“That you were a handsome man, who gave me not only the best night of my life but my greatest gift. Her.” I hold his stare. I promised myself and my daughter that if I ever crossed paths with him again, I’d tell him what that night meant to me. I’d tell him what he meant to me. It was one night, but my heart didn’t seem to care.
“Tell me everything. Were you sick? I mean, women who are pregnant get sick, right? When is her birthday? How much did she weigh? I’ve missed so much. I didn’t get to watch her grow inside you.”
“How much time do you have?” I ask, wiping the tears from my cheeks.
“I’m here all weekend.”
“I know you came to see Thea, Scott, and Clint.”
“They’ll understand.”
I nod. “It’s time for her to eat.”
“Can I do it?” he asks softly.
“Yeah,” I reply, just as soft. I stand and go to the kitchen to warm up a bottle and take it back to the living room. “She might not take it if she can see me. She’s used to being breastfed when I’m around. I’m going to step out of the room so that she’ll eat for you.”
“You can do it if she needs….” His voice trails off.
“No. This is breast milk.” I feel my cheeks pink from embarrassment. This man has had his mouth and hands on every inch of my body. We created a beautiful little girl together. I should be beyond embarrassment.
His heated gaze trails over my chest. My eyes zero in on his throat as he swallows hard. “If it’s better for her to, you know.” He nods toward my boobs.
“It’s the same thing, but it’s our bonding time. It’s fine. You need this time with her.”
“I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
“Here’s a burp cloth. When she’s about halfway through, you have to stop and burp her. Make sure this is on your shoulder. She sometimes spits up. She also might grumble and fuss because she’s a little piglet like that.” I smile at my baby girl, who has her eyes on me just from the familiar sound of my voice.
“How do I burp her?”
“I’ll be right here,” I assure him. “All you have to do is take the bottle from her and place her on your shoulder. Then you rub or pat her back softly until she burps.”
“Okay. I got this. We can do this, right, Hazel? You can help Daddy?” he asks, his voice raising an octave when he refers to himself as Daddy.
“I’m just going to step away, so she doesn’t see me.” I place the burp cloth over his shoulder and then hand him the bottle, quickly stepping out of Hazel’s line of sight.
“Mommy says this is a piece of cake. Take it easy on me, yeah?” he asks, placing the bottle to her lips.
Our little girl is a champ, and enjoys her bottle and goes to town. I’m far enough to the side that she can’t see me, but I have a clear view of the magnificent smile that lights up Trevin’s face as he feeds our daughter for the first time. As quietly as I can, I move to my purse that I placed on the floor near the diaper bag and dig out my phone before taking my place across the room. I snap picture after picture of the two of them, all while wiping tears that are silently racing down my cheeks.
“Mommy thinks she’s a photographer.” He chuckles. “You’re going to send me those, right?” he asks, not taking his eyes off our daughter.
“How did you know?” I ask.
“I can feel you. Don’t ask me to explain it because I can’t.”
I wasn’t going to ask, because I don’t need an explanation. I have the same intuition when it comes to him, just like when Thea opened the door for me earlier. I knew something big was about to happen. I could feel it. I just didn’t know what it was.
Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that my new friend, one who has been there for me since the day I moved in, would be my hazel eyes’ sister. It just goes to show you how small the world really is. Or maybe it’s fate? The universe’s way of telling us that we were meant to be together? That’s probably wishful thinking on my part, but I have to be honest with myself. He’s been my one and only since that night.
“You’re good with her.”
“She’s beautiful, Cadence. Her name. Is there a meaning behind it?”
I know he heard my hazel eyes comment when I was talking to Thea earlier. That’s all it took was telling her that her brother was Hazel Eyes, and she was caught up to speed as to what was happening between her brother and me.
“Marie is my middle name.”
“And Hazel?” From the tone of his voice, he’s fishing, but that’s okay. I’ll tell him what he wants to hear.
“Your eyes, they follow me in my dreams every night. I wanted her to have a piece of both of us, and well, that’s really all I had to go on that was appropriate to name a little girl.” I smile, and he chuckles.
“I like it.”
“What comes next?” I hate the wobble in my voice.
“Next?” He shrugs. “I don’t know, Cadence. What I do know is that she’s mine, I have no doubts, and I want to be in her life.”
“Just hers?” The question is out before I can think better of it. My already racing heart seems to kick it up a notch as I wait for his reply.
“You are her mother.”
“You know what I mean, Trevin.”
He nods. “I do, and honestly, I don’t know if I can think about that right now.”
“Please don’t take her from me,” I plead, my voice cracking.
“What?” The look on his face mixed with the tone of his voice tells me he’s appalled at the mere mention of him keeping her from me. “Do you think that’s the kind of man that I am? That I would keep my daughter from her mother?”
“I kept her from you.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“I left.”
“I’m just as much to blame. I didn’t tell you what was in my head. What was growing in my heart. Instead, I curled up with you in my arms and figured we could figure out in the morning.”
“And I was gone.”
“The past is the past. I promise you I won’t take her from you. I don’t… I don’t know what the future holds for us. I don’t live here. Decisions need to be made.”
The worry that’s been sitting on my chest eases just a fraction. He doesn’t want to take her from me, but what does that mean? We have decision to make? Does he want me to move? I’ve worked hard to build a life for Hazel and myself. This is the first true home I’ve ever had. I don’t want to leave. Taking a deep breath, I decide I have to trust his word, and trust that we will work it out together. “Would you like to stay for dinner?”
“Try getting me to leave your apartment before I have to. Unless she’s with me, I’m not going anywhere.”
His words cause my panic to rise again, but he promised he wouldn’t take her from me. The way that Thea talks about her brother, he’s good people. My gut tells me the same—the same exact way it did the night I followed him out of the club and to the nearby hotel. Fate brought him back to us. I have to have hope that everything will work out the way that it’s supposed to.