“So… you’ll take him?” she asked, like she was afraid she’d gotten it wrong.
“Yes,” he said.
All his better angels clamored in the back of his mind, trying to tell him the baby wasn’t even his and he didn’t know the first thing about how to care for an infant.
But for the first time in a long time, he felt a sense of peace and calm in his heart. The guilt and the voices all slipped away as he watched Brianna hurriedly remove the fabric sling from her chest.
“Here we go,” she said in a singsongy voice. It was the first time since appearing that she had really interacted with the baby, and it was happening as she handed him off like a sack of potatoes.
Grayson’s hands were shaking as he took the vulnerable little bundle from her and instinctively pulled him close to his chest.
Something about that warm weight sent another surge of peace through his chest, making him feel almost like he had… before.
The baby blinked up at him, unafraid, and Grayson felt his lips tug up.
He glanced over at Brianna, suddenly afraid she was going to notice how bad it felt not to have the baby in her arms and demand him back.
But her face was soft with what looked like relief.
“Thank you,” she told him, her eyes brimming with tears. “I just can’t.”
“I understand,” he told her, meaning it. There were plenty of things hejust couldn’tdo himself these days. Thankfully, this didn’t seem to be one of them.
“Here’s his stuff,” she said, letting her duffel bag drop to the porch floor. It landed with a thump that sounded much too light to really have everything a baby could need inside.
She got an odd look on her face.
“You’re allowed to change your mind,” he told her, surprised to hear gentleness in his voice. “Any time you want.”
He was surprised when a deep, animal side of him snarled inwardly at the idea of surrendering the babyback to her, but he was glad that he was managing to be patient and compassionate anyway.
Maybe the baby reallywasempowering him somehow.
“I won’t,” she said lightly. “Don’t worry.”
“Can I have your number?” he thought to ask. “Just… you know, in case.”
“I won’t be taking him back,” she told him warningly.
“Not for that,” he said. “Just because...”
But he couldn’t really say why. Because it felt like the right thing to do? Because one day maybe Leo would want to ask his mother why she left?
She moved close to him and slid her hand into his pocket.
He barely resisted the impulse to flinch.
But she was only scooping out his cell phone.
“There,” she said after a moment of tapping in her info.
When she was done, she set the phone on top of the bag instead of returning it to his pocket.
“Thank you,” he told her. It was for more than her number. He felt better than he had in a long, long time.
“Sure,” she said, shrugging awkwardly. “Well, good luck.”
It hurt him like a punch in the gut when she turned without even looking at the baby and marched out to the beat-up car that was parked in his giant driveway.
