“Let’s order something,” she said, shifting back to look at him. “And watch TV.”
Byron looked like she’d just offered him the whole universe on a platter.
They ordered dumplings and sat on the couch talking and half-watching some football panel show until Wendy rang the doorbell. Simon was sleeping quietly in his bassinet and didn’t wake even when Byron took him from Wendy.
“He was an angel,” their nanny announced. “I’d love it if all the kids were like him.”
“Thanks so much,” Beth said, opening the blankets to peer at her sleeping son. He had his thumb in his mouth, his reddish hair ruffled in precisely the same way as Byron’s. She straightened and gave Wendy her best smile. “You’ve really helped us out.”
“Like I said, anytime. How was your big night out?”
“Great,” Beth and Byron said simultaneously, neither of them looking at the other.
They didn’t always letSimon sleep with them, but tonight was an exception. Beth placed their son between her and Byron’s bodies, and they moved around him, creating a safe little space for him to sleep.
“Tonight was beyond,” Byron whispered.
“Completely.” Beth traced a fingertip across Simon’s brows. “Sometimes, I think I’d like another one… I don’t know if I’m there yet, but I think I do.”
“Whatever you want is fine with me,” Byron said quietly. “But for the record, I’d… I’d like another one, too.”
A tear tracked out of Beth’s right eye and onto her chest. “I’m just scared we might make the same mistakes. Or we’ll do really well, and it won’t be fair to Simon.”
Byron reached over their baby to touch her cheek. “We can’t help things being different for Si. Gabor Maté says, ‘no child is ever born into the same family.’”
It was a comforting idea, especially coming from Byron. Beth decided to leave it for now. There was only so much you could plan or talk about planning. Only so much you could apply things from the past. It hurt sometimes to know that the old days were gone forever. Set in cement the way the future never could be. But she and Byron had bent time tonight, so maybe they could do it again. For now, it was enough to be here, thinking and breathing and moving along with the rest of the world.
“Do you think he’ll ever know how much we love him?” she mused, putting a fingertip to Simon’s sweet, puckered mouth.
Byron, as always, had to think about it.
“No,” he said eventually. “But hopefully, he’ll feel it.”
The End
FIRST AND FOREVER
1
All of LA sparkled in a dark goblet before Eden, Scholastic Book Fair gems cast onto velvet. She didn’t like or dislike Los Angeles, but it was a strange place. The scrubby desert perpetually stamped down by cracked concrete and bright plastic. Nature and human ego locked in a forever-battle for dominance.
She looked to the inky hills where the Hollywood sign was supposed to be lit up. It wasn’t. Power cuts? General incompetence? Squinting, she made out the ghost of a giant white ‘H’ and wondered why she even cared. What about her life would be improved right now by seeing a big word in the dark? She returned her gaze to the sprawling city, glittering like a magician’s trick.
Willow shifted beside her, bending over the bars, also trying to make out the Hollywood sign. Once upon a time, she’d have pretended to shove him over, but it was hard to meet his eyes right now, let alone make a joke about either of them getting hurt.
It had been a year since her tour bus had spun out. Two broken ribs, one broken arm and a partially deflated lung.Months of physical therapy and doctors’ trips and work being delayed. Yet, as she stared out at the city, Eden thought the same thing she’d thought a million times. She’d endure it all again, all the pain and inconvenience, if Willow would promise to go back to normal.
He'd always been protective and fatherly, even before he was the father to their two baby girls. But the accident had changed something, turned him paranoid. She’d understood—he’d thought she was going to die. But she wasn’t hovering between life and death anymore, and it was like no one had told Willow. Her formerly chilled-out, jock-boy husband could barely sit still if they were in public. He texted her a billion times a day, stressed about everything, and insisted on driving her and their daughterseverywhere, sometimes gripping the wheel so tight his knuckles split.
They’d had the same conversation a dozen times since the accident, but this morning, it spilled into an actual fight. Because Willow hadn’t just lost his chill about her public safety, he’d lost his chill about her sexual safety. He wouldn’t hurt her in bed, no matter how responsible she promised to be, no matter how much she begged him to.
This morning, she’d had enough. She’d sat naked on the hotel bed, the duvet clenched in her fists. “I don’t want you to fucking murder me, Willow! I just want you to beroughwith me.”
“No, you don’t,” he muttered. He always got quieter when they argued. Not a bad thing, except for the part where it made Eden even angrier because she could never control her volume during fights.
He’d been on his feet, pacing the hotel room, his freckled fist to his forehead. “You want me to hurt you, and if you think after what happened?—”
“I don’t want you to hurt me, I just want you to?—”
