Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 122966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 615(@200wpm)___ 492(@250wpm)___ 410(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 615(@200wpm)___ 492(@250wpm)___ 410(@300wpm)
I grinned through my tears and touched her little hand carefully.
She gripped my finger and settled down somewhat.
Grace.
The feeling was surreal.
“You’re gonna have to be patient with me,” I murmured thickly. “But I promise to keep you safe. You’ll never doubt where I stand.”
“Pipsqueak, could you get it, please?” I called. “It’s probably Keira.”
“On it!” she hollered from downstairs.
I finished changing Grace’s diaper and helped her into the second onesie of the day. It was possible that the fifteen onesies Mary and Pipsqueak had bought hadn’t been too many after all. Because this little puke machine went through at least three a day.
Grace was four weeks old, and I’d learned five things. One, always carry a towel on my shoulder. Two, she’d poop five minutes after I’d changed her diaper. Three, if I didn’t keep her nails trimmed, I might wake up from her nightly screaming and find her with scratches on her face. In the process, I’d lost ten years of my life. Four, if I didn’t sleep when she slept, I didn’t sleep at all. Five, I absolutely sucked at feeding her, and I didn’t know what I was doing wrong.
She screamed and protested for at least ten minutes if I was the one holding the bottle.
Pipsqueak, on the other hand…
Fucking nonsense. Luckily, I was the only choice once the feeding was over. Grace wouldn’t settle down until she got to throw up on my shoulder. At least I had a magic touch for something. She was great at falling asleep in my arms too.
“Let’s go see if Keira brought you some food.” I pressed a kiss to the side of Grace’s head, carefully holding her in place at my shoulder, and carried her downstairs.
I found both Keira and Pipsqueak in the kitchen.
“Hey, Captain Sweatpants.” Keira held up a container that I assumed had more frozen cubes of breast milk. “Freezer, right?”
I nodded. “Thanks, hon.” Turning to Pipsqueak, I asked if she could take Grace into the living room. I wanted a word in private with Keira.
“Of course.” Pipsqueak gathered Grace in her arms and trailed out.
She had a bunch of textbooks open on the kitchen table, so I steered clear of that. It’d been part of our babysitting negotiation. I’d offered fifteen bucks an hour, two hours a day, for the first two months, at which she’d scoffed and called me stupid. She’d countered with zero bucks an hour, three hours a day, and it’d been my turn to call her stupid. This was her senior year, and I wasn’t going to have her waste it on babysitting when she could be studying. In the end, we’d compromised. Ten bucks an hour, three hours a day, and she’d promised to spend any spare time studying.
She wasn’t the best at negotiating.
“How’s your sister?” I forced myself to ask. Because I hadn’t particularly enjoyed the previous answers to the question. I’d only seen Taylor twice since Grace was born, and once was in the presence of a lawyer. It just rubbed me the wrong way how eagerly she was signing away her rights. She’d talked nonstop of the traveling she was going to do—how wasted she was going to get—now that she was “free.”
“Same. She’s fine.” Keira rested her hip against the counter and chewed on her lip. “You don’t seem glad that she’s moving on.”
It wasn’t that. “It’s the rate at which she’s moving on,” I corrected patiently. “I don’t believe it’s healthy for her to act like these past nine months didn’t happen.”
Keira nodded slowly and fidgeted with the rubber band around her wrist. She’d undergone some changes recently. Her hair was back to dirty-blond, a big improvement over the pitch-black tresses that went with too much eye makeup. The lethargy had left her gaze too. She was coming out of her mourning period, and I was happy to see it.
“You have to understand that she’s been processing this for a long time, though,” she replied quietly. “I think she puts up a front when she’s near you, and maybe that’s why it seems like she’s ignoring everything. But she talks to me. She talks to her therapist in New York.”
Oh. I folded my arms over my chest and scratched my jaw. “I didn’t know she was getting help.”
Keira smiled ruefully. “Because she’s not getting it from you?”
Touché.
“I’m not saying your concern isn’t valid,” she added. “I’ve been worried too. But I’m keeping an eye on her. She has a big heart—it’s just… This wasn’t what she wanted.”
“That part doesn’t bother me.” I furrowed my brow. “I may not be able to understand it, but that’s because I didn’t stand a chance against…” Grace. “My point is, I respect her decision. I just hope she’s not suppressing anything.”
Selfishly, I thought of what that could mean for Grace and me, and I didn’t want any issues down the road. It’d have been one thing if Taylor had changed her mind during the pregnancy and suddenly wanted to be involved in Grace’s life, but that train had left the station now. So, I was battling that, all while being baffled by the fact that Taylor had actually succeeded in staying unattached.