Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 123155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 616(@200wpm)___ 493(@250wpm)___ 411(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 616(@200wpm)___ 493(@250wpm)___ 411(@300wpm)
“Make a list, and one of the boys’ll go pick some up for you,” Forrest replied easily.
“Why us?” Eli asked.
“I have no fuckin’ clue what to buy a newborn. Send Lu,” Siah muttered, pointing at her as she came back into the room.
“Why would I know what to get?” she asked, rolling her eyes. “What? Because I’m a woman?”
“You have a niece,” Siah argued.
“That doesn’t mean I know what to get.”
“I’ll go,” I cut in before they really started arguing. The two of them could happily argue about the color of the sky for hours. They got off on that shit, but it irritated the hell out of the rest of us. “Uh, make a list like Forrest said. I’ll grab you some paper and a pen.”
“I can just go myself,” Cecilia argued, lifting her hand to wave me off. “Do you have a Target or something around here?”
“You gonna walk?” I asked, getting up from the table.
“Well, if it’s close enough, sure,” she said slowly.
“I was bein’ sarcastic,” I muttered as I searched through the junk drawer by the back door. “You’re not walking to the store in the middle of the night.”
“There a reason the two of you can’t go together?” Forrest asked dryly, amusement lacing his words.
I paused, bracing my hands on the countertop. Jesus, I needed to get my shit together. Never in a million years would I have thought that seeing Cecilia again would rattle me so badly. I knew it would hit me hard. The way things had happened, the way I’d loved her and the way the ties between us had been severed meant that it would never be easy to run into her. I hadn’t been concerned I’d see her in San Diego because I was barely ever there, but I’d braced for it every time I was in Oregon. I thought that I’d be able to handle it.
Maybe it was the situation we were in that was making things so difficult. The fear I’d felt. The fact that she was standing in the middle of my fucking kitchen holding a goddamn baby.
“That would work,” she said cautiously. “Is that okay with you?”
I turned to face her. Fuck, she looked tired. Tired and scared and sad, though I doubted any of the others noticed it. Cecilia had inherited most of her looks from her mother, but the calm, detached expression she wore was pure Casper.
“Yeah,” I said with a nod. “Go grab what you need and we’ll head out.”
After she left the room, Ephraim started chuckling and soon, everyone else was quietly laughing with him.
“Shut up,” I said with a sigh, leaning back against the counter.
“Who would’ve guessed that all we needed to rattle you was a little blonde woman holding a baby?” Lu asked.
“Not just any blonde woman,” Siah said.
“Cecilia,” he and Ephraim sang.
“It’s been a long fuckin’ night,” I replied.
“Gonna be even longer with a baby in the house,” Forrest said with a smile. “You see her? Cute little thing.”
“How could you tell?” Wilson asked. “She was holding that child so close I couldn’t even tell if it had all the requisite extremities.”
“It’s hers, I assume?” Eli asked me.
“Better be,” Josiah said. “Or it puts that nursing Madonna vision we found in the closet into a whole new freaky perspective.”
Eli grinned.
“Yeah, she’s hers,” I replied.
“What’s her name?” Lu asked Cecilia as she came back into the room.
“Oh.” She looked down at the baby. “She doesn’t have one yet.”
“You haven’t named your kid?” Ephraim said in surprise.
“I’m waiting to see what fits her personality,” she replied, the words sounding almost like a question.
“Good luck with that,” Eli said uncertainly.
“I think you should name her Cecilia,” Lu said, hopping onto the counter next to Wilson.
“So they’ll have the same name?” Josiah shot back.
“Men do it all the time,” Lu replied with a shrug. I could tell by her tone and the set of her shoulders that she was just winding up, and I didn’t want to be there for the eventual debate.
“You ready?” I asked Cecilia.
“Yep. Hopefully, we don’t get pulled over,” she said as she strode toward me. “I left her car seat behind tonight.”
“Shoulda thought to grab it,” I replied, opening the door and letting her go ahead of me.
“We’ll lock up when we leave,” Ephraim called.
“Sounds good,” I muttered. I wasn’t even sure if he heard me over the sound of Lu defending the merits of Cecilia naming her baby after herself.
“Good thing I have a back seat,” I told Cecilia as I led her to my truck. “Probably safer for you two to ride back there.”
“Good call,” she said. “Thanks for taking me to the store.”
“No worries.”
I opened the door and spotted her as she climbed in one-handed. I was trying not to stare at her ass, but it was impossible not to notice the shape of her. She didn’t look like she’d just had a baby. Sure, she was a little curvier than she’d been when we were kids, but that was normal. No one stayed the same size as they were at eighteen. If anything, Cecilia looked even better now that she had a little extra meat on her bones. She’s always been beautiful, but she’d matured into something even better.