer meet his eyes or how she kept trying to smooth down her burgundy locs, but Tristan suddenly got the feeling he was really going to hate the words about to come out of her mouth.

He sat up straighter. “Yeah? What’s up?”