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Nora gave birth to a healthy baby.
With all her anxiety over her health and complications related to it, she labored like a fucking trooper. From the sound of it, Rowan was the one who couldn’t keep his shit together.
It was pretty funny.
Kip teased him about it relentlessly.
Rowan barely noticed. He was too fucking enchanted with his new child, with the wife who birthed her, with his family.
It seemed, in a way, like Nora had birthed a whole new version of Rowan. For some reason, it made my chest burn a little. Only for a moment, though. Then I got my shit together and let the joy wash over me.
There was plenty of that to be had.
And we were plenty busy.
I took over most of the day-to-day running of the bakery, and Tina did the baking where she could—though Nora was there most mornings after her first week home with Ana. Sometimes with Rowan and the baby in tow, sometimes not.
I was at their place as often as I could be, enjoying my status as the cool, eccentric aunt and spoiling my niece in every way I could.
Kip was there often, too, because he was the uncle by default, and he tended to go where I went these days. I’d thought he was going to be a natural with Ana, considering he was just one of the kind of people you expected to be good with children. He was boyish. Playful. Seemed to be on their level.
But Kip kept his distance from the adorable baby girl, with a wary look in his eye, which was kind of funny since I was sure he was a badass who could handle a whole bunch of infidels or whatever, but apparently a newborn child was where he got scared.
I stored that in my ‘Interesting Tidbits about Kip’ folder.
Technically the folder shouldn’t exist. We had agreed it was just a marriage. Then we agreed it was just sex. I couldn’t be learning curious and interesting things about the man I was married to and now sleeping with.
The lines were blurred enough.
I went from despising the man to being married to him and despising him, then being married to him and wanting him, and now married to him and sleeping with him.
This was the end of the road. It had to be.
I wasn’t sure what Kip’s thoughts were on the whole thing. I wasn’t sure if he evenhadthoughts on it. He sure didn’t seem to be as conflicted as I was. Oh, to be a man. Maybe it truly was as simple to him as having a benefit to our arrangement. I was still curious as to what motivated him to agree in the first place.
I tried my best to just make the most of it while I could. It was bound to get complicated at some point.
We slept together every night now. Which wasn’t a good idea. But it wasn’t a good idea to marry him in the first place. In for a penny, in for a pound.
Life was happening fast these days.
But the immigration process moved slow.
My application was ‘processing,’ and our lawyer informed us we could be getting a letter with our interview date tomorrow or it could be multiple months more, depending on the volume of the applications.
So, my marriage could either last till tomorrow or for months.
There wasn’t much I could do but drink and enjoy the orgasms.
I’d been contemplating drinking alone since Nora was unable to drink with me and Tina and Tiffany were out on some kind of camping trip.
I didn’t have some huge circle of friends. I was a likable gal and had made many friends on my travels, but at this stage in my life, I didn’twanta huge circle of friends. I wanted a family I could count on. People who I could trust with my life. I had that. Unfortunately, they had families of their own and weren’t as available to drink away their sorrows.
Because these days, they didn’t have many sorrows.
Which was a good thing.
Kip would be home soon. He didn’t really hit the same spot a girlfriend drinking buddy did, but he cooked for me and fucked me good. A girl couldn’t complain.
