“You can, too. Say the word. Or sign them.”
“You know how to sign? I wanna learn. Will you teach me?” Noah jumped in, crawling off Beckett’s lap and across the floor. I grimaced, sure that the floor wasn’t the best place to crawl on hands and knees on.
I shrugged. Maybe sometime. Not today, though.
“Maybe,” Jasper spoke up again. “Just the three of you could have time together. Without Beckett and me.”
“A sleepover?”
“No,” Asher quickly said. “Maybe out for coffee or something. Somethingcalm.”
“Oh.” Noah only pouted, but still sat down right in front of me after moving the glass of water. “We could play games. Do you like games?”
I blinked.
“I love Uno. And some video games. Sports, not really. But you don’t seem like you like those either.”
“Wait,” Beckett whispered, my eyes snapping up to him, then quickly went to Jasper who stepped a foot closer. His hands were clenched at his sides, gaze hard my way.
I quickly looked anywhere but at anyone in the room.
I didn't know what I did to make him all of a sudden hate me. Was I really that crappy of a person? Well, I knew that answer, but I thought…well…I don’t know what I thought anymore.
Taking a deep breath, and pushing everything down, the same thing I’d been doing for weeks now, tried to tune back into what Noah was saying.
“…. have tons of games. Uno’s my favorite, but Daddy’s is scrabble, which I hate. I can’t spell, and I never win. And I have coloring books. Do you have any? What about toys? Can I see your room?”
Uh…maybe it was better to not figure out what he was saying.I blinked, looking at Asher for some sort of help.
I jumped, my phone in the kitchen pinging with a text message. I gladly took the save, pushing myself up and all but running to go answer. I heard Noah’s comment that my phone did work, before I rounded the corner.
Only then did I take a good deep breath, feeling every weight land on top of me at once. I wanted to collapse right there on the floor, and beg for it to open up and take me. Instead, I found my phone, finding a slew of messages and a few missed calls from Noah. I had ignored them all while I was baking.
Dawn had texted, just to check in and make sure I was okay. The normal midafternoon text, and I quickly sent back a thumbs up.
Beckett, of all the ones in the house, was the one to venture into the kitchen sometime later. He stood far enough away, watching as I carefully put frosting on a cookie. I got through five of them before anyone came to see where I went.
I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. Good that I got a tiny bit of time to calm myself down, but bad that the one person I wanted to follow me didn’t.
I was so messed up.
Shaking the thoughts away, I squinted, eyeing the cookie to make sure the frosting was even. I did not like the color, but it’s what Dawn picked up and I didn’t have any dye to make it anything but a pasty yellow.
It reminded me of pee, truthfully. Or bananas that were still too ripe. I was hoping for a brighter yellow, hence the stars. But it was too late to change the shape or color.
I was going to do half in this nasty yellow, half in white. And I made a mental note to ask dawn to pick up color dye.
“I figured you’d try to hide in a different room. The kitchen is a pretty good guess on where you went.”
I shot him an annoyed look. I had things to do, so I couldn’t go hide somewhere. Plus, someone would find me even if it had crossed my mind.
“I’m trying to figure out if you’re mad at someone, or if this is just the normal reaction you have to everyone around you.”
Both, but I didn’t say it. Instead, I returned to my work, doing my best to ignore him.
That made six cookies.
I was mad at myself for hoping. For trying. After all the physical pain, I should’ve been ready for heartache.
