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“You’re good with her.”
“She’s beautiful, Cadence. Her name. Is there a meaning behind it?”
I know he heard my hazel eyes comment when I was talking to Thea earlier. That’s all it took was telling her that her brother was Hazel Eyes, and she was caught up to speed as to what was happening between her brother and me.
“Marie is my middle name.”
“And Hazel?” From the tone of his voice, he’s fishing, but that’s okay. I’ll tell him what he wants to hear.
“Your eyes, they follow me in my dreams every night. I wanted her to have a piece of both of us, and well, that’s really all I had to go on that was appropriate to name a little girl.” I smile, and he chuckles.
“I like it.”
“What comes next?” I hate the wobble in my voice.
“Next?” He shrugs. “I don’t know, Cadence. What I do know is that she’s mine, I have no doubts, and I want to be in her life.”
“Just hers?” The question is out before I can think better of it. My already racing heart seems to kick it up a notch as I wait for his reply.
“You are her mother.”
“You know what I mean, Trevin.”
He nods. “I do, and honestly, I don’t know if I can think about that right now.”
“Please don’t take her from me,” I plead, my voice cracking.
“What?” The look on his face mixed with the tone of his voice tells me he’s appalled at the mere mention of him keeping her from me. “Do you think that’s the kind of man that I am? That I would keep my daughter from her mother?”
“I kept her from you.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“I left.”
“I’m just as much to blame. I didn’t tell you what was in my head. What was growing in my heart. Instead, I curled up with you in my arms and figured we could figure out in the morning.”
“And I was gone.”
“The past is the past. I promise you I won’t take her from you. I don’t… I don’t know what the future holds for us. I don’t live here. Decisions need to be made.”
The worry that’s been sitting on my chest eases just a fraction. He doesn’t want to take her from me, but what does that mean? We have decision to make? Does he want me to move? I’ve worked hard to build a life for Hazel and myself. This is the first true home I’ve ever had. I don’t want to leave. Taking a deep breath, I decide I have to trust his word, and trust that we will work it out together. “Would you like to stay for dinner?”
“Try getting me to leave your apartment before I have to. Unless she’s with me, I’m not going anywhere.”
His words cause my panic to rise again, but he promised he wouldn’t take her from me. The way that Thea talks about her brother, he’s good people. My gut tells me the same—the same exact way it did the night I followed him out of the club and to the nearby hotel. Fate brought him back to us. I have to have hope that everything will work out the way that it’s supposed to.
“Come keep me company while I make dinner. I have some photo albums you can look through.” I made it a point to catalog her life. One, because I don’t have any pictures from when I was her age, and two, I had always hoped the two of us would find our way back to each other, and he would want to see them.
With Hazel snuggled in his arms, Trevin follows me into the small kitchen and sits at the table looking through pictures of me when I was pregnant and every milestone our baby girl has surpassed in her short three months in the outside world. We eat dinner together, and Trevin helps me give her a bath, insisting on feeding her a bottle and rocking her to sleep. I hate losing that time with her, but I’ve had her for the last three months. It’s his turn. He deserves this time with her as well. I just hope that when he needs to go back to work, we can figure this out. Being that far from her would kill me.
I send up a silent prayer that Trevin Hubbard is the man I thought he was over a year ago. I also pray that he remains a part of my daughter’s life, and I might have maybe asked for him to be a part of mine as well as more than just my baby daddy.
Chapter 6
Trevin
The sound of a crying baby jolts me from sleep. Sitting up on the couch, I lift my arms over my head, stretching out the kinks. A quick glance around the room in my sleepy haze, it takes me a minute to remember where I am.
