“Can I talk to you a second?” Elaina asked Wood as she was leaving Cassie’s room. She’d shared a picture of Alan from her phone to Cassie’s and answered about a dozen of Cassie’s questions about their son. She’d also asked Cassie if she could be recognized as Alan’s aunt.
An honor Cassie had tearfully granted on the spot.
Elaina had a procedure scheduled and wanted to get back upstairs to prepare.
With a last long glance at Cassie, who, holding her phone to her chest, had closed her eyes, Wood followed Elaina out the door. “I can’t thank you enough for that,” he said. “You’re definitely in the right profession,” he added. “Your bedside manner is impressive.”
She smiled but didn’t look pleased. Or displeased, either. She looked...determined.
“What’s up?”
“I want you to forget everything I said about you being careful not to give too much to Cassie. About your tendency to give up yourself for others.”
He leaned back against the wall, staring at her. “What?”
“I was being incredibly selfish, Wood, afraid I was going to lose you, or something, I don’t know. But that woman in there loves you. And I just realized that I might be the one who’s been holding you back from what you really want. Or my fear has.” She glanced toward Cassie’s room door.
“Cassie’s not in love with me,” he said, standing upright. “Or, at least, there’s no way for us to know that. Not with everything that’s been going on. And...” He quickly moved on. “You aren’t ever going to lose me. And you aren’t ever getting rid of me, either. I’m your brother, by law or not. And—” he swallowed “—believe it or not, I need you every bit as much as you need me.” Because family was family.
She shook her head, tears in her eyes, but a smile on her lips. She hugged him, and then stood back. “Regardless of what you say, big brother, I think Cassie’s love for you is pretty clear. All you have to do is stand back and watch the way her face changes as she watches you...” Big brother. It was what Peter had always called him.
“And while I’ve seen you with a few women in your time, I’ve never seen you look at a woman like you look at her. Not even me.”
He stared at her.
“And...” she continued. “I also want you to know that the next time Jason asks me to spend the night with him, instead of getting up and going home, I’m probably going to say yes. Seeing the change in you these past months, as you found out you were going to be a father, and then as you got to know Cassie... I wanted that again, too. I at least want to try.” She had tears in her eyes as she smiled. “And if I do stay out all night, I can’t have Big Brother checking up on me...”
She was letting him go. Letting him know that she wouldn’t be checking up on him, either.
“Go to her,” Elaina said. “She needs you.”
“I love you.”
“I know. I love you, too. Now go.”
He knew what was happening. Elaina was ready to move on now. To find another man to fill the void his brother had left in her heart. Wood had done his job well. And that particular work was done. Made him so happy for her. And a little sad, too, to let go.
“You tell your Jason that if he ever causes you to shed one tear, he’ll have me to answer to...” he called down the empty hallway as she headed off to work. Because Wood was Wood. He’d always tend to those he loved.
And as she walked away, he had to lean a moment, to close his eyes as an onslaught washed over him, like a floodgate bursting open, as indeed it just had. The gate he’d been keeping on the walls of his heart. It could no longer keep a lock on the love he felt for Cassie Thompson.
The mother of his child. And the other half of his soul.
* * *
The rest of that day was a blur to Cassie, cataloged from moment to moment, but with each superseding the next. She was already dozing by the time Wood came back into the room and fell into a real sleep as soon as he settled on the couch he’d pulled up closer to the bed.
The door opening woke her sometime around four, and when she saw why, she sat straight up in bed. “You ready to meet your little one?” the plump, cheery woman asked, and with Wood on her bed beside her, she opened her arms to receive their son, settling him against her heart.
And crying happy tears.
There didn’t seem to be any private moments after that. She had doctor’s checks, vital checks. Alan, who, because he was doing fine, was allowed to stay in her room, did, too. He needed diaper changes. They wanted her to try breastfeeding right away. People from her office, the ones who’d apparently been standing out in the hallway worried sick as she screamed bloody murder in the process of giving birth, stopped in, one at a time, briefly. Once she had her cell phone, she’d called one of her college friends, and soon they were all texting her, wanting to know when they could meet Alan. Her mother also arrived. Wood ran home to get some clothes, announcing that he’d be staying the night, and Elaina stopped in at the end of her shift.
Her mother went home to Cassie’s house a little after nine, and then it was just her and Wood and their sleeping baby. She had the bassinet next to her bed but didn’t want to put the little guy down. Not until she absolutely had to, to get her own rest. He’d been sleeping next to her heart for months. Another hour or two wasn’t going to hurt him any.
At her request Wood turned off all but a light under a high cupboard and then he settled, half lying on the couch next to her bed.
He hadn’t held Alan yet. She’d offered a time or two, but there’d been so many people in and out of the room, so much going on, his refusals had gone largely unnoticed. Except by her. The closest he’d come to touching his son had been when he’d been on the bed, with his arm around Cassie’s pillow behind her back as she’d held him for her mother to get a picture.