“But why, Jasmine?” He paused, letting the words really sink in. “Why do you love them all equally?”

The problem with hating lies was that when you wanted to fall into one, it hurt like a motherfucker to pick it up, hold it in your hands, and decide what to do with it… knowing either way it was going to ache. Maybe it made me a weak ass, but I acknowledged it and accepted it. So I told him the truth. “Because they all have good things about them, and bad things. I don’t hold that stuff against them,” I explained to him, not wanting to—definitely not wanting to—but having to. What was so wrong with the truth, except for the fact that it made me ache like crazy?

I glanced up at Ivan before I kept going, because I didn’t want him to think I was embarrassed. I didn’t want to make this seem like a bigger thing than what it was. Otherwise, he would take it to be more than it needed to, and I definitely didn’t want that. So I told him. “I want them to know I love them just the way they are. I don’t want any of them to feel bad thinking I like one more than the other.”

And then it was out there. I couldn’t take the words back.

The words hung in the air, in between Ivan and me, around and around and around and around, they were there.

He said nothing.

He didn’t say a word for so long as he stood there, all long and perfect, staring at me with those blue eyes for so long that I wanted to fidget, but he was the last person in the world I wanted do that in front of, friends or not. He’d already seen me at my worst. He didn’t need to see how talking about favorites really made me feel.

So instead, I rolled my eyes and asked, “How about you look at something else now? You’re making me feel awkward.”

What did this idiot respond with? “No.”

I ignored him.

Luckily, it was right then that Benny waddled into the room, his clothes rumpled, his face puffy and cute, and said, “I’m hungwy, Jazzy.”

I jumped on that shit before it ran away and I got stuck talking about things I didn’t want to think about more than I already had. “Okay, Benny.” Then I looked at Ivan and asked, “You want the baby or the toddler?”

His face got alarmed so fast it made me snicker. “I need to take one?”

“What do you think I brought you for? Yeah.”

Ivan blinked before his gaze slipped from Benny, who was still half asleep standing in the doorway, to Jessie’s sleeping face. “They’re both babies,” he said, like it was news.

It was my turn to blink.

Ivan bit that pink lip of his and glanced at the little boy standing there, probably not even totally comprehending we weren’t his parents. Then he decided. “I’ll take the baby.”

I didn’t let the surprise show on my face. I thought for sure he’d take Benny instead of Jessie. “Okay. Here,” I said, stepping in front of him, already holding my arms out.

His face almost made me laugh.

“I’ve never held a baby before,” he muttered, his whole body tensing.

“You can do it.”

That had him glancing up at me as he formed his arms into the same shape I had mine. “Of course I can.”

I snickered, and that made him smile. It was pretty easy transferring the baby from my arms to his. He was a natural, slipping the crook of his elbow underneath her head and then bringing her in close to his body.

“She’s so light,” he commented the second she was fully in his arms.

“She’s only a few months old,” I told him, already turning to crouch down to Benny.

Ivan snickered. “That doesn’t mean much. You’re little too, but you’re heavy as hell.”

“Oh, shut up. I’m not that heavy.” I turned to look at him over my shoulder as I extended my arms out to my nephew.

“You are. You’re the heaviest partner I’ve ever had.”

“It’s all muscle.”

“Is that what we’re going to call it?”

I laughed as Benny came toward me, still rubbing at his face. “Okay, Tinkerbell, you aren’t exactly light either,” I threw out before wrapping my arms around my favorite three-year-old, picking him up.

Ivan laughed softly as he brought the baby up to his face the same way I had moments ago. “I’m not supposed to be. It’s all muscle.”

“I don’t know why people complain so much. This is easy,” Ivan said, holding the bottle to Jessie’s mouth as she sucked hungrily at it.

I hated to admit how easy this baby shit was with Ivan. It probably shouldn’t have been. But it was.

The second time Jessie had started wailing, this time in his arms, he’d kind of jumped a little, frowned, given me a panicked expression, and before I could tell him what to do, he’d started humming and rocking her all on his own. His shh, shh, shh sounding weird out of his mouth. I hadn’t timed it or anything, but it felt like less than a minute later, her kitten cries had turned into whimpers, and a minute after that, she had completely stopped. I had almost called him a natural, but he didn’t need that shit to go to his head. He already thought highly enough about himself.

And then he amazed me some more.

When she’d cried not too long after that, and I’d told him she probably needed a diaper change, all he had said was “Okay.” So when I offered to change it, while he took Benny, he had said, “I can do it. Tell me what to do,” and that had been it. He changed her diaper and only fake gagged twice.

He was infinitely patient. He didn’t get tired. He didn’t complain.

And it shouldn’t have surprised me. It really shouldn’t have. I’d seen him be patient, tireless, and complain-less, every day for weeks and weeks. He got it from figure skating. But I couldn’t help but think that maybe I didn’t know him as well as I thought I did.

“I’ve spent the night with them before. Do that and then tell me it’s easy. I don’t know how my sister isn’t a walking zombie,” I told him as I lay on the floor beside Benny, handing him blocks that he was making a castle out of. Or something that looked sort of like a castle.

“They wake up a lot, huh?”

“Yeah, especially when they’re this young. Ruby and Aaron are both crazy patient; they’re good parents.”

“I could be a good dad,” Ivan whispered, still feeding Jess.

I could have told him he’d be good at anything he wanted to be good at, but nah.

“Do you want to have kids?” he asked me out of the blue.

I handed Benny another block. “A long time from now, maybe.”

“A long time… like how long?”

That had me glancing at Ivan over my shoulder. He had his entire attention on Jessie, and I was pretty sure he was smiling down at her. Huh. “My early thirties, maybe? I don’t know. I might be okay with not having any either. I haven’t really thought about it much, except for knowing I don’t want to have them any time soon, you know what I mean?”

“Because of figure skating?”

“Why else? I barely have enough time now. I couldn’t imagine trying to train and have kids. My baby daddy would have to be a rich, stay-at-home dad for that to work.”

Ivan wrinkled his nose at my niece. “There are at least ten skaters I know with kids.”

I rolled my eyes and poked Benny in the side when he held out his little hand for another block. That got me a toothy grin. “I’m not saying it’s impossible. I just wouldn’t want to do it any time soon. I don’t want to half-ass or regret it. If they ever exist, I’d want them to be my priority. I wouldn’t want them to think they were second best.”

Because I knew what that felt like. And I’d already screwed up enough with making grown adults I loved think they weren’t important. If I was going to do something, I wanted to do my best and give it everything.

All he said was, “Hmm.”

A thought came into my head and made my stomach churn. “Why? Are you planning on having kids any time soon?”

“I wasn’t,” he answered immediately. “I like this baby though, and that one. Maybe I need to think about it.”

I frowned, the feeling in my stomach getting more intense.

He kept blabbing. “I could start training my kids really young…. I could coach them. Hmm.”

It was my turn to wrinkle my nose. “Three hours with two kids and now you want them?”

Ivan glanced down at me with a smirk. “With the right person. I’m not going to have them with just anybody and dilute my blood.”

I rolled my eyes at this idiot, still ignoring that weird feeling in my belly that I wasn’t going to acknowledge now or ever. “God forbid, you have kids with someone that’s not perfect. Dumbass.”

“Right?” He snorted, looking down at the baby before glancing back at me with a smile I wasn’t a fan of. “They might come out short, with mean, squinty, little eyes, a big mouth, heavy bones, and a bad attitude.”

I blinked. “I hope you get abducted by aliens.”

Ivan laughed, and the sound of it made me smile. “You would miss me.”

All I said, while shrugging was, “Meh. I know I’d get to see you again someday—”

He smiled.

“—in hell.”

That wiped the look right off his face. “I’m a good person. People like me.”

“Because they don’t know you. If they did, somebody would have kicked your ass already.”