Page 179 of Hold Me Until Morning

Joy.

“Can we go outside and play now?” Maddie came bouncing in from the living room where she was playing with Dakota’s son, Kayden.

The adorable little boy was right behind her, flapping his arms in the air. “I wanna swing, my Daddy Rye-Rye!”

Ryder didn’t hesitate, he stood. “Then let’s go, little man.”

My foundation cracked nearly all the way through when Cody stood, too. “Come on, Button, let’s go outside.”

Cody swept my giggling girl into his arms, peppering kisses all over her face as he carried her out into the heat of the summer day.

I just watched, unable to look away from the hope that radiated back, mine banging into his and the man emitting it right back.

A hand suddenly was on my wrist where I had it rested on the table. I looked to my right to Cody’s mother who sat between me and Dakota. She brushed her thumb over the back of my hand and whispered, “I’m so glad you’re here.”

Emotion clutched, and I could barely force out, “I am, too.”

“Wait a minute,” Maddie said, a sweet demand of excitement. “You got my favorite and your favorite?”

Maddie squealed it as Cody cut a big piece of pumpkin pie where he stood at the island of my kitchen later that evening.

He shook up the can of whipped cream and squirted a giant mound on top, swirling it up into a perfect peak.

He’d swung into the grocery store on our way back from his mother’s house earlier this afternoon. It was amazing that after everything that had been happening that we had found solace in the day, but it’d been there, this serenity that had lulled.

Respite.

“That’s right, Button, I got both our favorites,” Cody said, glancing down at her where she stood peering up at him.

She threaded her fingers together and lifted them up under her chin, her mouth stretched so wide that she showed off all her tiny, gapped teeth, ringlets bouncing around her cherub face. “You remembered all the really important things about me, my Mr. Cody?”

Devotion flooded the room, and I could feel his spirit swim.

He tapped at her nose. “How could I forget when you and your mom are my most important things?”

Her giggle was light, not quite grasping the magnitude of what he was saying, and she scrunched her shoulders up to her ears. “I like being that.”

“I like you being that, too,” he told her.

My spirit thrashed, and my grandmother leaned in and whispered from where she sat on a stool beside me, “Yeah, I bet you like being that, too.”

I did.

So much.

And I was so afraid of accepting it then losing it.

“Get on up there,” he told Maddie, gesturing to the stool on my opposite side.

Maddie climbed up, and she sat on her knees as Cody set the pumpkin pie in front of her.

He shifted to look at my grandmother. “What about you, Lolly? Do you have a favorite?”

“I wouldn’t mind a piece of that pumpkin pie.”

“On it.”

He prepared hers the same way as he’d prepared Maddie’s and set it in front of her.