“Because he was exhausted,” she said. She threw the covers back.
“Where are you going?”
“To get him and walk around. If I can get him to fall asleep on my shoulder again, I can lay him down like last time. Some kids need that. We don’t know any of those things.”
Because Nettie hadn’t volunteered. She asked as many questions as she could while she was there but didn’t want to text without Chance knowing.
There was a line she was trying hard not to jump over. Not even tiptoe over.
Chance got out of bed with her.
“Maybe I should do it,” he said. “He has to get used to me. You won’t be here every night.”
She wouldn’t let those words bother her. They were the truth.
It was a fact.
She didn’t expect them to spend every night together, even if she was looking at more of a future with him than she had any other man.
More than she had even days ago.
She didn’t want to think Maverick had anything to do with it. Or that Chance would need her so much that he’d fall in love with her for those reasons.
Stupid on her part and it just told her she was as exhausted as the child was.
“You should,” she said.
He had to bond with his son at some point. She knew he was trying through his anger.
The looks she’d caught Chance sending Maverick. The two of them playing on the floor together, Chance fixing dinner, then watching carefully how he cut up the pieces of chicken, cooked carrots, and mac and cheese.
The toddler plowed through the food again and she worried that maybe he hadn’t been given enough before.
Between the two cups of milk with dinner, and what she thought was a full plate, then snacks later, she worried they’d have another bellyache on their hands.
Maybe that was it again.
It’d been an hour of tears that didn’t want to let up, so Chance pushed the door open. Maverick was standing in the playpen, his arms out reaching for them the minute he saw them.
Chance had his son in his arms, and the toddler quieted down almost the minute he was held, gripping Chance’s neck.
“He’s scared,” he said. “At least I think so. I don’t want him in bed with us, but do you think it’d hurt to put the playpen in there?”
She was going to suggest that but didn’t know if that might start bad habits that would be pushed off and have to be dealt with in the future or not.
“You could,” she said. They were walking around the living room with Maverick settling into soft sniffles and a few sighs. “Or you can sit in the room with him so he knows it’s safe. He’ll learn it’s his room and not yours. My mother used to lie in my bed with me when I couldn’t sleep. I’d fall asleep with her there but wake up in the morning and she’d be gone.”
“I like that idea better,” he said.
The longer they walked around the living room, the quieter Maverick got.
“I think he might be sleeping,” she whispered.
They moved back to the toddler’s room, Chance leaning down and setting his son down in there, then covering him with the blanket. “Do we go back to my room or stay here now?”
Her head went back and forth. “Let’s just sit here a minute and see what he might do.”
They sat on the bed together that had to settle for a day, and watched as Maverick turned a few times, made sure his pacifier was still in his mouth from when Chance grabbed it as they walked around the room. Maverick’s eyes opened and locked on Chance close by, then shut, his little body almost sighing into a deep sleep.
