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EIGHTEEN
Del’s babywas squishy and adorable. I snuggled him for ten solid minutes before he started to shift, and then she wanted him back. Apparently shifting didn’t hurt babies and little kids because their bodies were so malleable or something—I thought that was a stroke of luck for them, and something that probably brought peace of mind to a lot of wolfy parents.
Watching Zed hold the baby was strange. I was nowhere near ready to have kids, but it did a weird thing to my stomach. Not the nauseous thing it did when I ate things that it didn’t like, but a fluttery thing.
When we left, I hugged Del fiercely and told her I better be her number one babysitter when she was out of the hospital. Zed gave Rocco a hug—not a dude-hug, but a real hug.
That did things to my stomach too.
When Zed’s hand caught mine as we walked out of the hospital, and his fingers slipped between mine, I didn’t stop him. I just stepped a bit closer, so our arms brushed as we walked too.
“You’ve been quiet,”Zed observed, as we finished cleaning the kitchen. Our backpacks were already packed and ready to go. We hadn’t told anyone we were leaving, but that really wasn’t our style. They could find out after we were gone. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah. Just thinking,” I admitted.
It was kind of a lie.
I wasn’t thinking; I was feeling. And I was feeling a lot of emotions that I didn’t have names for or coping mechanisms to deal with.
“I’ve got a pretty decent set of ears if you want to talk about it,” Zed remarked.
I nodded, but I wasn’t ready to talk about it.
Not to him, at least.
We stopped at the dump to drop off the old, slightly smelly mattress sitting in my truck’s bed, and then hit the road. Though we were taking my truck, Zed offered to drive, and I didn’t turn him down. I needed more time to think, more… space.
Not because I’d had to say goodbye to my old mattress, though that had been slightly sad. I was actually kind of glad about it, because I officially had an excuse to buy a new one the next time I decided to take a road trip.
Just because of everything, I guess.
A text came in from Del after a while, and I glanced down at my phone.
Del: The hospital is boring
Del: And uncomfortable
Del: Rocco’s asleep, and Felix is too. Entertain me.
I bit back a grin.
Me: We’re heading out to empty my stuff from my storage unit in Jackson.
Del: Damn, jumping in head first now?
Me: Don’t want to talk about it.
Del: K
There was a pause.
My fingers stumbled over the keyboard on my phone.
Me: How did you know Rocco was a good guy?
Del: I told him I just wanted to be friends, and he didn’t try to fuck me.
Del: He wanted me in his life more than he wanted me as his wife, as ironically poetic as it sounds.
