When the door shuts behind him, all I can hear is my sister’s soft sobs in the room, and my own voice as I reach out to pat the back of her head and gently ask her, “Did he hurt you?”
She grabs a tissue from inside her small purse and pats the corners of her eyes. “No. He was a mess. He said he missed me. He wanted me back and would do anything to keep me. It’s probably why he was fighting so fucking bad,” she says. “I’m glad he lost. I just hate that it still hurts me.”
“Oh, Nora.”
“When you came home, I couldn’t even think straight. You’re so . . . protected. Having his baby! He’s so in love with you. While I was in hell! Benny said he would spread the video around if I didn’t come back. He wanted to hurt you again. He wanted to have a way to make Remington lose. I didn’t want to be with him, but I was afraid he would blackmail you guys with that video about me! So I did. He offered me . . . drugs. . . . I wanted them. I really did, but I knew if I took them I’d never come home. My plan was to stay with him”—she pats her cheeks as her tears keep streaming, even though her voice is steady and strong—“until the season ended, and then he wouldn’t need me to hurt you two anymore. I figured I’d find a way to get the video back and run away from him.”
“Nora . . .” I open my arms, and she leans over and rests her head on my shoulder. “We need to move forward now,” I whisper. The words come out almost like a plea, because I have a baby now. A baby. He will need me, like my partner does, and I need Nora to be strong on her own. Remy has protected her for me, but I appoint it as my duty to protect my son and my guy just as fiercely—and this includes from my own family.
She curls out her pinky, like we used to pinky promise when we were young. Laughing, we hook them together. “Just don’t tell Mom and Dad. They’re desperate to see their grandchild and are flying over as we speak,” she tells me.
“Nobody has to know about the video. But they must have been thrilled to hear your voice on the phone.”
With new, curious excitement, she signals at the door. “So what are you guys going to call the little thing?”
I grin at her, ear to ear, and whisper, “I have no idea, so I hope the dad does.”
? ? ?
HIS NAME IS Racer.
Racer Dumas Tate.
Because he was racing to the finish line, before we even set up camp.
The nurses say he’s a big boy, for a preemie, even though Remy and I think he’s so tiny.
God, he is perfection. Ten tiny fingers. Ten tiny toes. Pink little mouth. Little button nose.
He’s needed the incubator for four weeks now, but apparently he’s almost ready to go home. He doesn’t need a tube to be fed anymore, and he now weighs eight healthy pounds, which impresses everyone who can’t believe he was a preemie. Then, of course, they see the father and understand why this preemie is kind of big and healthy.
Remington spends the day training for next season while I hang around the hospital, determined to feed him my own breast milk so he’ll get all the nutrients and immune system benefits he needs. I’d also read about a “kangaroo method” where the nurses set the baby against the mother’s bare skin to strengthen and mature all of his systems. I love reading about all the scientific evidence of what skin-to-skin contact can do.
So once a day, the nurses bring Racer out to me, where I open my shirt and feel our naked little baby on my bare skin. Sometimes Remy is here, and he spreads out behind me, so he’s my kangaroo, and then I’m the baby’s kangaroo—as the method is called. But no. Remy doesn’t feel like a kangaroo behind me; he’s too primal for that. He nuzzles my collarbone and peers down at our baby while I feel him on my skin, and it’s exactly today, as we are doing this, when Racer finally opens his eyes to look up at us. And they are blue, an achingly familiar pristine blue, and I fall in love for the second time in my life.
? ? ?
WE’VE BEEN DISCHARGED from the hospital, and the three of us are in Seattle, playing house at last.
Today is the fortieth day after labor, and tonight Remington and I will finally be able to have sex. Except he’s determined that the first time he takes me again . . . I be completely his. So, at noon, we’re off to city hall.
God, I am. Dying. To have my way with my baby’s sexy daddy.
“He’s asleep,” I whisper, from the chair in the living room where I sat to feed Racer this morning.
Remington is still in his pajama bottoms and bare-chested, and he comes over with such a proud, protective gleam in his eye, I die at the look on his face.
“Come smell him,” I whisper with a big, besotted smile.
He comes and takes a big whiff from the top of Racer’s head.
“He smells good, right?” I say.
“As good as you,” Remington gruffly whispers, and as I smell the baby, he scents me.
We laugh, and he slides his hands under my body to scoop me up and tells me, “Hang on to him.”
I do. He lifts me up while I hold the baby and carries us to the bed. “Diane is so excited about him—they all are. Is she here yet?” I ask.
“She’s on her way,” he says.