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“You brought me peaches the next day and I fell a little harder. You swapped journals with my son. You cooked vegetarian dinners. You picked out all the orange-flavored prenatal vitamins because just looking at them made me gag. You did all these little things that made me love you, and that showed me you loved me too, but I didn’t get it because I am a deeply unloved person, okay? My whole life, only two people have loved me; my sister and August. I don’t know what any other love feels like. I didn’t know you loved me until you said it. If I did…” I pause, I breathe, I feel the guilt that I saw riddling Cass last night. “I wouldn’t have grabbed August and ran. I would’ve stayed and fought with you some more, fought for you more.”
A hand sweeps across my cheek, a thumb swiping beneath my eyes to collect the tears starting to fall.
“I hate that you gave John money. I hate that he won. I hate that it feels like he won because it was never a competition, not for me. I just wanted my son. And I’m never gonna be okay with how you did it, but I know that I have him because of you. I know that you were trying to spare us some pain. I don’t know, though, if you know that you not being here was so much worse than anything John could’ve put us through. Because John never really gave us anything. He just took. But you… Fuck, Cass, you’ve given us everything. A home. A family. So much love.”
Grasping the hand still cupping my cheek, I hold it with both of mine, twisting to kiss his palm. “I love you, Cass,” I repeat the words he told me last night, the ones that really broke me, the ones that meant so much. “I love our kids. I love this family so much more than I have ever loved anything in my entire life, and I can’t thank you enough for giving it to me. For loving it too.”
I’m not sure who kisses who. I think it’s a joint effort. Either way, it doesn’t matter because we’re kissing, soft and slow and salty from my tears, from our tears because Cass is crying too. Not to be left out, October starts up, her quiet mewls breaking us apart just in time for someone else to creep into the room.
“Oh.” August startles like he didn’t expect to find us in here, like he was just creeping in to say good morning to his baby sister. “Are you crying?”
Cass’ hand slips to my nape as we both nod.
Head lolling to one side, August scrunches his nose. “In a good way?”
A laugh scratches my throat. “Yeah, Goose. In a good way.
“Cool. So you told her you quit?”
My narrowed gaze whips to meet Cass’. “You told him first?”
“No,” he and August answer in unison, the latter adding, “I guessed. Does this mean y’all are back together?”
Back together, he says. Because I never told him it was fake.
Because, I think as I look at Cass,it never was.
Cass hums a decidedly nervous noise as his grip slips, slowly stroking the length of my spine. “That’s up to your mother, kid.”
“Wait,” August blurts before I can reply—fortunately, maybe, because an enthusiastichell yeahisn’t quite as romantic as the situation calls for. “I have some conditions.”
Expression serious, Cass nods.
“One condition, really.”
I eye my son warily. “Go on.”
“You can’t leave again.”
Without a single moment of hesitation, Cass agrees. “Never again.”
* * *
October is three weeks old when she attends her first Morgan-Silva-Jackson-Evans-Butcher-Acharya-Lane family function. Along with her cousin, Estrela, she is the star of the show.
“Oh, Sunday,” Lynn practically weeps when she meets her. “She’s beautiful.”
“She is,” I agree, because she is. She’s beautiful. She looks just like her daddy—except for the eyes.
She’s got my eyes. August’s eyes. Lane eyes.
Her personality, though, I fear that’s all Cass already. She’s more than happy to be passed around and fawned over, lapping up the attention. But she’s most content when she’s in her daddy’s arms—and I guess, she’s like her mama that way too.
“I give it three months.”
Tearing my gaze off my very real, totally not fake, so beloved partner and our daughter, I eye Luna questioningly.
“Three months,” she repeats, “before he knocks you up again.”
