He nodded seriously. “I haven’t left once, just like Daddy said not to.”
“Good job, kiddo.” My smile was painful. Beau understood the least why things had changed and he needed to give his mother more time to rest. We’d tried to explain she was sick, but then, of course, he’d had to ask her about her illness, which had, of course, resulted in her having a breakdown and fearing she was failing her son completely.
To say the least, Beau and I had been hanging out a lot more these days.
“Let’s say we get you cleaned up and into some pajamas, huh, big guy?”
Beau wrinkled his nose. “Daddy said I didn’t have to take a bath tonight.”
I totally didn’t get his aversion to baths. The kid loved water—he usually begged to go swimming every day during the summer. And once you wrangled him into the tub, he played with his toys until you had to drag him out with all his fingers and toes pruned and wrinkled. But he fought it every night anyway, without fail.
“Oh, did he?” I murmured, arching a censorious eyebrow. “Let me smell your hair.”
Beau eagerly tilted his head down for me to bring my nose close, and when I actually got a whiff of clean soap, I shrugged. “All right then, bud. But we still gotta brush your teeth.”
He groaned and complained, but I set him on the floor and swatted him lightly on the back to urge him along. “Get going, Captain Underpants.”
He laughed, loving the title, and raced from the room. I followed a little more leisurely and paused just outside the bathroom to let him do his thing on his own. Every wall of the hallway was plastered with hundreds—maybe thousands—of little slips of paper with a quote either handwritten or printed on each one.
When my gaze caught on one near the bathroom entrance, I snorted derisively. It said something about regrets only coming from things you never tried.
“Bull…shit,” I muttered, thinking immediately of bright pink cotton panties and the prettiest pussy I’d ever seen. I definitely regretted trying that, regretted learning more about her and kissing her and watching her come apart in my arms. And most of all, I regretted getting close enough to her that she could hurt me.
Down the hall, in the opposite direction as the nursery, I heard hushed, muffled voices. Needing to know how Aspen was doing, I inched that way and barely peered around the corner into Noel’s bedroom, hoping they didn’t spot me eavesdropping.
The two lay on the bed together, curled around each other, with both of them still wearing the clothes they’d gone to the wedding in.
Aspen sniffed and burrowed her face against Noel. “I didn’t do too bad today, did I? Do you think anyone knew?”
“No, not at all. You did great.” He smoothed her hair behind her ear before kissing her brow. “You did amazing.”
“No,” Aspen murmured, closing her eyes. “I didn’t.” A single tear trailed down her cheek.
Noel quickly wiped it away. “No one suspected a thing. You did just fine.”
She sighed and closed her eyes, and he hugged her close. “I’m tired of being this way, Noel. I’m so tired.”
“I know, sweetheart.” He rested his cheek on the top of her head and smoothed her hair. “It’ll be over soon, and you’ll feel better again. I swear.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.”
I turned away from the doorway and headed toward the bathroom to check on Beau, believing my brother. His sheer force of will would heal Aspen if nothing else did. I swear, he wanted it to happen so bad, it almost had to. She would get better, eventually. There was no maybe about it.
Noel loved his wife with an intensity I saw in few couples, three of those few being all of my siblings.
It was strange. Noel, Brandt, and Caroline had each found someone to fit them perfectly. In this day and age, that was unheard of, and yet…it left me with this hope, this determination that someday I’d find the same thing too. So I was always on the lookout, testing the waters to find that perfect fit for myself.
I mean, I didn’t turn down casual hookups along the way. Hello, I was an eighteen-year-old dude. But in the back of my mind, the ultimate goal had always been to find her, that girl who filled the gaps in me the same way all my siblings’ spouses had filled the gaps in them.
As my thoughts wandered back to Julianna, I decided something. Maybe I didn’t regret what had happened between us after all. I had tried something, tested the waters, and it hadn’t worked, but at least I’d tried, and now I knew without a doubt, the two of us were definitely not meant to be.
JULIANNA’S CHAPTER | 7
My eyes felt crusted over and dried up when I tried to open them. The sunlight was obnoxious and way too damn cheerful as it streamed through the blinds of my window and prodded me out of my sleep.