I’d been up since two in the morning, rocking and feeding and changing Arielle, but nothing seemed to be working. I’d even laid her down in her bassinet thinking that she could just be awake for a while on her own while I fell asleep, but the minute I’d set her down, she started squawking like a chicken, and I’d had to pick her back up.
I’d learned in the first couple of days that my girl liked to be skin to skin, so we were both stripped from the waist up as I carried her around the living room, a small blanket wrapped over her back.
“Hey, you awake?” Bram called from the front door, making me freeze.
“Uh.” I looked wildly around me, but couldn’t find anything to cover up. My hair was wild around my head, and I was in nothing but a bra and pajama shorts. Shit.
“I used my key in case you were sleep—” Bram’s eyes widened as he caught sight of Arielle and me. “I brought breakfast.”
I should have known someone would be by. Everyone had been taking turns bringing me meals since I’d brought Arielle home. But I was so tired that I’d completely forgotten.
“Whatcha doing?” Bram asked, grinning.
“She likes to be skin on skin,” I answered, starting another lap around the room when Arielle began to squawk.
“She sounds like a bird,” Bram mused.
“Yeah, a loud bird.”
“You need some help?”
“I’ve got it,” I said, rubbing my hand up and down her little back. “We’re fine.”
“You look tired.”
“Is that your way of saying I look like shit?”
“No.” Bram drew the word out as he pulled off his flannel. “It’s my way of saying you look tired.”
“She’s been up since two,” I confessed, making Bram wince.
“And she’s all fed and changed?”
“Of course,” I replied irritably. I could take care of my own daughter. I didn’t need him to help, I was doing fine on my—“What?” I asked as Bram pulled his T-shirt over his head and came toward me.
“Hand her over,” he ordered, wiggling his fingers at me.
I let him take Arielle and cradle her against his chest with one arm.
“Sit down,” he said quietly, nodding at the couch.
I stumbled over and dropped down heavily, watching him in disbelief as he came toward me and pulled my throw blanket from the back cushions over my shoulders.
“Rest.”
“You don’t have to—”
“It’s fine, Ani. I’ve got nothing going on. Lie down and rest for a little bit. We’ll be right here.”
“If you’re sure,” I replied, my eyes already drooping.
“Well, I’m already topless so it’s a little late to change my mind,” he said teasingly before turning away.
I closed my eyes as he started humming a song I didn’t recognize, and fell asleep to his steady footsteps circling the living room over and over again.
* * *
When I woke up a couple hours later, Bram and Arielle weren’t in the living room anymore, but I could hear him humming quietly in the kitchen. I tiptoed to the bathroom to pee and grimaced when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Nasty. My hair was sticking out in all directions, and I was pretty sure I hadn’t brushed my teeth in two days.
I took care of business, then wet down my hair and brushed my teeth, making myself feel slightly less like a hobo when I pulled a T-shirt over my head. I glanced down at my sleep shorts and decided against changing. They were comfortable, and I wasn’t leaving the house anyway.
When I got to the kitchen, my jaw dropped. Bram was sitting at the kitchen table working on some sort of paperwork with Arielle in a sling across his chest.
My sling.
The one with the floral print that I hated but accepted with a smile when Ellie had bought it for me on our shopping trip.
“What are you doing?” I asked incredulously, pausing Bram’s quiet humming.
“Getting some work done,” he said simply, running his gaze from my head to my toes. “You look better.”
“You look like a jackass,” I said with a snicker.
“Ah, there’s the Ani I know. I thought you were going soft on me.”
“Not likely.” I took a few steps forward. “You have to be careful with those slings,” I blurted, taking a couple steps forward. “If you don’t put her in there right, it’s hard for her to breathe and—”
“She’s fine,” he assured me, pulling back the fabric so I could see Arielle’s sleeping face. “I can feel her breathing, and I watched a couple YouTube videos before I put her in it.”
“Oh, so that makes you an expert?” I asked, fidgeting.
This was new. This overwhelming need to protect someone. I was protective of my nieces and nephews, and of the Evans and Harris families, but this feeling went so much deeper than that. It was overwhelming and almost feral in its intensity.
“I’d never do anything to hurt her,” he replied incredulously.
“Here, I’ll take her,” I said sharply, reaching my arms out. I knew I was being rude as hell, but I couldn’t seem to stop it. I needed to hold her.
“Sure,” Bram said, lifting the entire sling so that it was loose around his neck. He handed Arielle over and pulled the fabric over his head, then shuffled the papers in front of him, gathering them up into a neat pile.
She was too hot. Was she too hot? I walked to the couch and laid her down, pulling her out of the sling, only to find that she was a completely normal temperature. Good.
“I’m out,” Bram muttered, sliding his T-shirt back on and grabbing his flannel off the back of the couch. “She likes the vibration in your chest when you hum, try that.”
Then he walked out the front door, locking it behind him.
I sat down heavily on the couch after he was gone, sighing in disgust. I hadn’t even said thank you.
A part of me felt like such a bitch for that, but the other part—the dominant part? It kept repeating the same phrase in my head over and over.
Hurt me once, shame on you. Hurt me twice, shame on me.
I couldn’t afford to get pulled into some anti-relationship with Bram again.
* * *
My phone rang a couple hours later as I was climbing out of the shower.
“Hello?” I answered, out of breath.
“I hear Bram was at your house for hours earlier,” Kate sang into the phone, making me curse.
“Jesus, this family is such a bunch of gossip queens,” I griped, trying to dry off my hair as I held the phone with my shoulder.
“Well, he left work at like eight and didn’t get back until lunch,” Kate said innocently. “Trev was just wondering if I’d heard anything.”
“You live in San Diego,” I scoffed, awkwardly pulling on my clothes.
“Semantics,” Kate replied. “So what happened?”
“Well.” I drew the word out, imagining the huge smile on her face as she waited for some fairy-tale story to come bursting out of my mouth. “He got here, and I was topless, walking around the living room.” My voice grew quiet. “And then he started stripping.”
Kate was completely silent on the other end of the connection.
“As soon as he was bare chested, he came to me…and took Arielle so I could have a nap while he did the skin-on-skin shit that calms her down.”
“Oh, thank God. I was trying to be a good friend but I was totally skeeved out,” she blurted.
“You’re such an ass,” I laughed.
“It sucks being so far away.”
“I thought you loved it down there?” I asked in surprise.
“I do,” she said cheerily. “But I miss you guys and I want to meet Arielle.”
“You should come visit.”
“Yeah, I talked to Shane about it last night. We can’t really afford to send all of us up there, so I’m thinking I’ll just fly up for the weekend or something.”
“That would be awesome,” I said, checkin
g on Arielle, who was asleep in her little bassinet.
“What’s happening with you and Bram?” Kate needled. “You never tell me anything!”
“There’s nothing to tell,” I replied, going out to the couch so I wouldn’t wake the baby. Or should I try and wake her so she wasn’t up all night? None of the baby books I had gave me a straight answer. It was annoying as hell.
“Well, he was at your house—”
“Trev was here yesterday, Ellie the day before that, your mom comes over every day at some point, and I’ve even seen your dad a few times,” I said flatly.
“But still—”
“But still, nothing,” I said in exasperation. “He made his decision very fucking clear, Katie. Can you just drop it?”
Kate was quiet for a few seconds. “Okay,” she said on a sigh. “For now.”
“Have you always been this annoying?”
“Oh, please,” Kate replied. “You told Mom I was pregnant before I could—you’re way worse than me.”
“I was worried!”
“Likely story.”
* * *
Two weeks later, Kate came home to Oregon and met Arielle for the first time.
“Oh my God, she’s gorgeous!” my foster sister said, stealing Arielle from me the minute she walked through the door. “Iris was a pretty baby, but Gavin and Keller looked like little gremlins.”
I snorted as she passed me, pushing her way into the house.
“Good to see you, too.”
“I’m not here to see you,” she joked back as Trevor carried her suitcase inside.
“Are you staying here?” I asked in surprise.
“Obviously.”
“I bet Liz is really happy about that,” I said flatly as I shut the front door.
“She’ll be here in a little bit,” Kate replied with a shrug of her shoulders. “She said she didn’t care since I didn’t bring the kids with me.”
Trevor and I laughed as we followed her into the living room.
“How you doing?” he asked, throwing an arm around my shoulders.
“I’m good,” I said, giving him a big smile. “Hey, have you heard from Hen? He hasn’t called in a few days.”
I’d been talking to Alex, Henry, and Kate almost every day since I’d brought Arielle home. They also made me send photos and videos of Arielle so they could see her. I could tell they were feeling pretty homesick, but they’d all come to visit recently so only Kate was able to come back home to meet her.
“He’s doing that training thing he was talking about,” Trev answered, rubbing his knuckles over my head before moving to sit next to Kate on the couch. “He won’t be back for another week.”
“Oh, right.” I snapped my fingers, then looked down at my hand in disgust. When had I started picking up mannerisms from Uncle Mike of all people? He was the only person who snapped like that.
“Yep,” Trev said, nodding his head as he snapped his fingers.
“Shut up.”
“I didn’t say a word.”
“Children,” Kate scolded, “let’s focus on what’s important here, me holding my new niece. Take a picture for Arielle’s baby book, Ani.”
I looked at her in horror. “What the fuck is a baby book?”
“It’s a little book that you put all their milestones in, like when their favorite aunt held them for the first time,” Kate said slowly, like I was an idiot.
“What?” I was so confused.
Trevor started laughing hard, his deep voice filling the room until both Kate and I were laughing, too. I wasn’t even sure what was so funny, but his laughter was ridiculously contagious.
“We’ll go to the store and buy you one tomorrow,” Kate assured me, wiping tears off her face.
“Where’s my favorite sister?” a voice called from the front door, making me freeze.
I’d barely seen Bram since he left my house two weeks earlier. He monopolized Arielle when we went to family dinners, but he barely said a word to me. I knew I’d been a bitch to him, but I couldn’t make myself apologize. If he was going to be butt-hurt over one comment I’d made, that was fine. It wasn’t like he hadn’t said much worse things to me over the years.
“Abraham,” Kate sang, coming to her feet.
“Hey,” he said, stepping into the living room with a sweet smile. He walked toward Katie and hugged her with Arielle between them, leaning down to give my daughter a quick kiss on her forehead. “Where’s Mom?”
“What?” Kate asked, pulling away.
“Mom said we were doing dinner here. I’ve got groceries in the back of the truck,” Bram said in confusion, his eyes meeting mine.
“That’s news to me,” I said drily.
“Shit,” he mumbled, reaching up to run his hand through his beard.
“It’s fine. Trev, get off your ass and help him unload,” I ordered.
“When did you get bossy?” Trevor bitched with a smile, pushing himself to his feet.
“When I became a mother,” I replied snottily, raising one eyebrow.
Trevor and Katie both laughed at that, but when I glanced at Bram, he was giving me a soft look, his lips tipped up in a small smile.
That night, my house was filled with noise. Ellie, Mike, Liz, and Dan showed up about a half an hour after Bram, and the women immediately got to work making dinner. They passed around the baby and refused to give her back until I’d finished my meal, then finally let me cuddle her as they ate their own. Everyone stayed late, laughing and joking as Ellie and Liz cleaned the house despite my protests. They even gave Arielle a bath in the kitchen sink, taking a thousand pictures of her disgruntled face.
After everyone had gone, Katie and I curled up on my bed with Arielle between us.
“How’s everything going?” Kate asked seriously, playing with Arielle’s little hands.
“It’s good,” I said with a little nod. “I’m tired pretty much all the time, and I usually smell like ass because I haven’t showered—but I wouldn’t change it.”
“I know how that goes,” Kate replied, rolling her eyes. “Shane will come up behind me all ‘let’s get it on’ and I’m like, ‘Dude, this is day three of not showering. You don’t want anywhere near my downstairs.’”
I snickered, my giggles shaking the bed and making Arielle startle with her hands and feet straight up in the air. “Well, I don’t have to deal with that, at least.”
“Still nothing with Bram?” Kate asked quietly.
“Why do you keep harping on this?” I asked.
“Because I watched him watching you all damn night,” she replied. “And when he wasn’t watching you, he was watching whoever was holding Arielle like he was going to tear their head off if they made any wrong move.”
“You’re delusional.”
Kate sighed. “I’ll drop it.”
“Thank you.”
“But—”
“Oh fantastic, you have more to say,” I said drily, lying down flat on my back.
“Just…don’t give up on him yet.”
“Kate”—I shook my head—“it’s been over a month. That horse is dead, yet you continue to beat it.”
“That saying is ridiculous. Why would anyone beat a dead horse?” Kate said in disgust.
“Exactly.”
* * *
The next morning, Ellie and Liz showed up bright and early, their hands full of donuts and coffee. Then they shooed Kate and me out of the house with gift certificates to a movie theater and a salon. They kept Arielle all day so Kate and I could get out for a while.
I didn’t want to go at first, but as we sat in the salon chairs with footbaths massaging our feet, I realized how badly I’d needed the break. It was hard leaving Arielle for any length of time, but it also felt good to leave the house for a little while and gossip with my best friend. I didn’t know how Kate took care of five kids; just one was making me feel like I was losing my mind. I forgot everything, from appointments to the last time I’d brushed my hair
.
I cried when Kate left on Sunday, but I knew she was anxious to get back to the kiddos. Shane had already left on his deployment, and while her neighbor was rad about keeping so many kids, Kate was ready to be home. She didn’t like being without them, and for the first time, I completely understood it.
Sometimes I wonder if that weekend was God’s way of preparing me for what happened after that. A reprieve of sorts so that, when the time came, I would be rested and strong.
Chapter 13
Abraham
I was in love. Flat-out do-anything-say-anything-kill-for-and-die-for love. And the object of my affection was a little girl that weighed less than ten pounds.
I’m not sure how it happened, but from the moment I’d held her in the hospital, it was like something clicked. I loved Katie and Shane’s kids. I’d loved them since the minute they were born, and I’d do anything for them, but Arielle was different.
What I felt for her was stronger than all that. It made me change. I waited for any mention of her, made sure I ran into whoever had visited her and Ani that day just so I could hear whatever story they wanted to tell. I had a hard time falling asleep at night, wondering if Ani had gotten her to sleep all right or if she was pulling an all-nighter that I was missing. And anytime I was in the same room with her, I couldn’t stop my gaze from landing on her over and over again no matter who was holding her, just to make sure she was okay.
I had a thousand pictures of her on my phone already.
I hadn’t wanted any of this. I’d fought it right from the beginning.
When I’d left the hospital that day, I drove around for hours trying to get my head on straight—but nothing seemed to help. She’d worked her way under my skin just by being alive, and that scared the shit out of me.
I didn’t want kids. The thought of being a parent made my skin crawl as I remembered my biological mother. She was, well, beautiful. In every single way.
A lot of kids I’d met in the system had really shitty parents, parents even worse than Ani’s, but my mom had never been anything but perfect. She was single when Alex and I were born, but she’d worked her ass off at job after job to make sure we had what we needed. When we were really little, she’d had a job at a daycare center so she could take us with her, and once we went to school, she’d joined a cleaning company.