“I’m fine. I’ll have some coffee at my place and then catch a nap this afternoon. If you need anything, just text or call.”
Usually he’d look torn or wary about letting me take Toby to mine unless he had to work or be somewhere, so the fact he’d given in so quickly and had cut off my promises worried me. Maybe he was the one who had a brain injury or concussion? Was acting abnormally and nice one of the symptoms?
As we walked toward the vehicles, I remembered something and groaned. “I’ll be right back. My car’s unlocked, but if you could take out the car seat and put it in Pawpaw’s, that’d be awesome.”
Seeing the confusion on their faces, I explained, “Remy’s vehicle is still at the hospital. I’m going to give him my keys in case he needs to go somewhere.”
“Okay. Once you’ve had a nap, I’ll go with you to get it, if you want?” Croix offered.
“Please!”
Running back inside, I put the keys on the table next to Remy, who now had the ice pack over his eyes.
Squatting down beside him, I asked softly, “When did you last take your painkillers?”
“Before I came down here,” he mumbled. “They should start kicking in soon.”
“Okay. I just came in to give you the keys to my car in case you need to go somewhere. Croix is going to drive me to the hospital later to pick up your vehicle, so can I take your keys with me?”
Lifting the ice pack off one eye, he looked at me. “I don’t remember where I put them when we got back. They might be in my room, or I may have dropped them in the bathroom when I went for a leak before I got into bed. That damn toilet seat lock needs to go. I almost peed on the floor trying to get it undone with my eyes and nose like this.” He’d never spoken to me this bluntly, so I blinked at the revealed information.
“I’ll find them once I have a nap and go with him to get it.” His hand appeared next to my face, making me flinch slightly, but then he rubbed his thumb over my forehead so gently it took everything in me not to lean into it. “You’re exhausted, baby. Thank you for looking after us, but we need to do that for you tonight.”
Knowing I had to work on a book tonight, I snorted. “With your eyes the way they are, there’s no way you should drive. Plus, I already told you, I’ll have some caffeine, take a nap, and I’ll be great.”
The only person outside of Addy and Marcus’s sister-in-law, Sadie, who knew I wrote was Pawpaw, so I couldn’t tell him that I had to be awake later. I also couldn’t dwell on the fact he’d called me baby, not when he had more issues than Playboy and was hopped up on painkillers that’d been prescribed by a doctor.
Jumping up, I gave him a breezy wave. “Righty ho, I’ll see you later. Call me if you need anything.”
Not even waiting for a response, I jogged to the front door and continued going until I got to Pawpaw’s car, where Toby had pride of place in the front passenger seat, even if his car seat still had to face backward.
It didn’t take long for us to get to my place, a small one-bedroom house on the far side of the horse pasture not far away from the one most of the hands stayed in. I stayed silent, mulling over Remy’s behavior the whole drive.
The flinch that’d happened when he’d brought his hand close to my face wasn’t because I was afraid of him, it was because he’d always gone out of his way to never touch me. Even when he was handing Toby over, he’d remove his hand quickly so that any skin-to-skin contact was brief. Him voluntarily, let alone gently, touching my face just didn’t happen, nor did him not questioning where I was taking Toby and wanting a full rundown of what I intended to do with him.
I understood why he was so panicky about his son and why he got defensive, even when people weren’t questioning his parenting abilities. I’d like to say I’d be different in his shoes, but I couldn’t ever say that, given that I was the one with the womb and ovaries in the pregnancy scenario.
Being on the receiving end of his defensiveness so often, I’d swayed between being offended, hurt, angry, and understanding, just like Marcus and Addy had. Mostly, I felt frustrated and sad for him.
Look, I got why he was so angry and hurt by Carrie not telling him she was pregnant. Sure, enough women have used pregnancy as a weapon for it to leave a mark on men, but enough men had been kept out of pregnancies who would have wanted to be there for it all. You could tell the guy and have him call you a liar until a DNA test proved otherwise, or you could withhold it until the baby was born. Every scenario was different, and it was a shitty situation to be in for all of them, but the actual victim was the baby.