I’d never been good at thinking things through. Some of my earliest childhood memories were of scrapes I’d gotten myself into because I’d done something without thinking of the consequences. So when I’d seen him unbuttoning his shirt that night, I hadn’t been able to think of anything beyond the way his fingers moved as he pressed the buttons through the holes. He hadn’t even been paying attention to what he was doing, as if working on autopilot.
I’d let him lure me into his lair.
And even though he’d been a dick afterward, I couldn’t really regret it. I’d wanted him, badly. And for a few minutes, I’d had exactly what I wanted.
I was under no illusion that Shane would magically fall in love with me. I didn’t have visions of walking down the aisle or even holding hands on the sidewalk. I’d loved him from afar for most of my adult life, and while I didn’t see that changing anytime soon, I also didn’t expect that he’d ever return those feelings.
I was okay with that. Mostly.
I dreaded the day he’d find someone else, knowing that my life would change dramatically when that happened, but I expected it. I’d learned from an early age that sometimes people left whether they wanted to or not, and I’d much rather Shane left me because he’d found a woman who made him happy.
Once when I was nine, my parents had fostered a little boy who seemed to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. He was a year younger than me, and quite a bit smaller. I remember that he didn’t speak much, but was always unfailingly polite when he did. I swear, that kid had seemed almost like a ghost in my nine-year-old mind, but I knew even then that ghosts needed friends. So I’d tried to be friends with him, and though he tolerated me, I didn’t think that he ever particularly liked me much. It wasn’t until his social worker showed up one day after school that I saw the boy smile. Apparently, his mom had left his abusive dad and had been awarded custody. He’d left our house with the largest smile I’d ever seen before or since, and even though I knew I’d miss having him around, I couldn’t help but be glad that he was that happy about leaving.
If Shane found someone else, that’s how I wanted him to leave me behind. Joyfully. Even if it cut me to shreds.
* * *
“Megan’s got the kids, so we need to make it quick,” Shane informed me as he brushed by me into the apartment the next morning. “Is everything packed up?”
“Yeah,” I answered, my eyes widening as two men followed in behind him. “Hi, who are you?”
“This is Eric and Miles,” Shane informed me, stacking small boxes in the kitchen so he could carry three at once. “They’re going to help you move.”
“Wow, thanks, guys.”
“No worries. Shane helped me and my wife move last year,” the taller guy said, reaching down to pick up a large box in the middle of the room.
“He promised me beer,” the one closest to me whispered, winking. Dang, he had that nerdy-cute thing going on.
“Hell, if you unpack when we’re done, I’ll bake you a cake,” I shot back, smiling.
“Let’s go, guys,” Shane said sharply, walking out my front door with the first load of boxes.
I grabbed the garbage bags of bedding I’d packed that morning and followed the guys out of my house, huffing in annoyance as the bags went bouncing off the railing of the outdoor stairs.
“What the hell are you doing?” Shane barked, pulling the bags out of my hands before I’d made it halfway to the ground level.
“What are you doing?”
“You shouldn’t be carrying shit down the stairs.”
“They’re blankets, Shane. They weigh like four pounds.”
“You were about to trip.”
“So the blankets would have broken my fall,” I argued stubbornly. He was being an ass, and while I didn’t mind sitting his moving shit out, I didn’t like the tone he was using to speak to me.
“How about you just go over to the house, and we’ll meet you there?”
“How about, no? How about I go back upstairs and grab some more stuff so we can get this show on the road?”
“You’re not going to help us move boxes.”
I went silent as Shane’s friends moved up the stairs past us to grab another load, but continued glaring until they were out of earshot.
“You’re being kind of a dick right now.”
“Because I won’t let you carry boxes?” he asked flatly.
“No, because you’re speaking to me like I’m an idiot!” Oh no, the hormone-crazy was coming out.
“Shit, Katie,” he said quietly, stepping down a stair. “I don’t want you to get hurt. Can you please just supervise or something?”
“Whoa, complete one eighty. I’m impressed.”
“Sometimes I wonder if you’re deliberately trying to get a rise out of me,” he said in exasperation, shifting the bags in his hands.
“Maybe I need a spanking,” I replied seriously, before spinning around and moving back up the stairs while he stood there with his mouth open.
I wasn’t sure if I should be mortified at my lack of belongings or impressed that the guys packed up my things so quickly because, only thirty minutes later, the trucks were loaded and we were on the road to the Anderson house.
It was time to step into shoes that were not my own.
* * *
“Auntie Kate! We got a surprise for you!” Sage called as Megan walked her and the boys across the street.
“Thanks for keeping them, Megan,” I said as she handed a sleepy Gunner to me.
“No problem, neighbor. Eric was helping you guys anyway.”
“Oh, is your husband the super-tall one or the super-hot one?”
“Both?”
“Okay, the super-tall one then.”
We laughed, then grabbed ahold of little hands and shuffled to the lawn as the guys backed Shane’s truck into the driveway.
“Come see, Auntie!” Kell whined, pulling on my hand.
“See!”
“See!”
“Okay, okay, I’m going.” I turned to Megan, who was busy keeping her son from running to the back of the truck. “Thanks again, Megan.”
The kids babbled excitedly as we went into the house and I was pulled and shoved toward the spare bedroom. When Sage opened the bedroom door with a flourish I couldn’t stop the tears that came to my eyes.
“We thought you might need a better bed,” Shane said quietly from behind my shoulder. “It’s nothing great but the mattress is new, and—”
“I love it.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s the best bed ever in the history of beds.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” he replied with a small smile. “We’ll put your old one in the garage in case you need it for a spare room or something later.”
“You did this for me?” I called out to the kids who were bouncing on the bed. “I love it!”
“We got you new sheets, too! ’Cause Daddy said your other sheets wouldn’t fit this bed,” Sage yelled over the noise her brothers were making. “But Daddy forgot to wash them until this morning, so they’re still in the dryer.”
I glanced over my shoulder at Shane to find him laughing softly. “Whoops,” he said, with a small shrug. “They’re probably done by now.”
“Sage and Keller,” I called out, getting their attention, “can you guys go get my brand-new sheets out of the dryer so you both can help me make my bed?”
“I’ll do it!” Keller announced, running past me.
“She said for both of us to do it, Keller!” Sage yelled in indignation.
I smiled at their bickering and watched as Gavin realized he no longer had anyone to play with and flopped down dramatically on the bed. By the amount of drool seeping into the shoulder of my T-shirt, I had a feeling that Gunner had already fallen asleep where I held him.
“All the boxes you need in the house are marked, right?” Shane asked as Keller and Sage came running back in, arguing about who could put their side of
the sheets on faster.
“Yeah, they’re all marked. There’s eleven of them. I counted.”
“Okay, I’ll go grab those. You want me to take Gunner up to bed?” He reached out to slide his hand over the top of Gunner’s head.
“No, but do you think you could get the rest of the monsters out of here for a while?” I asked ruefully. “I kind of want to just crawl into my new bed with Gunner and take a nap.”
He smiled tenderly, the expression stealing my breath, and nodded.
“Sage! Keller! Gavin!” Shane called out. “Let’s let Kate lie down with the baby for a while, and you guys can help us unload the rest of the truck.”
Once everyone was out of my room, I crawled into the twisted sheets and curled around Gunner in the huge bed. My blankets and pillows hadn’t made it into the house yet, but I still fell asleep almost instantly when my head hit the mattress.
I woke up a little while later under my favorite comforter, with Gunner missing.
“Gunner?” I called out in a panic.
I jumped from the bed and ran downstairs, where I could hear Shane and the kids in the kitchen.
“Where’s Gun—” He was sitting in his high chair eating blueberries.
“Sorry,” Shane called out sheepishly from where he’d been talking to nerdy-cute guy. “When I went up to check on you guys, he was waking up, so I brought him down here with us.”
“Holy shit, I thought I’d lost him,” I gasped, covering my face with one hand.
“There’s a gate at the top of the stairs, Katie. He wouldn’t have gone far,” Shane reminded me with a laugh.
Yeah, it was funny for him, maybe. I burst into tears.
“Oh shit,” nerdy-cute guy mumbled.
“Hell, Kate.” Shane sighed, coming toward me so he could pull me into his chest. “Why are you crying?”
“I slept right through it! I didn’t even know that he was gone.”
“You were tired,” Shane mumbled in my ear.
“I’m always tired! Oh God, what if I don’t wake up when one of them needs me!”
“Quit it, Katie,” Shane ordered firmly, sliding his hands up my back until he was gripping my head. “Stop crying. Hey! You knew I was here, right? You knew even when you were sleeping that I wouldn’t let anything happen to you guys.”
“I guess.” I sniffled.
“Right, so you probably noticed when I grabbed Gun, but you didn’t think anything of it, just turned over and went back to sleep.”
“Yeah, but—”
His face was close to mine, and I could hear his quiet voice clearly even though the kids were making a ton of noise while they ate. “No more crying,” he said with a small smile, wiping the tears off my cheeks.
“Auntie Kate’s gonna have a baby. That’s why she cries all the time!” Keller yelled over the noise, making Shane’s body go completely stiff.
He let go of me and turned back to his friend, who was watching us with wide eyes. The news shouldn’t even have been noteworthy to nerdy-cute guy—women my age had kids all the time when they weren’t married—but the way Shane had held me and his complete change in body language after Keller’s little announcement must have been a huge red flag.
“Food’s on the table, Kate,” Shane called without looking at me again. “You should probably eat.”
I nodded even though he wasn’t looking at me and moved to Gunner, whose face was covered in food. “Did you have a good nap, monkey?” I asked softly.
“Onkey,” he replied with a huge grin.
“Jumpin’ on a bed!” Gavin yelled as I passed him.
“There better not be any monkeys jumping on my new bed!” I teased, poking him in the side.
* * *
Thank God the day was finally over. The kids had been so wound up at bedtime, it had felt like they were never going to sleep. I understood it, though. Shane had to leave in the morning, and they were anxious about his departure. We’d decided that nerdy-cute guy, whose name was actually Miles, was going to drive Shane down to the drop-off point instead of bringing the kids down there. I wasn’t sure what the place would be like, but I had a feeling seeing all those families saying their good-byes would probably freak them out.
I changed into a nightgown and slid between the sheets, relaxing into my familiar pillow. Shit, I was dreading the morning. I didn’t know how I would sleep that night. My anxiety was building with every changed number on my alarm clock.
“Auntie Kate, can I sleep with you?” Sage whispered in the doorway, interrupting the what-if scenarios that I’d been sifting through in my brain.
“Sure, come on up,” I whispered back, throwing back the covers. “This bed could probably fit twenty people.”
“Me too!” Gavin called as his stubby legs raced in my door.
“I thought you guys were asleep!”
“Gavin kept kicking his wall,” Sage answered with a scowl.
“Not tired,” Gavin announced, crawling over Sage and me with a grunt.
“Okay, but I am tired. So you have to go right to sleep.”
“Okay,” he grumbled, laying his head on my shoulder.
I rolled toward him and pulled his body into mine as I felt Sage curl into my back.
It was quiet for a while as the kids’ bodies grew heavy and Gavin started the little sniffling snore thing he always did, and I didn’t realize that Keller had come into the room until he was crawling onto the foot of the bed.
“Hey, bud,” I called out when he didn’t say a word. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“I was all alone,” he said with a little sniff.
He crawled up to the other side of Gavin and lay down close, facing us.
“Aw, bud. You want to sleep in here?” After two years of sharing a room with Gavin, Keller hated to sleep alone. I wondered if he’d ever grow out of that.
“Yeah.”
He was asleep within minutes, and I lay there running my fingers through his hair for a long time. Keller was going to be the one I needed to watch closely in the next few weeks.
Sage took things hard, but she tended to internalize them until she figured them out and then quietly came to terms with whatever was happening. After Rachel had died, she’d sort of shrunk into herself, but after a few months she’d become the Sage she’d always been except for the jolting way she woke up.
Gavin just went with the flow. He was so easygoing—almost too easygoing. I wondered if it was because of his age or if God had just decided that Shane and Rachel needed someone who was the exact opposite of their oldest son so they didn’t lose their minds.
Keller took things hard, and when he was having trouble, everyone knew it. He was so sensitive. I think most people would have assumed that his behavior just meant that he was a brat, but I’d known him from the time he was born. The poor kid took everything to heart, and when he was feeling too much—whether it was fear or sadness or anxiety—it always came out of him as anger.
I listened to the quiet sounds of the house settling around us and prayed that I’d be able to take care of all of those little people on my own.
“Looks like a party in here,” Shane said from the doorway, then walked around the bed so I could see him. “Good thing I got you a king.”
“No kidding. Thank God Gunner is trapped in his crib or I’m afraid we’d be falling off the sides.”
“Want me to take them into their beds?”
“Yeah, they’ll probably sleep better,” I replied, kissing Gavin’s sweaty forehead.
Shane walked back around the bed and scooped Sage up, walking on silent feet back out the door as I stood up.
“You didn’t have to get up,” he whispered when he came back in.
“You should grab Gavin first. If Keller wakes up before Gavin’s back in their room, he’ll freak.”
“Good call.” He nodded, leaning over to grab Gavin. “Be right back for Keller.”
I curled back into the suddenly lonely bed as Shane finally carried Kelle
r to his room. I was kicking myself for telling him to put the kids in their beds when Shane came back in.
“Scoot over,” he ordered, shutting the door behind him.
I scrambled back in the bed and swallowed hard as he pulled his T-shirt over his head before climbing in beside me and rolling until we were face-to-face.
“You couldn’t sleep?” he asked.
“I wish you didn’t have to go,” I blurted, instantly squeezing my eyes tightly closed so I couldn’t see his expression.
“Yeah, I’m not too excited about it, either,” he replied with a sigh, making my eyes pop back open.
“I thought—well, Rachel always said you were anxious to go.”
“Things are different now.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“I’m not worried about you taking care of the kids. You know that, right?” he asked, grabbing one of my arms and pulling me closer until I was resting against the side of his body. “I don’t trust anyone more than I trust you.”
“I’m nervous.”
“I would be, too. They’re a shit ton of work.”
“I’m nervous for you.”
“That’s one thing you shouldn’t worry about.”
“I can’t help it.”
“I’ll be back before you know it.”
“I’ll be huge by the time you get back,” I complained.
He laughed softly, jostling the entire bed. “Probably.”
“I’ve missed you,” I whispered softly, curling my hand into a fist on his chest.
“I’m not even gone yet.”
“No, I’ve missed you for a long time.”
He was silent for so long that I wondered if I’d messed up big by bringing up the elephant we’d been dancing around for the past year.
“I was an asshole back then.”
“You were my best friend.”
“I know.” He sighed, pulling my body tighter against his.
“It was just a stupid crush. I would have gotten over it. I did get over it,” I insisted.
“And I was twenty-one and pissed at the world,” he reminded me. “It was easier to pretend you didn’t exist. I knew if I had to see you watching me with those sad, big brown eyes, I’d do something stupid.”
“So you hit on my roommate. God, that was such a dick move,” I retorted.