Page 33 of Trusting You
11
Carter
Once Locke is out of the room, I’m not supposed to think about him.
That’s what I tell myself as I strip off my pants in his room, lie down in his bed, cover myself in his sheets.
He’s right, they’re crisp and clean. Smelling like lavender.
What he doesn’t know is that lavender is Paige’s signature scent. Was.
Like always, my eyes fill with unbidden tears. I use a piece of his sheet to wipe them away, but that only traps me in a floral breeze, and I choke back a sob.
I don’t want Locke to hear me. I’d be mortified if he came in here and saw me without pants and crying.
But memories of Paige don’t care about what I want, and they assail anyway. Of her holding Lily in the hospital, her cheeks wet with happy tears. Her recovery in our apartment, a small bassinet beside her, Lily sleeping through most of it while Paige could barely come to a sitting position…
My sleeping with both of them, helping Paige figure out how to breastfeed, and then, when that didn’t work, how to take a bottle. Figuring out morning feedings and the weird tendencies of newborns to appear like they’re malfunctioning as they adapt to life outside the womb. All scary, terrifying prospects that Paige and I battled together.
But then…the greatest fear of all came upon us, and I couldn’t lift up a sword for her.
The lump on Paige’s right breast. Her dismissal of that tiny bump all throughout her pregnancy. The failure to breastfeed leading us to mention it during Lily’s one-month wellness checkup. The pediatrician feeling Paige’s breast and going, “Huh…”
Everything turning into disaster after that.
It’d be easy to blame Paige for this. For my being here. For Lily being given to a guy who wouldn’t know who Paige was if someone threw her at him. But as much as I hate to admit it, I know Paige’s reasons. She wanted Lily to have a father, her father, not another family where not only I but she would disappear.
I wonder if Paige kept up with Locke’s career. If she knew about his knee blowout and maybe thought she’d be offering him the gift of learning to live again by giving him a chance to choose Lily.
That would be so like her, to notice his fall, sense an opening. To give him the chance to overcome his ego and understand true love instead of the allure of brief, physical talent.
Did she wrestle with the idea that Locke could’ve been worse, rather than better, after his accident? Not simply due to the drinking and women, but the failure, too. Losing his career, becoming invisible to the masses that once adored him. The infallible Lachlan Hayes turning into an internet joke.
Who knew? I roll over, fluffing Locke’s too-flat pillows. Locke certainly won’t tell me.
Slowly, ever so carefully, I feel my eyelids weighing shut, but can’t help the bleak thoughts from blanketing me into slumber.
Locke could be a worse man now than he was then. And back in college, he was pretty bad.
* * *
I wake to a thump.And then another.
Cracking an eye open, I’m still unable to see anything. The room is dark, only the barest line of curtain bordering the night.
Lily.
I shoot up in bed and throw the covers off, fumbling in the darkness for my jeans.
While I was sleeping, Lily might’ve been hurt. I’ve left her with a stranger the entire afternoon who doesn’t know a toddler from a newborn and—dammit, where are my jeans?
Oh god, oh god, oh god.
Fuck ‘em.
I sprint to the door and fling it open, desperate to see a baby crawling around, one healthy and pink-cheeked and whole.
“Lil—!”