Craving Molly (The Aces' Sons 2)

I bent down to fix Rebel’s glasses as she reached my side. She must have run into the bedroom and took them off to scratch at where they rubbed against the sides of her head. My little sneak. Too bad for her, she’d put them back on upside down. “Don’t take off your glasses, Reb,” I told her for the eighteen millionth time. “You need them to see.”

She held up her giraffe and smiled sunnily. “Yeah, I see your giraffe, kiddo. Don’t take off your glasses.”

I turned back to Will. “My daughter has Down syndrome. That’s her truth. It’s not something I hide. It’s not something I use to test people. It’s just her life. Our life.”

Will gave me a terse nod, then crouched down. “It was nice to meet you, Rebel.”

Reb smiled brightly and held out her giraffe, pulling it quickly back to her chest when Will looked like he was going to take it. Her expression morphed into the non-verbal equivalent of I’m just showing you, dude. Hands to yourself.

“Cool giraffe,” Will said softly, dropping his hands. “Is that your favorite?”

Rebel gave a short nod, watching him with shy eyes.

“I like alligators. Do you like alligators?”

She tilted her head to the side. I wasn’t sure if we’d ever talked about alligators.

They watched each other for a long moment before Rebel turned away without warning, running back down the hall in her weird, little person gait.

“I’ll see you around,” Will said tonelessly as he stood back up.

I was frozen as he stepped into his boots and left the house without tying the laces.

Like he couldn’t leave fast enough.

The door closed behind him and I heard his bike start up just as Rebel came meandering back down the hallway, carrying a duck, a bunny and two bears in her arms.

I wondered if she thought one of them was an alligator.

* * *

“Auntie Mel is here!” my best friend announced a few hours later as she came through my front door. “And I brought Rebel a taco!”

“She’s not supposed to be eating that crap!” I called back as I rinsed out our soup dishes and glanced at Reb, who was sitting in her high chair clapping her hands merrily.

“Hey—no junk food is your deal, not mine,” Mel argued, setting a paper-wrapped soft taco on Reb’s messy tray. “I also brought c-a-n-d-y.”

“At least she’s in her high chair and not on my couch this time,” I mumbled, turning away as Reb reached inside the paper and pulled out some shredded lettuce with her fingers.

“Exactly,” Mel countered, moving over to my side and leaning against the cupboard. “I got it with no cheese—since you’re not doing dairy anymore.”

“I’ve got a half-gallon of milk in the fridge if you want it,” I said quietly, glancing over my shoulder. “I’m going to have to throw it out.”

“Is cutting out dairy actually helping?” she asked, laughing as Reb started pulling apart her tortilla.

“Not yet, but this is the last step before I have to cut out gluten. You know what a pain in the ass that’ll be? Pray that cutting dairy works.”

Mel nodded.

Reb was healthy. She didn’t have the heart problems that a lot of people with Down syndrome dealt with, and we were lucky that we’d caught her eyesight problems early. But she had eczema on her torso and thighs that just wouldn’t go away, no matter what we tried. It was scaly and rough and it itched, and trying to stop an almost two year old from scratching when something itched was practically impossible. Rebel would scratch at her skin until it bled, leaving her open to infection.

Doctors were finding that sometimes eczema was a symptom of a food allergy, so we’d been going down a list, cutting things out for a while to see if it helped. Milk was the current item on the list.

“So what happened last night after I left?” Mel asked, grabbing a rag and wiping down the counter.

“Oh, you mean after you abandoned me?”

“Come on, you were fine with Will.”

“Yeah, I was. He brought me home and stayed the night.”

“What!” Mel yelled, her head whipping toward me.

“We didn’t do anything,” I grumbled. “We watched a movie and fell asleep.”

“Good grief,” Mel grumbled. “You had that hot guy here all night and you didn’t bang him?”

“No, I didn’t bang him,” I hissed, glancing over at Reb. “We were on our way to . . . something this morning, but then my dad showed up with Rebel.”

“What did Will do?”

“He was cool.” I finished rinsing the dishes and dried my hands. “But he took off right after. How was your night?”

“Rocky is nuts in bed,” Mel said, waggling her eyebrows up and down. “I think I had like five orgasms.”

“Nuh uh,” I argued.

“Oh, yeah. Dude knows exactly what he’s doing. I’m lucky I can walk.”