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She nodded, and I moved toward the living room until her soft voice stopped me. “Devan?”
“Yeah?”
“You were right. I can’t do this on my own. I’ll come with you to Ann Arbor.”
My heart leapt in my chest, and I knew it was a shit thing to do, holding her to something she said when she was obviously distressed, but I couldn’t help it.
“You’ll never have to do it on your own again. I promise.”
And I always kept my word. Always.
ChapterSix
NOVA
I woke up in a panic,my hand moving to the cool side of the bed where Huey should be. As my brain came back online, I remembered calling Devan in the middle of the night. Of him picking up Huey and soothing him. Of falling into a restless, distressed dream state for hours until I passed out from absolute exhaustion.
I remembered telling Devan that I’d go to Michigan with him. I wasn’t having second thoughts.
After the first night of sleep deprivation, I’d thought,No. I can definitely do this.
The second night was hard.
The third night of trying to do it alone was absolute torture. I needed help. The only person who’d suffer if I clung to my pride was Huey.
The very thought that I could have dropped him from sheer exhaustion terrified me. I climbed out of bed, and the brightness of the day told me it was late. I looked down at my pajamas, which were covered in food and sweat and baby spit, and grimaced. I needed a shower, but first, I needed to make sure that Huey was all right. That Devan hadn’t run off with him in the middle of the night.
My heart pounded at the thought, and I raced from my room and into the living room. The kitchen was empty but when I turned the corner, I saw Devan, sitting on the floor beside Huey’s play mat.
Huey was clean and dressed in a new onesie. He was kicking his legs and gurgling happily, and my panic subsided. It was replaced by some dark sort of jealousy that he was obviously so content with Devan. And that jealousy was directly because I feared I was inadequate. That I wasn’t enough.
Devan looked up from the baby and gave me a soft expression. “Feeling better?”
I smiled tightly. “Yeah. Is Huey okay?” I swallowed hard. “Should I have called an ambulance? What if it was his heart?” Fuck. What if I’d caused him damage by not taking him to the hospital?
Devan stood, walking over to me, but keeping one eye on the baby. “I don’t think it’s his heart. They gave us a list of things to look for when they discovered the heart defect, and he doesn’t have any.”
I knew that, logically. I’d Googled the shit out of it when I found out that Huey had a congenital heart defect. No blue fingernails or lips. His breathing was okay, as was his color. He was drinking fine. But how was I supposed to know what the baseline for a baby even was?
Devan squeezed my forearm. “He’s fine. Happy. Look at him,” he insisted softly, and I did. He was so small and fragile, the sweetest baby I’d ever seen most of the time, except when he was crying in the middle of the night like he’d been possessed by a demon. “It’s probably just colic, but we can go and get him checked out if you’d like.”
I nodded, because I did want that. I wanted to be sure he was okay. He was on my co-pay, though they said it would be another few weeks before the paperwork was finalized. Didn’t matter, though; I’d pay out of pocket if I had to.
Devan’s eyes darted up and down my body, and I cringed. I looked like shit. “Why don’t you have a shower, and I’ll make some lunch?” he suggested, completely reasonably.
I turned away before I did something dumb and cried again. I couldn’t even blame hormones. I was just a mess.
I went into the small bathroom and stood under the showerhead for twenty minutes. I hadn’t had a shower longer than two minutes in almost a week. I scrubbed and shaved everything I possibly could, just in case it was another five days before I got this opportunity again.
Dressed in soft sweats and a tank top, I emerged back into the main part of the house. The smell of hot carbs told me that Devan had found my frozen pizza stash. I hadn’t had time to go grocery shopping for me in ages.
The man in question was standing in the kitchen, making a box of Rice-A-Roni. He looked odd cooking in the kitchen, standing in the place my mother had made almost every meal I’d ever had growing up. It was an almost painful reminder that everything was different now.
Feeling my eyes, he looked up from studying the directions on the back. “I didn’t realize anyone ate this shi—stuff.” I shrugged, not about to tell him that I hadn’t really had the will to cook anything for myself in months. Probably not what he wanted to hear from the woman who had custody of his nephew.
“It’s been a long couple of weeks. I need to get to the store.” I sighed. “Devan, about what I said last night…”
His body froze, his spine going rigid. I could almost see him forcing himself to relax. “I’m not going to hold you to something you said when you were almost delirious with exhaustion, Nova.”
