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"Because it's been barely over a week!"

"I know how long it's been!"

"Then act like it!"

My teeth grind.

She continues, "I have an eight-week-old baby. My entire life changed. I moved hours away from home. I started a new job. I found out the man I thought betrayed me never did. I had to tell you about Charlie. I met approximately four hundred Cartwrights."

"There aren't four hundred."

"Feels like it."

Despite myself, my lips twitch.

"Don't," she warns with a smile.

I press them together.

Her face turns serious again. She adds, "My mother is living in a guesthouse on your family's ranch. I'm trying to figure out how to co-parent with a man I barely know while also apparently dating him. And now, you're upset because I haven't moved into your house after a few weeks."

When she puts it like that, I sound fucking insane. But the ache in my chest doesn't disappear. I reiterate, "I'm not asking you to move all your shit in tomorrow."

"Then what are you asking?"

"I want my daughter to stay at my house. Preferably with you, but if you don't want to, then I'll have her on my own. But I want to know what it's like to wake up when she cries instead of wondering if she's crying in another house. I want her crib in my house, bottles in my refrigerator, and diapers in every damn room because apparently babies shit constantly."

Her lips twitch.

I add, "I want to be tired because she kept me awake, not because I'm lying there wondering what I'm missing."

The humor disappears from her face.

My throat tightens. "I already missed so much, Lainey."

"I know."

"No, I don't think you do."

Her eyes turn glassy.

I blink hard to control my emotions, but my voice catches. "I missed you being pregnant. I wasn't there to hear her heartbeat or learn it was a girl. Your belly grew with my child in it, and I didn't get to see it. She was born, and I can't even tell you what I was doing that night or where I was when you brought her home. And I didn't get to see all the firsts that I'm not even aware of that happened in six weeks." Pain slices through me. I look away.

Two weeks.

It shouldn't matter.

I have the rest of her life.

But it fucking matters.

She steps closer. "Jagger."

"I'll never get it back, Lainey. But I know you didn't keep her from me because you wanted to hurt me. I know why you thought what you thought. And I'm trying really fucking hard not to hold it against you."

A tear drops down her cheek.

I can't stop. It's like I opened Pandora's box. "Now, I know she exists. And I'll be damned if I miss anything else."