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“Telling Anton we’re here.”
“So you have a friend here.”
“Of course. Didn’t your father?”
When I left home, all he had left were enemies. I don’t answer.
The door to the station opens and a tall, fit man in his early thirties strides out. He nods to Aleks. Aleks pops open the back of the car and takes out an enormous box.
“Wow, did that materialize out of thin air or what?”
“Aleksandr has a way of getting what he wants when he wants it,” Anton says, and I can’t tell if it’s only a statement or a warning.
“Anton, meet Harper.” Aleks stands taller. “My wife.” I don’t miss the surge of pride in his voice when he saysmy wife.
My heart melts a little.
Anton extends his hand to me but one look from Aleks and he pulls it back and gives me a little wave. Ha.
“Now let’s get this going, we’re on a schedule.”
“Not even sunrise yet and you’re on a schedule,” Anton says with a shake of his head. “Alright, we begin by making sure we’re on level ground.”
The two of them get all sweaty and breathless anchoring the seat into position. It’s one of those fancy ones. Finally, Anton points to a little bubble on the base of the seat like a mini level. “When that’s in the center position, you’re good to go.”
They do some kind of brotherly fist bump thing, and we’re on our way.
I wouldn’t ever tell him, but it’s absolutely adorable that he got acar seat.
His phone on the dash has the directions I gave him on it. It says we’re only fifteen minutes out. This feels so different from other times. I’ve been here before, but always surreptitiously, never with the intent of taking Ivy back with me — and never with a dangerous man by my side. Some of his brothers look like they could pass as normal civilians, with some effort. But when Aleks leans slightly to the side to crack his window, the outline of a gun bulges under his tee. There’s nothing normal about him.
“I still feel guilty we’re taking her. It’ll wreck them.”
Aleks raises his brows. “This is the right thing to do.”
“Soright, and I get that.” A part of me’s elated not to leave her again. “But I— they’ve had her since birth.”
“But she’s your baby. That’s the risk a foster family takes. The goal is usually reuniting the child with the birth mother, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know about usual but… well, yeah. It’s what they sign up for, I guess.”
He squeezes my hand. “It is.”
There’s more than that, though. I have so many fears. And even though I’ve already talked to him about being a mother and it helped, all of that worries me.
“What do I do if she doesn’t sleep in the middle of the night?”
“I think you’d… well, probably, maybe rock her. Give her some milk. Soothe her until she’s sleepy.”
I nod. Okay, I can do that.
“And what if that doesn’t work?”
He scratches his nose. “Hmm. Well, presumably the nanny will know about things like that.”
Oh, right.
I guess I’m just in a place I’ve never been before. Married, to a dangerous man I still hardly know. About to co-parent with him. Guilty I’m taking Ivy away from the only people who’ve ever loved her.
