I hadn’t meant to be a selfish, ungrateful bitch after Kara finally gave birth to that massive porker of a son, but seeing her and Owen crying happy over the little guy’s birth dragged up a lot of feelings I thought I’d put behind me. I’d been angry at the universe and everyone in it when the girls’ father died and I had no one, and they lost the chance to know that half of their genetics. I’d hated every OB appointment where I had to sit in the waiting room and watch happy couples go in to see sonograms together, and at every birthing class where it was just me trying to remember everything through pregnancy brain. I’d been fucking furious about it, and even more so after they were born.
I’d made my peace with having a shitty hand dealt to me, and resolved to make sure the girls had the absolute best of everything I could afford to give them. Which wasn’t much, but still. I tried really hard, and one day they would know that. I just hoped it was enough.
But my biggest fear was that I alone wouldn’t be enough. I wouldn’t be enough love or comfort or safety or reliability for them. That not having a strong male influence in their lives growing up would inevitably lead to them being hookers or drug addicts or cult members soliciting donations at the mall. It was just me, and I had to work all the time to afford the meager shit I could. How was I ever going to have enough of myself left after a full day of work to give my best to them?
I worried constantly that I didn’t love them enough, that I didn’t show it enough when they were working my last nerve and Aviva got that look in her eye where I knew — I knew — she did it on purpose and wanted to literally give me a nervous breakdown. Seeing how perfectly Kara and Owen loved their boy from the first breath he took just reminded me of everything I wasn’t and didn’t have and would never have.
And it drove me out of the apartment and even the building, so I wouldn’t bring that vitriol into their lives. They deserved that happiness and everything that came with it, and so did their baby. I hated myself for feeling that way, but I couldn’t change it. I’d learned that in therapy, at least; sometimes you just had to go through shit and come out the other side.
But that was the advice you got with a budget therapist.
So when Jameson said something about liking me and wanting to go wherever I went, I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to actually hear that. Plus I was soaking wet and freaking freezing.
I hadn’t realized I’d gone outside without my coat until he pulled me into the hot tub. I’d been crying and upset and blind with that self-loathing that came along with being a terrible person for being jealous of Kara’s good fortune, and my feet took me to the back door. I hadn’t even questioned it until I got there and looked out and saw all the snow. My mind went blank as I stared at it, wondering what the hell I was doing. Then the water splashed and I saw Jameson, and it was like everything in the world righted itself and made sense again. I didn’t stop being mad and miserable, but I knew I wasn’t alone. I knew I’d gone to the backyard to find him, because I knew he was there.
Which was absurd. Like he’d said, we’d known each other for literally three or four days. What business did I have finding the man so comforting, even when he was being obnoxious and ridiculous? But just like those unwelcome feelings of jealousy, I couldn’t do anything about how my heart went to Jameson.
Except then he said something that didn’t make any sense. He said he liked me and he wanted to stick around.
Despite the girls. Maybe not in spite of them. Maybe he accepted them and wanted to be around them.
Which was just impossible. No one was that much of a saint. Especially after only knowing someone three-ish days. I knew I wasn’t that great in bed. It wasn’t like my vagina convinced him to go from a bachelor who wandered around the world having adventures to a homebody husband who changed diapers and got up to feed them in the middle of the night. It wasn’t magic.
But sitting in his lap in the bubbling water was the first time I’d felt warm in… forever.
Which made it hard to sort through everything I was feeling and thinking to find the truth.
I rubbed my face, because I was freaking exhausted and at the end of my rope and I couldn’t be sure I’d actually heard him right. “You want to go out west with me.”
“If that’s where you go, yeah.”
“And if I stay here, you want to stay with me.”
“Ideally, yes.” Jameson shifted how he sat and patted my butt, his arms still linked around me.
“So you want to move in when I find an apartment and then… what?”
“Well, not exactly.” My heart sank as I waited for the bad news, or at least the truth. It had been a misunderstanding. But Jameson rested his chin on my shoulder and murmured in my ear like he shared a secret. “There’s a building next to this one that Kaiser just bought. He’s going to do something with it, but there’s a big ass apartment that needs to be remodeled on the top floor. I was debating sticking around here to give Sasha crap and maybe remember what having roots is like, so if you would consider staying in the city, we could live there. Or you could live there and I could live here until you’re comfortable with the idea of me living with you, or…”
“Wait.” I squeezed the bridge of my nose. “What?”
“There is a list of options for living arrangements,” he said. Jameson kissed the side of my neck. “Together or separately. Whatever you’re comfortable with. Already taken care of and ready to go if you want to stay here.”
“And if I want to go west?”
“There is a solution for anything you want,” he said, sounding thoughtful. “Separate apartments. A big ass house. Same building, different buildings. Duplex. Townhouses connected by a secret passage. Maybe a tree house or geodesic dome, although those are harder to keep cool.”
Like any of that was a real option. I swallowed hard, though, because he actually sounded like he meant it. “And you’d do this because you like me.”
“Yup.”
I craned my neck to look at him. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Not about this,” he said. “Literally I have never been more sure of anything in my whole life. Serious as a heart attack. Or a once-in-a-century blizzard. Or both.”
I put my hand over his mouth to stem the flow of words. To think we’d somehow spent the first day together mostly in silence. I couldn’t imagine the man keeping his mouth shut for longer than a few seconds after the last two days. “Why?”
“I told you why. I like you.”
“That’s not enough,” I said. I sounded less astonished than I felt, but probably more than he expected, from the look on his face. “Jameson, you hardly know me. You’re talking about living together, and not just with me — with two toddlers. Do you even understand what kind of hell you’re signing up for? There is literally poop and vomit and half-eaten cheerios everywhere we go. Aviva has been on a kick where she won’t sleep. At all. At all. She must be a bat or part raccoon or something, because she just won’t sleep. And Viviana doesn’t want me out of her sight, and she cries the second I leave the room. She’ll run through her sister to find me. I can’t even pee in peace, man. I literally have not had a shower alone in almost two years. Until this week. And you want to just walk in to that, when you have zero obligation?”
He studied me for long enough I expected a “nah, never mind” to come out of his mouth, but instead he just smiled. “Yeah.”
“You’re crazy,” I whispered. “You’re out of your mind. What’s wrong with you?”
A shadow crossed his expression and he hesitated, then started off slowly so I knew there was a whole hell of a lot left for him to say. “There’s something I should explain. It’s hard to understand, or at least to believe, so hear me out.”
It was exactly how he’d started the whole “I can turn into a bear” conversation, and look at where that got me. What else was there he could possibly reveal?