“It was a few months ago.”

“See? I missed it. So, happy birthday.”

It was nice to see the smile on my brother’s face.

I signed the waiver, then began to remove Ollie’s socks to put on the ones he was required to wear.

Ollie looked up at Ryder. “You’ll jump with me, right?”

“Heck, yeah. Your sister’s gonna jump, too.” Ryder flashed me a smile that showed a glimpse of his inner child.

“Can we jump first, Ryder? Then eat?” Ollie asked.

“Whatever you want.”

I handed Ryder a pair of the special socks. “We all have to wear these.”

He examined them. “What do you know, Ollie? They make socks for Bigfoot-sized feet here.”

Ollie laughed.

We made our way up the stairs to the biggest room in the joint. It was just a series of connected, flat, rectangular trampolines. The space was practically the size of a basketball court.

Ryder kept a close eye on Ollie, so I didn’t have to do much except trail behind them as I admired the view. The way Ryder’s jeans hugged his ass was absolutely divine. I wondered if he and I would have alone time later, because I really wanted to taste his lips again. It was all I could think about.

As I watched him jump with my brother, I realized Ryder was definitely a kid at heart. They counted to three to coordinate landing on their butts at the exact same time.

I decided to venture away from them for a bit, giving myself my own space on one of the trampolines at the other corner of the room. I jumped as high as I wanted, feeling happier and freer than I had in a long time. But I knew that likely had little to do with flying freely in the air and everything to do with the man jumping onto his ass like a fool in the other corner.

When I finally returned to them, Ryder’s face lit up when he noticed me.

He patted his stomach as he turned to Ollie. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. Wanna go eat?”

Ollie slowed down his jumping and came to a stop. “Yeah. I’m hungry, too.”

We ventured downstairs to the party room. The table was set up with a couple of boxes of pizza, a pitcher of fruit punch, paper plates, and cups. On a table in the corner was a half-sheet cake that was supposed to be a trampoline. It had little people figures on the top.

After working up an appetite, we demolished an entire pizza and broke into the second. Ollie was working on his slice of cake when I took Ryder aside.

“I can’t thank you enough for this afternoon. No one has ever done anything like this for him. But please don’t feel like you need to do this kind of thing to make him happy. He would be just as happy with a pizza party at home.”

“I wanted to. I wanted to do something fun for him that he doesn’t normally have. It makes me even happier than it makes him. I promise, I won’t pull this over-the-top shit all of the time.”

“It seriously must have cost a fortune.”

“What good is having money if you can’t use it to make people happy? Do you know how much money I’ve spent over the years throwing parties for people I don’t even know? This day brought me more joy than I’ve had in a long time.”

I gripped the material of his shirt. “How can I ever thank you?”

“Again…so many ways I could answer that.” He winked.

“I know just how I’m gonna do it.”

He leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “Oh yeah? Do tell.”

“I’m taking tonight off.”

He slid his hand down to my ass. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to. One more night of missed work is not going to kill me. I don’t want to work when I could be spending this precious time with you.”

“You’re not gonna hear me complain about that, Eden.”

Ryder brought my face to his and planted a long kiss on my mouth. He bit at my bottom lip. My panties were getting wetter by the second. This wasn’t the appropriate place to be losing control. I could’ve kissed him endlessly but pulled away at the sound of my brother’s voice.

“Ew…kissing,” Ollie said.

I hadn’t realized he would be able to hear it, since we’d been at the other corner of the room.

“Is there anything you don’t hear?” I said to him.

We walked over to Ollie, hand in hand.

“I apologize,” Ryder said. “But I really like kissing your sister.”

My brother scrunched his nose. “You think?”

Ryder laughed, placing his hand on my knee and squeezing it. That simple act made my entire body weak.

He turned to Ollie. “After you finish your cake, you wanna go another round on the trampolines?”

“Can we?”

Ryder squeezed my leg again. “Yup. We got the whole place ’til six.”