Billionaires Dollar Series

“And Lucas?”

“And Lucas,” I confirm. “But you’ll have to give him a few years to catch up to you two.”

She nods sagely, her hands stroking the hard plastic case. Ethan looks up at me. “A pinball machine?”

I shrug. “Seemed like a cool idea.”

“No, it is,” he says, turning back to it. “See here, Evie? You put your hands on either side, and you press to keep the ball from rolling. Uncle Liam and I can show you later.”

Remembering my promise, I catch a quick picture of the two of them to show Maddie later. Evie sees it and gives me a giant smile.

I grin back at her. “Just wait till it’s time to show you some pranks, too.”

“What?” says Ethan.

“Yay!” says Evie.

“I’ll go and say hi to Mom,” I say. Escaping that dicey situation intact, I search the party for the familiar head of styled hair. I find her sitting in a sunchair next to a table of face paints, a lemonade in a cocktail glass in her hand.

“Hi, Mom.” I kiss her cheek. “Have you been exposing all these kids to your painting?”

“A few. Did you see a girl with a butterfly on her face? Or a boy with a Spiderman mask?”

“I didn’t, no.”

She sighs, patting the chair next to her. “I asked one girl if she wanted something that was a bit Starry Night inspired, or perhaps Monet, but she chose a star.”

“She wouldn’t have been able to sit still long enough for you to impersonate Van Gogh.” I cross an ankle over my knee. “But good for you for trying.”Text content © NôvelDrama.Org.

“Thank you,” Mom says. “And good for you for coming out and about a bit.”

“I’m out and about all the time.”

She raises an eyebrow. “See, you say that like you expect me to believe you. I know how hard you work. You and Ethan have always worked so much, from the time you were young. I have no idea who you’ve gotten that from.”

I grin at her. “You don’t see yourself reflected?”

She grins right back at me, and despite the few added lines and wrinkles, she’s every inch the fun-loving, unpredictable mother she’d been twenty years ago when she’d suggest breakfast for dinner and sleeping under the stars. “Nope.”

I nod to the drink in her hand. “Did you manage to get something a bit stronger than lemonade?”

“Of course not. It’s a kid’s party.” She frowns down at her glass. “Haven offered me this, calling it a fancy person’s glass.”

“And you’re a fancy person. That’s a compliment, Mom.”

“I suppose. But we’re not done talking about you and finding a work-life balance.”

I groan. “A lecture? At a four-year old’s birthday party?”

“It’s never a bad time for a lecture.”

“I can think of many, many inopportune times.”

Mom puts her hand on my leg. “Look, Liam. All I’m saying is that Ethan has gotten it right. He works, but he has a family to come home to. A wife to come home to. It doesn’t have to look the same for you, but there has to be some kind of balance. Find your off-switch.”

“I know,” I say, glancing around at the colored streamers and the still-unsmashed piñata hanging from the girls’ oak tree. The treehouse is decorated with balloons.

Ethan achieving perfection, yet again.

“You’ll find it,” Mom says. “And I have no doubt that when you do, it’ll be unique, just like you.”

Trust Mom to turn a lecture into a pep talk. My mouth is open to respond when Haven joins us. “I’ve decided now,” she tells Mom.

“You have?”

“A butterfly, please.” She turns her cheek to my mom, who reaches for her paints.

“Coming right up.”

Haven grins at me. “Uncle Liam?”

“Yes, kiddo?”

“When are we getting cousins?”

I blink at her. “What?”

There’s a smile in my mother’s voice. “The girls have friends who have cousins. They asked me earlier why they don’t have any. I explained to them that the power to change that is entirely in your hands.”

I just look at her.

“Well,” she amends, “not technically in your hands, but you know that.”

Haven blinks at me like a honey-blonde angel. “So?” she prompts. “Cousins, please?”

I drain the last of my lemonade, the sweet flavor doing nothing to restore my balance.

“Not anytime soon,” I manage. “Sorry, kiddo.”

Find my off-switch, indeed. And perhaps I have, at least temporarily, because when I make my way out of the giant house in Greenwood Hills that evening, the sun just beginning to set, my hands on the steering wheel don’t take me back to the high-rise I’m currently calling home.

They lead me to a mid-rise outside the city instead. And when I press down on the intercom, the familiar voice washes over me like a wave.

“Hello?”

“It’s me,” I say. “Can I come up?”

I don’t know why my mind stirs itself awake, but it does, halfway through the night. My bedroom is cast in shadow and the bed empty next to me.