Little C climbs onto my lap and announces that he's going to help me drink my milkshake. Wade immediately slides it out of reach.
“Ask first, buddy.”
Little C looks up at me with enormous eyes. “Can I please help drink the baby’s milkshake?”
I burst out laughing. “The baby says yes.”
Wade gives him the straw, but only after a stern look. “Slowly.”
Little C takes one dramatic sip and smacks his lips. “Baby milkshake yummy.”
Across the table, Joelle grins at me.
And the people who stared when it was just my men and me? Now they're in a frenzy of whispers, and I still don’t care. Because when our families are together like this, our arrangement doesn’t feel strange. It doesn’t feel scandalous, impossible, or fragile.
It feels normal.
It feels like peace and security, and the kind of love people spend their whole lives looking for yet might not be lucky enough to find.
Brookes leans close to my ear. “You okay?”
I nod, watching Joelle tease Wade about ordering extra fries so he doesn’t steal hers. “Better than okay.”
Mason kisses my temple. “You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
And I am.
The final knot inside me loosened last week when Mom called.
I had stared at her name on my screen for three full rings before answering. Mason and Brookes had been in the kitchen with me, both pretending not to linger and both failing miserably.
Her voice was stiff at first, then it broke.
She told me things I never expected to hear. About a mistake she made before she married my father. About a pregnancy she never told anyone about until it was already gone. Her parents would never have accepted a child out of wedlock, and the man she’d loved had disappeared the moment she confessed.
She told me she’d been young, terrified, and alone, and suddenly, so much of my life made sense. Her control. Her fear. Her obsession with appearances. The way she’d tried to steer me away from anything that looked uncertain or dangerous or too much like the cliff she once fell from.
It doesn’t excuse the way she treated me. It doesn’t erase the years of pressure or the way her love sometimes felt like a cage.
But it gave me an explanation, and somehow, that explanation became a bridge.
She told me she loves me. She told me she wants to meet her grandchild. She told me she still doesn’t understand how I can think I love two men.
I told her I don’t expect her to understand everything right away.
Then I told her the truth.
“I don’tthinkI love Mason and Brookes, Mom. I love them with all my heart. There’s a difference.”
The silence on the other end of the phone had been long. So long I thought she might have hung up. Instead, she whispered, “Then I hope they’re worthy of you.”
I looked across the kitchen at Mason, who was gripping the counter as if he were physically restraining himself from taking the phone and making promises directly into it. Brookes stood beside him, eyes locked on me, his face full of quiet devotion.
“They are,” I told her. “They're more than worthy.”
Knowing I may never have the kind of relationship with my mother that I once longed for still hurts. But we’ve taken one small step forward, and the weight of her constant expectations no longer sits on my chest.
