“Yeah.”
“How ’bout I go clean up, then I’ll come back and cuddle you?” I needed a minute to myself. The thought of being without her was starting to make me anxious and I had to get my shit together.
“Fine,” she mumbled, sliding her hands across my sweaty back as she let go.
I climbed off the bed and walked into the bathroom. Shit, I needed a shower, but I was too tired to do more than piss. When I was finished, I shut off the light and walked back into the bedroom to find Molly completely passed out on her belly, one arm dangling off the side of the bed.
She’d asked me to hold her, and I’d left her to fall asleep alone. I was such an asshole.
I crawled in next to her and pulled her against my chest, swallowing hard when her arm automatically slid around my waist as she slept.
Chapter 11
Molly
“Time for bed,” I sang to Rebel, trying to get her calmed down. She’d been racing around the house all night, barely able to sit still, and I knew it was my fault. I was strung so tight my shoulders had begun to ache from the tension, and there was no way that Rebel hadn’t picked up on it.
“Do you want to go potty on the big toilet?” I asked, catching her as she tried to run past me. She clung like a monkey as I sat her on my hip and carried her into the bathroom.
She wouldn’t be potty training until she was older, but she’d seemed so fascinated with the toilet that I’d been letting her sit on it before bed and when she woke up in the morning. Oddly enough, I used it as incentive both for her to wake up and let me get her ready, and so that she would calm down for bed. It seemed to be working so far, though we’d only started it a couple days before.
“What a big girl you are,” I said, smiling as I sat her little bare butt on the seat.
I tried really hard not to cry as she grinned at me, completely clueless that anything was wrong. She felt the tension, of course, but she had no idea what was going on. In her world, everything was normal.
“Good job, Reb!” I told her as she dropped clean toilet paper into the toilet. “Now, we wash our hands.”
I helped wash her hands and wrists, then brought her into her bedroom to get her dressed in her brand new puppy pajamas. I’d bought them in a lame attempt to commemorate her surgery, because the next morning I’d be driving her to the hospital so early that they’d told me to just bring her in her jammies. It worked better that way, since dressing was Rebel’s cue for time to eat, and she couldn’t have anything before the procedure.
“You’re getting so big,” I said softly as I zipped up the new pajamas. “I can’t believe it.”
“Mama.”
“I know, you’re talking now!”
She signed for water and I glanced at the clock to make sure I could give her some, even though I knew it wasn’t after midnight. After carrying her into the kitchen for a drink, I brought her back into the bedroom, my hands trembling slightly as I sat down in the rocking chair. I wasn’t ready to put her down yet, so instead, I wrapped her blanket around her and began to rock.
“You’re going to do so good tomorrow,” I whispered against her hair, even though she had no idea what I was talking about.
Reb laid her head on my shoulder and sighed, her little body relaxing against mine. After a few minutes, before I’d even sang the “Ten in the Bed” song, she was asleep. But I didn’t put her in her crib until two hours later.
* * *
“Hey, Will,” I said into the phone late that night, trying hard not to let my voice indicate how hard I’d been crying. “So, I haven’t talked to you since yesterday morning and I’m getting kind of worried. I mean, I know you have other stuff going on, but—” I snapped my mouth shut and grit my teeth as tears dripped out of my eyes. I cleared my throat before speaking again. My nose was stuffed, and I knew I sounded awful, but I had to try one more time to reach him. “I just wanted to remind you that Reb’s getting those tubes in her ears tomorrow, and I know you wanted to be there. I hope everything’s alright . . . Okay, bye.” I pressed end on my phone and tossed it on the couch beside me.
He was fine. Of course he was. He probably just broke his phone or something. We’d talked every day since we’d started seeing each other, but that didn’t mean we had to. We’d been together less than two months. It wasn’t like we were married.