Page 2 of Pretty Nightmare

When you’re Company you can’t talk about your life much. But he could tell me anything. He knew I was a vault in that way. That I was never gonna go tell someone what he said. Not even Nathan.

Nathan—even though he’s dead—was something quite different than these three men.

Nathan was just… well, the boy next door. That’s who he was. He was everything Adam, McKay, and Donovan were, and more. Because he was always there—loving me, and listening to me, and protecting me—and he never asked for anything in return. He never expected me to protect him, and he never expected me to tell him my secrets, and he never asked me to love him.

I just did all those things because that’s what you do.

Nathan was… well. It doesn’t matter anymore. He’s gone.

But Adam, and McKay, and Donovan are still here.

Just the way I want them.

Maggie is here too. And I love her to death. I would do anything for that little girl. But sometimes… I hate to even think this, but sometimes Maggie feels like a secret. Something I should hide away from the world.

I don’t understand this feeling very well. I tried to tell myself I’m a mother and that’s a mother’s job. But that’s not it. I did give birth to her, but am I her mother?

No. I don’t feel like a mother. She feels more like a friend too. It’s almost like I’m her… Donovan. Except she has Donovan too, so I can’t be her Donovan.

I feel like her Adam and McKay as well. I want to protect her fiercely and I want to teach her things and make her strong. But again, she already has an Adam and a McKay.

I’m sitting on her bed—my old bed, actually—listening to her brush her teeth in the bathroom down the hall. It’s bedtime. She goes to sleep at nine o’clock on the freaking dot every single night.

Just like I did.

McKay cooks her food, and teaches her lessons, and he even bought her a set of throwing knives and has her in martial arts training three times a week because both of those are things you can start young.

This also parallels my training somewhat.

She’s very good at both. And we all know that Adam took advantage of the last four years and started training her, even though we don’t talk about it.

In fact, almost everything about her life here is just Indie 2.0.

Minus Nathan, of course. I hate that she has no Nathan. It feels like she’s missing out on something.

But that can’t be helped.

I don’t know if I was just too young when I had her. Too immature. Or if it’s that I’ve missed out on so much of her life—more than half of it, to be exact. But I don’t feel like she’s my daughter. I think mothers spend their pregnancies dreaming of the lives their children will live. What they can give them. How they want to shape them and things like that. And I just didn’t do that.

I try to tell myself that it’s not my fault—not her fault, for sure, but not my fault either. Because I spent the first trimester of my pregnancy trying to deny it was happening. And I spent the second trying to figure out what was happening with Nathan, trying to keep Adam from killing him, and trying to maintain my relationship with McKay.

The last trimester I fell into a little funk because it was clear that Nathan was not ready for this. Neither was I. And now, looking back, it didn’t even matter. He wasn’t her father. Or so that card from Carter said a couple weeks ago on Maggie’s sixth birthday.

We don’t know if Carter is telling the truth. I guess, since he’s Donovan’s twin brother, we could just do a DNA test using Donovan’s blood and see. But Adam says that’s risky because, obviously, we have to send that test out somewhere. And his people—which is a whole other topic of conversation—aren’t set up to do science like that. So we’d have to send it to a private lab that he has no association with.

Donovan was a hard no on that. So. End of story there.

And it’s not like Nathan’s even here to push the issue. We’re in limbo as far as her father goes.

My point was that I didn’t spend my last trimester planning Maggie’s life out the way I should’ve. And even after she was born, I was barely equipped to deal with a baby.

I was good with her. I think. And I do love her. My heart gets tight when I think about her, and I’m pretty sure that’s love. But McKay took over because that’s what McKay does. And I was… postpartum. I guess that’s what we’re calling it. That was Donovan’s professional opinion.

I’m not sure I completely buy the idea that postpartum depression lasts for two years, but… OK.

It’s just… if I were to plan a life for her, I’m not sure I would plan this one.

I love these men. And they love us. But should a six-year-old girl be throwing knives? Even if she’s really good at it?