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“Why?”
“It was so much easier that way.”
“But is it really?”
I stop for a moment and think. “No. It’s not. It’s hard being…like this.”
His voice rings out in the quiet room. “So stop.”
“I’m trying.” I nod toward the sleeping bundle in my arms. “I’m really trying.”
“Loving a baby is easy. They’re innocent and they don’t hold pain in their hearts. At least not yet. But loving another adult… That’s a little harder.”
It’s really not. What’s hard is not loving a man, particularly when you know you already do.
“I asked Friday to make a tattoo for me.”
“What kind?”
“Just something to remember it all by,” I say quietly. “It was real. It happened. And I will forever be changed by it.”
“I will too.”
And that sentence hits me like a punch in the gut. In all of this, I could only think of my own pain. I could only think of the way it affected me, the way it changed me. But he was there too, and he was changed by it t
oo.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly.
“I’m not,” he replies. “I wouldn’t take any of it back. Sure, I’d change the outcome, but I wouldn’t take any of what happened back. It’s part of you and, if you haven’t figured it out yet, I like all the parts.”
I laugh quietly. “All my parts? You haven’t even seen most of my parts.”
Silence falls for a moment, again. “I’ve seen the important parts. The rest will come if the time is ever right.”
“I think he’s asleep,” I say. Chase lies limp and unconcerned in my arms.
“You want me to lay him down?” he asks.
“I can do it.”
“Okay.” He yawns. “I’m going back to bed, unless you need something.”
“No, go ahead.”
I take Chase into the nursery, lay him down, and when he stirs ever so slightly, I lay my hand upon his chest, right over his heart, and he settles back down. I check on Roxy, covering her where the blanket has slipped off. Then I check on Devon and Anna, and they’re both sound asleep.
As I walk by Mick’s room, I see that his door is open just a crack. I stop outside it and listen for sounds of him moving around. I don’t hear anything. He’s probably already asleep.
I push his door open and step into the room, and my heart starts to thunder in my chest. He rolls over onto his back, and he stares up at me.
“Can I sleep with you?” I say quietly.
He tosses the covers back and slides over, and then he pats the space next to him. “Come on,” he says, his voice husky, like rocks sliding over glass.
I sit gingerly on the edge of his bed. “It’s difficult, you know.”
“I know,” he says, and his fingers touch the small of my back. “But this time, I needed for you to seek me out, instead of the other way around.”
