I put a hand on the door and made my way inside. The lights were down low but there was a glow from the heart monitor and other medical machines Kallie was hooked up to. She had the hospital bed elevated and she was partially sitting up with a tiny, blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms. When she caught sight of me she smiled and tilted her chin so that I would come closer. She looked tired and a little ragged but there was definitely a glow about her that made her look absolutely beautiful. Her hair was in a tangled mess on top of her head and she had shadows under her eyes, but her smile lit up the room and had me smiling back even though my heart was in my throat.
“How you feeling?” I took slow steps toward the bed, faltering when the baby started to fuss as he searched for comfort and food.
“Like I was sawed in half and superglued back together.” She lifted an eyebrow at me and her smile grew even bigger. “So never better.” She lifted a hand and motioned me closer. “Come meet Royce.” She brushed a finger over his cheek. “He looks just like Wheeler. I hope he gets his dimples.”
I let out a startled laugh that her thoughts mirrored my own. Those dimples were in high demand, it seemed.
It took me longer than it should have to get to the edge of the bed, and when I did I felt my heart fall right out of my chest and land at that little boy’s feet. His face was scrunched and irritated, red and splotchy, his eyes squeezed shut, and his miniature hands curled into fists where they rested against Kallie’s chest. He had a tuft of fuzzy hair on his head that was clearly the same reddish brown as his father’s. It was way too early to actually tell but my heart agreed with Kallie that he looked just like Wheeler. I felt like a fool for ever questioning whether or not I could handle loving someone that was so much a part of the man that lived inside of my heart. This little boy was created by the best man I had ever known, so there should have been no doubt that he would own me the second I laid eyes on him.
Tentatively, I reached out so I could rub my knuckle over his velvety soft cheek. “He’s beautiful. I’m so proud of both of you, Kallie.”
She blinked her eyes and I noticed they had tears in them. “I’m proud of you too, Poppy. I wasn’t sure you were going to come in.”
My smile was lopsided and my breath caught as Royce’s eyes flickered open and looked up at me. They were muddy, newborn blue, but I would bet good money they turned to pretty, pale blue as he got older. He was going to be a little mini-Wheeler and I was going to have a heartbreaker on my hands. “I thought it was going to hurt, that all I was going to feel was loss, but I don’t. All I feel is grateful you’re both okay, that he’s healthy and here. I’m lucky to have all of you in my life, lucky that you trust me to be in his. There is so much happiness and celebration happening inside of me right now that there is no room for that ache and the hurt.” It might come later when I was alone, when it was quiet and I had a chance to process everything, but for now all I felt was full of goodness and love for that little boy.
“You want to hold him? You should see him when Wheeler holds him. He looks like a little doll.” She snickered and lifted the baby up in my direction. “You might as well get used to it. I have a feeling you’ll be giving him plenty of brothers and sisters to play with in the not-so-distant future. Wheeler was born to be a family man and I’m so glad he found someone that can make all his dreams come true.”
I stared at the baby for a long minute trying to decide if I could actually take him from her. It felt like such a big step, one I knew I was going to have to take eventually, but that didn’t mean I felt prepared for it at all. As if sensing my hesitation, the baby started to wiggle, arms waving and body moving. Kallie made a startled noise and I reached out and grabbed him to make sure he was secure before I could think about what I was doing.
As soon as my hands wrapped around the precious bundle and his sweet, baby scent hit my nose, I knew it would all be okay. I pulled Royce to my chest, buried my nose in the curve of his neck, and blinked away the tears that flooded my eyes. He moved into my heart right next to his dad and I wasn’t at all surprised he took up nearly as much room.
The last of my demons were dead, crushed under the weight of my very full and overflowing heart.
I brushed a fingertip over one of the baby’s feather-soft eyebrows and told him in all seriousness, “I’m all in with you too, little man.” I couldn’t get any deeper in if I tried. I was drowning in love and it was the one time in my life I wasn’t wishing to be saved.
MY EYES SNAPPED open when the baby monitor next to the bed emitted a soft cry. Sometimes I thought I was dreaming when Royce started fussing in the middle of the night. I thought I was hearing another baby cry, one I would never get the chance to hold, to cuddle and care for. Those painful thoughts always quickly dissipated because there was an adorable baby boy that looked just like his daddy across the hallway that needed me to be present, not caught up in the web of what might have been.
Wheeler let out a groan from somewhere behind me and tightened the arm he had locked around my middle. His long legs shifted behind mine and I felt him roll over onto his back with a sigh. “I got him.” His voice was raspy with sleep but alert. I don’t think either one of us slept soundly when it was his week with Royce. The baby had just crossed the six-month mark, so Wheeler’s time with him had exponentially increased from when he was a newborn and had to spend the majority of his time with Kallie.
I pushed up from the warm cocoon of the covers and brushed my hair off my face. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and climbed to my feet. Wheeler looked up at me, pale blue eyes practically glowing up at me in the dark. I bent to find the T-shirt he had peeled off me hours earlier and slipped it on over my head, which made him groan again. I had to have a mini tug-of-war with Happy, who was curled up on the garment, in order to get it back. He was no longer a little dog, but his goofy disposition hadn’t changed one bit. He rolled on his back, legs in the air, kicking as I tried to get my shirt free. That sent all my naked parts jiggling and moving in ways that made Wheeler groan once more. This one sounded like he was actually suffering some kind of torture. It made me grin, so I put a hand on the bed and leaned over so I could touch my mouth lightly to his. “I got him. You have to work in the morning and I’m off. Go back to sleep.”
His eyes blinked at me, slow and sleepy. His mouth kicked into a grin, and even with the lack of light in the room, those dimples did me in. The monitor made another noise but now Royce was really awake and obviously agitated, so I heard him cry out from the other room. “You sure?”
He always asked me. He always made sure that I knew I was here for him, he didn’t have me in his bed and in his life because he was looking for me to play mommy to his little boy. He had me there because that was where he wanted me, where I belonged, and no one else would ever be able to fit in that space besides me. For the first few months it had been a delicate balancing act, letting Wheeler figure out just how much he could take on with the baby without me offering to help. Everything inside of me wanted to scream that I was there, that he could take advantage of my two capable hands, and that I was dying to help, but the fact was I had to let him bury himself before I could dig him out.
“More than sure.” The baby wailed again and I pushed off the bed and hustled across the room before he got really agitated and worked himself into a fit that would be impossible to quiet down without hours of cuddling and rocking in his favorite chair.
Those unforgettable eyes slid shut and that broad, tattooed chest heaved a grateful sigh that made my heart thud heavily and happily. “I’m here if you need me.” The words were sleep-slurred and sloppy but I knew he meant them with every single fiber of his being.
“You always are.”
He’d been there through every step of my father’s arraignment and subsequent trial. He’d been there through the media circus that surrounded it all when the local press put together that the victim (me) was the same woman that had been abducted and raped by her husband. The fact that
Dad was so heavily involved in the church made for a story too juicy to resist. He was there when my father was convicted and sentenced, showing zero apology or remorse for the things he did as he was led away. Wheeler was the one that kept me together when I got the call from Case Lawton that my mom had been skipping church and her weekly meetings with the counselor that her friends forced her to go see after my father no longer had control over every single aspect of her life. I knew even before he told me that it wasn’t good. Her skipping mandatory therapy was one thing; her skipping church was something she would only do if something was seriously wrong with her.
She was dead.
Sheriff Lawton told me he found her in the chair by the window and an empty bottle of pills on the floor by her feet. She left a note but all it said was:
I can’t live without him.
My father killed her just like I knew he would. Even if it wasn’t by his own hand, he was the reason she was no longer alive.
It was hard. Dealing with the funeral arrangements, fielding questions from the nosy people that hadn’t bothered to step in before it was too late, and trying not to let the guilt Salem felt for shutting her out and letting her go overwhelm me. It was hard but I managed because I had Wheeler to lean on. Every time I stumbled he was there with a hand on my elbow to keep me upright. Every time I felt lost, all I had to do was look for that bright spot of color, that boy who was impossible to miss, and find my way back to where I was supposed to be. He was absolutely there when I needed him, which is why I had no problem slipping out of the room and into the nursery just as Royce’s clenched little fists lifted to his tiny, furious face. I could see he was gearing up to scream his displeasure to the world, so I rushed to the side of the crib and picked him up before he could really get going. I shushed him, rubbed his back, and rubbed my cheek against the velvety softness of his. I made a face when I got a whiff of what was obviously making him so uncomfortable and irritated.
I held the baby out in front of me and wrinkled up my nose at him as he grabbed for fistfuls of my hair. He cooed at me and blinked eyes that were the exact same icy blue as Wheeler’s. His face scrunched up into a baby grin and my heart felt like it was going to burst because it was so full when the single dimple Royce had in his left cheek appeared. He was going to appreciate inheriting that from his daddy when he was old enough to understand the effect it had on the opposite sex.
“Let’s get you cleaned up, little man. I’ll make it all better.” And like he understood that I would always be there, I would always do what I could to make things the best they could be for him. He quieted right down and switched from fussing to giggling as he grabbed at my hair, trying to shove handfuls of it into his mouth.
I laid him down on the changing table and went to work getting a new diaper on him and getting him all cleaned up. He’d had a blowout, so he needed a new set of pajamas. I put him in ones that had little elephants all over them, courtesy of Zak and his lovely wife. Royce had more baby stuff than I’d ever seen. His nursery was filled to capacity with gifts and gadgets that were constantly arriving from California. Shannon’s health had steadily declined the last few months and Zak hadn’t been able to visit as often as he wanted to. Wheeler and I were planning a trip to California around my birthday so we could take the baby to see his great-grandfather since his great-grandfather couldn’t come to him. It was all about family. It was the way I had always wanted it to be.
“All better.” I put Royce to my shoulder and settled us into the rocking chair Wheeler had bought when he realized how soothing the baby found the gentle back-and-forth motion.
The first time I held Royce, and I looked into those eyes, Wheeler’s eyes, I felt like the biggest idiot in the world. He was so much a part of Wheeler, so innocent and pure, so sweet and helpless, all I wanted to do was protect him and make sure he knew he was loved, that he would always have a place to call home.
I was all in and I never wanted out.
I muttered into Royce’s neck. Telling him stories about his dad and his mom, telling him that Wheeler had already bought him his first car, that it was sitting at the shop under a tarp waiting until he was old enough to use a socket wrench. I told him all about my niece, Glory, who had made her way into the world a couple of months after he did. She was the perfect mixture of both Rowdy and my sister, with a cap of fuzzy blond hair and endlessly dark eyes and perfectly glorious, golden skin. At some point while I was talking, the baby fell asleep on my shoulder, his whispery breaths in my ear the sweetest sound I’d ever heard. The dog had also made his way into the room and made himself comfortable next to my feet. It was every dream I’d ever had come true.
“You look good holding my baby, honey.” Wheeler’s words had my gaze lifting to where he was propped up in the doorway, one arm lifted above his head, the other lazily scratching across his chest. He always made my breath catch and blood run hot, but his words had a new kind of longing unfurling and working its way through my entire body.
“I love holding your baby, Hudson.”
I smiled at him as he put his hand over his heart and smiled at me like I had given him the greatest gift in the entire world. “Good to know, honey, good to know.”
It was good to know.
It was good to know I could do this. I could be a mom, a lover, a sister, a friend, a survivor, and I could be someone that someone else might need in order for them to understand that there were options and something better out there. I could be all the things I always wanted to be. I could be all the things I’d never been allowed to be before.
“Come back to bed, Poppy.” His eyes really were glowing now in a way that was intimately familiar and impossible to resist. They promised wonderful, decadent, delicious things. They promised sweaty sex and sore muscles in the morning. They promised thundering hearts and pounding pulses. They promised multiple orgasms, even though I’d already had one that I could still feel, and they promised dirty words that were going to make me blush. But the thing that had me laying the baby in the crib with a kiss on his forehead and a sweep of my fingers through his reddish-brown hair and tiptoeing out of the room was that those eyes always, whenever they were directed at me, promised me they would take care of me however I needed to be cared for. He would always give me whatever it was I needed, which was nice, because all I really needed was him.
BONUS (BECAUSE MY READERS ARE RAD) EPILOGUE
Sometime down the road …
“Two minutes is plenty of time.” My voice was rough in Poppy’s ear as I flipped the skirt of her frilly bridesmaid’s dress over her ass and tugged at the barely-there thong she was wearing under it. Her eyes met mine in the mirror over the sink and her hands braced on the vanity I had her bent over. She shook her head no but her hips pressed back into mine, rubbing against my cock where it was hard and tenting the front of my tuxedo pants. Her teeth bit into her bottom lip and her eyes glowed with golden heat.
I’d gotten good at doing a lot of things in two minutes and under, you had to when you had a growing kid underfoot. There were diapers that needed to be quickly changed, messes that needed to be cleaned up, a dog that needed its fur rescued from strong, grabby hands, feedings that had to happen at the drop of a hat, and tantrums that needed soothing regardless of what the adults in the house might be doing. I was quick; often Poppy was quicker when Royce needed something, but we still always tried to take our time with each other. I would always give her more than two minutes, but today we didn’t have that luxury.
Sayer and Zeb had gotten married an hour earlier and we were both supposed to be down at the reception before the bride and groom arrived since we were in the wedding party. Zeb had asked me to be his best man and I couldn’t have been prouder to stand up there with my oldest friend as he tied himself to his perfect girl. He also had Rowdy and his brother-in-law stand with him while his son, Hyde, acted as the ring bearer. Sayer asked Poppy to be her maid of honor, so I got to walk her down the aisle in a lilac dress shirt that match
ed the fluffy underlay of the bride’s cream-and-ivory dress. No boring white for Sayer, not anymore. She’d also asked Salem, and Zeb’s sister, Beryl, to stand up with her, so the entire wedding had been a family affair.
The reception was held at the Crawford, so of course I had gotten us a room. Royce was with Kallie for the weekend and I had no plans on letting Poppy out of bed after all the pleasantries of the wedding and reception were said and done. That gave me plenty of time to have my way with her, but I couldn’t wait. I was always hungry for her, starving for a taste of her unique honey and spice flavor.
“You’re going to take longer than two minutes.” Of course I was. With her, I felt like I could last for hours and even days if my body was capable. There was humor in her tone but she obediently opened her legs when I nudged my knee between them. Her shoulders stiffened and her head dropped forward on a sigh as my lips hit the back of her neck and the sound of my lowering zipper filled the room.
I grunted in response and ran a questing finger along the lush line of her ass before dipping it inside and tickling my way down to the sweet spot between her legs. She was already wet, already quivering and unsteady on the tall heels her feet were still encased in.
“No one will even notice that we’re not there.” That wasn’t true, but I was sliding my cock along her cleft and coating myself in her slick moisture, so I was willing to say anything to get her to stay exactly where she was.
She gasped as I pushed in, spreading her open and sinking in. It never got old, the feeling of taking her and of being taken in by her. I groaned into the curve of her neck and moved my palm over the curve of her ass.