“How did I know I would see your face after today’s news story?” Dante wraps me up in a hug that lifts me off the ground the moment he opens the door. He looks amazing. Construction has kept his hard body in top shape. His penny-brown skin is rich and smooth. Time has been kind to him. It owed him that at least.

“Nowhere else I’d rather be. I had to put eyes on you after that came out. Make sure you’re good.”

“I’m better than good, Livvy.” He looks over to Kai, who’s patiently standing behind me. “Is this him?”

“Dante, meet Kai. Kai, meet Dante.”

The two shake hands and then pull each other into an embrace.

“Good to meet you, man. I’m glad this one finally got her shit together,” Dante says as he points his thumb over to me.

Kai chuckles and pulls me under his arm. “Me too.”

“Okay, enough bonding.”

Dante leads us inside to his beautiful home that looks professionally decorated. I know why but I point it out anyway.

Dante’s face heats. “That’s all Tati. She’s got that gift, you know?” Tatiana is his gorgeous interior designer girlfriend that he met on a job and mother of his child.

Right then, what sounds like a stampede but is actually just two feet attached to a very excited little girl rolls through the foyer.

“Daddy, daddy! Do we have compwany?”

He scoops her into his arms and nuzzles her cheek. “We do, baby girl. This is Daddy’s friend Liv and her friend Kai. Can you say hi?”

“Hi!” She waves excitedly. Willow Moore is one hundred percent her dad. I don’t see a lick of Tatiana in her which Dante tells me is a running joke between the two of them that she carried her for all those months and she had the audacity to have his face.

Willow takes us on a tour around her bedroom and her homemade playground in the backyard before Tatiana comes home and Willow loses interest in us. Tatiana gives me a long hug and introduces herself to Kai, then grabs Willow’s hand and offers to show Kai to the kitchen for a drink, leaving Dante and me alone to talk.

We get comfortable in the eggshell chairs he has hanging on his back patio. “So, how do you feel now that it’s over?” he asks.

“Me? I should be asking you that. You’re finally free from the stain he left on you.”

Dante waves me off. “I told you; I was free a long time ago. I made peace with my lost basketball career. I found a life that works better for me. Makes me happier. I wouldn’t have Tati and Willow if I hadn’t lost everything first.”

“True.”

“So I ask again, how do you feel?”