He rocked me. “I’m good. Next time wake me when you’re hungry. I can make you better food than oatmeal.”
Barrett laughed. “That has been bugging you all morning, hasn’t it?”
Jer pressed his nose to my hair. “Little bit.”
“I can’t leave yet. I’m going to the gynecologist.” I stepped back. “I have to take the elevator up.”
They looked at each other before they looked at me. Finally, Barrett nodded. “Jer will take you up since he’s feeling so needy, and I’ll wait here for Phoenix who is next door.”
“I didn’t get to cuddle all night and make oatmeal. Yes, I am feeling needy.”
Dina had said to leave them alone when they were like this. They’d been brothers a lot longer than they had been mine. “You know I love both of you.” I tried to wink. I might have looked deranged. I wasn’t really a winker. I put my hand out to Jer. “Let’s go.”
He grinned at his older brother. “She loves us.”
“And here we can be really obnoxious about it if we want to. Hear that, world?” he shouted. “Alatheia loves us.”
The door to Dr. Trevor’s office opened. Lily looked him up and down. “Barrett, please, don’t shout.”
“Sorry.”
We pushed the elevator button to go up.
Jermey took my hand,and it was such a novelty to be able to do this in public without giving it another thought that I squeezed our fingers together. “I don’t think I would have madeit very long without calling you guys when I ran away in my hypothetical what to do when I’m eighteen. Before I knew I was going to die.”
He brought our joined fingers together and kissed them, gently. A warm burst of pleasure surged up my spine. Jer held my gaze. “It kills me that you would have waited at all. Did you really think we were just done?”
It was hard for me to say things that would hurt him, but I did it anyway. “When you didn’t come the first month I thought maybe you’d had enough or you’d been talked out of it.”
He shook his head slowly. “No, Princess. I’m sorry we didn’t come. I’d have battered down the door to get to you. Laid siege on the place.”
I really wished we could be alone right now instead of about to get out of an elevator. “I’d really like to kiss you.”
Jer backed me against the wall. We both breathed hard. I could feel his chest moving against my own. My head spun, anticipation rushing through me. Finally, he kissed me, hard. “Here? You can kiss me. It’s one of the few things I like about this place. Anytime. Anywhere.”
My heart beat fast. “Are you sure I’m not dreaming?”
“You’re not, but I might be.”
The very slow-moving elevator opened, and we stepped into the hallway. She had said to pass the nursery, and I headed that way, stopping abruptly when I saw two babies inside. A boy on one side of the room, a girl on the other.
I’d never seen a baby as young as those two. “They’re brand new.” I spoke aloud, as much to myself as Jeremy. “They’re so small.”
He kissed my neck. “They are. Beautiful.” He was quiet for a second. “Do you like babies? I mean hypothetically. We’re too young for babies right now and everything is chaotic.”
I wrapped his arms around me. “I’ll be honest, Jer, before this very moment I have not given babies the least amount of thought. Remember, when we met, I was focused on getting through life long enough to be on my own and hoping to make a friend. Babies? Whole other universe.”
“My mother was twenty when she had Barrett. I don’t think I’ve ever stopped to consider how young that was.”
I took a breath. “So twenty-one with you and Jules and twenty-two with Phoenix.”
Rosalind was thirty-nine right now. She looked very young. When she was my age she had already been contemplating how to get out of her life. Now she was glamorous in New York and knitted hats in Louisiana.
“I have to make my appointment but will you remind me that I have to tell you something when I get out? Something that might take a moment so not now.”
He nodded. “Sure.”
I sighed, walking past the nursery. “I liked looking at those babies.”
