“Love you,” he says. “Sorry if I drooled on you a little just then.”
I laugh as much as I can pinned beneath his weight, and I snake my fingers through his hair. “Love you,” I whisper.
My mind is at ease. My heart is happy. If I thought buying this house was a dream come true, I know now that home ownership doesn’t even come close to what I feel when I’m with this man.
This competitive, silly, real, firefighting Bianchi. I fall asleep with a smile on my face and the man I love literally on my heart.
* * *
“Holy fucking…”Gracie Bianchi—now Cooper—wanders through my new house with her son Ethan on her hip and her mouth wide open. She lifts a perfectly arched black brow at me. “Babe, when you said you bought a house, I was expecting a starter home. This?” She sweeps her hand around the wide-open living room.
My head is spinning right now. Gracie offered to watch Juniper while I go in for my first day of orientation, and I have barely had enough coffee.
Vito has been on the last two nights, so I haven’t slept well. That’s becoming a real thing now that I know he plans to move in. But since he hasn’t told his parents yet, I can’t spill the news to Gracie.
“Hey.” Gracie’s voice is soft as she sets Ethan down on the playmat. He’s just about Junie’s age, and he immediately waddles, then drops to a crawl to take a toy from Junie’s hand.
“Eden?” Gracie waves a heavily tattooed hand in my face. “Hey, girl. You look like you want to start crying. You know Junie’s going to be just fine with me and Ethan, right?”
I nod and swallow hard against the emotions. “Yeah, of course. I’m really happy you’re here. Thank you for agreeing to watch her.”
“It’s a lot, though. Going back to work.” She nods at Ethan’s dark brown ringlets of hair. “You got any coffee going?”
I shake my head. “I was up early and finished a pot. I haven’t been sleeping.”
Gracie nods, her long black hair grazing her shoulders. Somehow, she looks effortlessly cool in an oversized, shredded concert T-shirt with a tank top underneath it and black jeans. She took her shoes off at the door, of course, and is barefoot. Even her black toenail polish looks perfect.
“How do you do it?” I ask. I drop down onto the floor beside the kids and cross my legs. “I don’t think I’ve painted my toenails since before I got pregnant.”
Gracie looks at me, her beautiful eyes rimmed with thick, winged liner. “Girl, I have Ryder. I couldn’t do it without him.”
I peek at the time on my watch and reassure myself I’m okay. It’s only nine, and Michelle said I could stop by this morning for the hiring paperwork and a basic orientation. I figure a few minutes with Gracie is time well spent, because I have no one else in my life I can ask pressing questions. “Was postpartum hard for you?”
Gracie widens her eyes and shakes her head dramatically. “I was still adjusting to being a stepmom to two fully formed humans when this one came along.” She jerks a thumb at her son. “I had some infertility issues before I conceived, and I thought the hardest part of all of this was going to be getting pregnant.” She plops down on the floor beside me and tucks her feet under her butt.
“It wasn’t?” I ask.
“Hell no.” She picks at an invisible thread on her tee and shrugs. “I have a big personality.” She flicks me a glance as if ready to fight me over the statement, but I just grin. “Ryder gave up his stable job teaching just before Ethan was born. He went to work for a start-up with his best friend, so he was putting in long hours. He cut back once the baby was born, of course, but I fell into a funk for sure. I’m not the kind of person who gets sad, though. I mean, I feel the feelings, but I tend to either go quiet or I get angry. You can probably guess how hard it was to be quiet with a newborn, two children, and a husband who was pulled in twenty directions.”
I listen to her experience and can’t imagine. I know how hard it was to do everything myself, but to multiply the responsibilities, to have a partner who was out of his routine, and to battle postpartum depression? I reach out a hand and squeeze her shoulder. “Gracie,” I say. “How did you manage?”
She chuckles. “I drew a lot. In fact, that’s one of the things that got me through. I leaned in to the one thing that has always been there for me. My art. I would swaddle the baby against my chest and sit the older kids down, and we would make art for hours.” She waves a hand. “I wish our house was this big because, let me tell you, two kids and a professional tattoo artist can make a big old mess.”
It dawns on me then that Gracie has this huge family. Where were they when she was going through all of this? “I’m surprised your mom wasn’t constantly helping,” I say, hoping I chose the right words.
“Girl, I had to kick my mother to the curb constantly. She’d have raised those kids if I’d let her.” She lifts a perfect brow at me and points right at my chest. “You need to set boundaries with Lucia, because I’m telling you. Ma is all heart, and she’s eyeballs-deep in good intentions, but she has no filter sometimes. So, if she’s showing up day after day, offering to help, you take what you need. I love them to the moon and back. But I’ve been worried they’ve been making things too easy on my brother.”
She grows quiet and looks at me.
“I’m about to spill some tea, so I sure hope you two are serious.”
I smile and nod, but I don’t say anything more. I don’t want to speak behind Vito’s back, but at the same time, I want to get to know Gracie better.
“So, here’s the deal about my brother. Ah, crap.” Gracie wrinkles her nose and leans in to sniff Juniper’s butt. “Not yours,” she says. “That means it’s mine.”
She jumps up and grabs her diaper bag, which looks more like a giant metallic-gray purse than a diaper bag. “You mind if I do this here?” she asks. “Or do you prefer the bathroom?”
“Wherever you want.”
