Page 95 of A Return For Ren

It was funny to see Ren’s face when he realized how much stuff he had to return home with compared to what he started with.

“You helped him get the house set up for Max to move around?” Lily asked.

“I did. It took all of Saturday to unpack and do that. He had to get food for the week and so on. He wanted to come back this weekend and stay all next week, but I told him I’d go there again if the weather was good. It’s going to be harder for him to come here than me to go there. He won’t have to pack up as much stuff for Max other than clothes and I’ll get the food here, but he has to bring monitors and his computer, not to mention clothes for him and Max. I don’t think either of us put much thought into it until I watched him load up his vehicle over the weekend.”

“He’s not complaining about it, is he?” Rose asked with a frown on her face.

“No. He’s not. He even commented on he could have stayed with me for the month of February, but it was best he went back home.”

“Why would you say that?” Poppy asked with her hands on her hips. “Keep him with you.”

“Poppy,” Lily said. “Zara isn’t like you. I’m sure she has her reasons.”

“I do. I’m not going to lie and deny that I wouldn’t have minded if they did stay, but he has to go home at some point. Why keep pushing it off and making it harder than it is? We need to take this step and figure it out and see if it will work. The plan for now is he will come here for two weeks and Max will stay at the daycare while he works. I’ll go there on the weekends when he isn’t here.”

“Sounds like a great plan and you aren’t going any longer than five days or so without seeing each other,” Lily said. “Practical.”

“Very,” she said softly.

“Yet you aren’t sure you like it?” Poppy asked. “Do you love him?”

“Poppy,” Rose said. “You always ask too many personal things.”

“It’s fine,” Zara said. “That’s why I’m here. I need to say things that I don’t feel I can say to him.”

“Why is that?” Rose asked. “Do you not want to go down this road with him?”

“I do. I didn’t think it’d be so hard. Things are going great. Better than I could have imagined. But when that happens there is almost always something bad that will come around the corner.”

“Now you sound like Rose,” Lily said.

“I never used to feel this way. I think I’m afraid to love him again.”

The truth was, she found herself falling in love stronger than it was so long ago. It wasn’t only Ren she loved but Max.

She couldn’t see her life without either of them.

“That makes sense,” Lily said. “Love is scary. I know that firsthand.”

“You’re the best one to ask this—what if I love Ren because of Max? That I love his son just as much and they are blending together.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Poppy said. “They are a unit. You can’t love one without the other.”

“Poppy is right,” Lily said. “I was falling for Willow as hard as I was Zane. Zane wouldn’t want it any other way. Are you saying you think you only feel for Ren because you don’t want to lose Max in your life? How do you handle the children that leave your daycare after five years? I know you get attached to them all.”

She wasn’t surprised that Lily would cut right to it. “I do love them all. Well, not all. Some I’m happy to see go,” she said, laughing. “You get the point. I do miss them but know life moves on. I don’t know that I want it to move on without Max and Ren in my life again. I’m holding back so much because I know it will hurt too much if they leave like last time.”

“It sounds to me like it hurts to keep it locked up too,” Rose said.

“It does,” she said. “That is why I’m here talking to you three. I appreciate you letting me too.”

Poppy moved closer to her and pulled her in for a hug. “You’re one of us. We aren’t ‘letting you.’ We expect you to come to us for this. That’s what sisters do.”

Lily and Rose joined the group hug and Zara felt her eyes fill up with tears.

She needed this more than she could have ever imagined.

“Thanks, girls. I feel like one of you too.”