“Oh, my God,” I whispered. “I need to go and get it out the house. And how do you know they won’t step on the bowls and pots? If they come later when it’s dark, they can’t turn the lights on because the water might have made its way into the wires. What if the stinky mattress ruins Toby’s stuff?”
Remy’s semi-amused expression turned pissed. “You didn’t turn the lights on last night?”
“Not in my bedroom. I did in the living room and kitchen, but after I lay down on the couch, I realized the water could have made its way into any of the wirings where there were leaks, so I switched them all off.”
“You lay in the house with no lights all night?” he hissed, the muscle in his jaw ticking frantically.
“Well, it wasn’t all night. The ceiling came down at about one o’clock, and I spent maybe twenty minutes putting stuff out to catch the water. Then I had to—”
Remy held his hand up to stop me. “Don’t get technical, Tana. Whether it was eleven or two, it was still all night. Shit,” he clipped, glaring at the door. “Okay, you’re not stepping foot in that place until they’ve finished all the work, and I’m happy it's safe for you to be in there.”
I grinned as Toby tugged on the lock of hair his dad had previously tucked behind my ear. “I won’t take him in there while it’s like this, I promise.”
Remy’s eyes moved between the two of us. “It’s not his safety I’m worried about, Tana. It’s yours.”
I didn’t reply. I couldn’t have even if I’d wanted to. Remy had never expressed any concern about my wellbeing before, that I was aware of. Hearing it from him was strange but nice…
Following mutely behind him, I buckled Toby into his car seat while Remy put my stuff in the trunk of his SUV.
“Get in and turn the engine on, baby. I’m just going to get some of the stuff you bought for Toby to store in the garage.”
Nodding, I did as he’d asked and settled Wrecker at my feet, then watched as he disappeared into my house. After only ten minutes, the door opened again, and he carried out the now folded down Pack ‘n Play, followed by two boxes of stuff he’d packed up.
Feeling like the laziest asshole in the world leaving him to deal with it all while I sat there, I reached for the door handle. Almost like he could read my mind, he met my eyes through the windscreen and shook his head.
Welp, seeing as how he was happy doing it himself, I sat back and unashamedly watched his ass as he walked back to get the last box after dropping off the first two items. I could say I did it without shame because he was completely unaware of me doing it. If he’d known, I’d likely have felt like a total twat.
Getting in behind the wheel, he turned to look over his shoulder in the back, likely looking at the mirror he’d installed that pointed down at Toby. I’d mentioned it to Mom once, and she’d chuckled, saying it’d been a life changer for when Hart was little but that she hadn’t had one for Croix or me because they likely hadn’t existed back then. That not only made me feel like I was ancient but also made me wonder how parents coped before all of the discoveries for kids that we had nowadays.
Reversing slightly, Remy did a double-take at me before putting the car into drive and starting the short journey to his place.
“What are you thinking about so hard?”
“Wondering if I’m ancient and how more kids our ages and older aren’t fucked up because of the lack of gizmos like the mirror facing Toby when we were little,” I replied, my brain still on it and wondering if there was anything online about it all.
How much of a difference did those mirrors make? Had any lives been saved because of them, or were they purely for the parents’ peace of mind? And those machines that made up the baby’s bottle and automatically dispensed the formula into them that I’d seen online—were they better than doing it yourself?
There was so much stuff you had to have for babies and kids these days, how did parents ever manage without them? Surely if they were that necessary, there’d be generations of kids walking around with major issues.
“I see,” Remy chuckled. “I didn’t see that coming.”
“That’s ironic considering we’re talking about a mirror, isn’t it?”
Remy burst out laughing, his foot easing off the accelerator as we moved from the dirt road onto the harder ground the ranch's buildings were on. Some of the areas had gravel, and some had stone, while others had grass… It all depended on what area of the ranch you were in.