Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 68583 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68583 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
“Fuck,” he said. “She can’t be left alone, then?”
I immediately shook my head. “Left alone? Sure. But she has to take those meds. Her hormones are super out of whack, which they say is why she had the PPD in the first place.”
“What about the baby?” he said. “Does she want anything to do with him? The way that she made it sound over the phone…”
I thought about the mom that I saw now, compared to the mother that I witnessed with her son in the very beginning.
She didn’t care if he screamed—hell, she even left the room if it got to be too much screaming.
She didn’t care if he was bathing and did something cute.
She didn’t care if he was asleep and looked so innocent and goddamn angelic.
She straight didn’t care.
Over the last week, I finally realized the extent of postpartum depression, and how detrimental it was to a person. I saw her turn into the mom she was always supposed to be.
“Why didn’t y’all check on her?” I asked a little bit forcefully.
Shad swallowed. “Stubbornness.” He shook his head. “Stupidity. Take your pick.”
“She’s going to stay with me,” I said. “At least for a while. I hate to break it to you, but every time I bring up her staying with y’all, she freaks the fuck out. She’s still not ready to go anywhere where your wife and kids are.”
“We failed her,” he admitted.
“You did,” I agreed. “But I think you can fix it. You just have to work at it.”
“Daddy?”
Baker smiled at Shad, and Shad opened his arms wide to allow Baker to move into them.
He closed his arms around her, and I saw the way his face blanked as his hands moved up the length of her back, feeling the bones there. His eyes opened, and they locked on mine.
Something big passed between us, and I nodded my head, promising that I’d take care of her.
“Copper and I were just talking about grabbing some lunch,” Shad lied. “Would you like to join us?”
“Oh, I’m not super…”
“She’ll come,” I said. “Do you want to bring Holt or leave him to take his nap?”
“I just got him to sleep, so I want to leave him. I’ve noticed how well he does when he’s on the routine that you set in place,” she admitted. “I’d rather him get that nap. Plus, he’ll just be fussy if we wake him up now.”
I saw the panic flare in her eyes at him becoming fussy, and I grinned. “He got that crying thing from Shad.”
Shad rolled his eyes and let his kid go, throwing his arm around her neck to bring her in close.
“Do you think you can take off now, or will your business fall down around your ears without you here to run it?” he joked.
I shrugged. “I think I have a meeting in about an hour, but it’s with another one of the board members that thinks that it’s okay to fuck me over whenever he wants. He can wait.”
“There’s that pizza place,” Baker said quietly. “I saw it on the way in. It looked pretty good in the window in the daycare.”
“Let’s go,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic.
I hated pizza, but if it got her to eat, I’d eat it every day of the week.
“Cool.” She smiled and looked at her dad. “Let’s go try pizza.”
I knew Shad had the same aversion to pizza, but not nearly as bad as me.
If you eat it every fuckin’ Thursday for years and years, you hated a lot of things.
That was why I still couldn’t stomach milk.
It was either milk or water when you were locked up, and I hadn’t touched the shit since I’d gotten out. Not even when I had sweets, which practically demanded that you had milk with them.
“Sounds good to me,” Shad lied.
It took us five minutes to walk to the pizza place, and the smell of the sauce and spices immediately turned my stomach.
I saw Shad’s face scrunch up in disgust, but he didn’t say anything either as we ordered.
I got as much meat and veggies on mine to hopefully mask the taste of the sauce, and Shad followed suit.
Lunch went well, Shad studiously avoiding any awkward topics that mentioned his wife or his family at all.
He also tried to talk about more than just Holt, though it always kept swinging back toward him.
I could see the guilt hitting Baker with each question she couldn’t answer—or wouldn’t—and I changed the topic each time to steer him away from overwhelming her.
In the end, Shad was catching on, and I could see him mentally kicking himself once we were walking out the door.
He did, however, touch on the elephant in the room as we were heading back across the street.
“I know that you’re not comfortable coming home,” Shad said as he came to a stop next to his truck. “I more than understand that, and I want you to work on you, not pleasing others. So Copper asked for you to stay with him.”