Craving Molly(37)

“Women can’t resist me,” I told her, laughing harder when she elbowed me in the side.

We sat there quietly for a few minutes watching the opening credits of the cartoon, but before anything exciting happened on the TV, Rebel was sliding sideways off my lap. She’d fallen asleep sitting straight up. I caught her before she went far, and scooped her up in my arm like a newborn, her little feet dangling as I pulled her glasses off and set them on the table. When I turned to check if Molly had seen that Reb was asleep, I found her the same way, her head resting on the back of the couch.

The lack of sleep was catching up to both of them.

I carried Rebel into her room and lay her gently in her bed, pulling her blanket up around her shoulders. I didn’t want her to be cold since she wasn’t wearing any pants, but I didn’t see any other blankets in her room, so I grabbed a clean towel off the top of her dresser and laid that on top of her blanket.

When I was sure she wasn’t going to wake up, I left the room, feeling pretty fucking proud of myself that I’d put the baby down for a nap. Well, I guessed she was technically a toddler, right? Didn’t matter. She still seemed like a baby to me. Normally, Molly dealt with anything to do with Rebel. She did all the diapers and getting her things to eat, and getting out of bed at night when Reb woke up.

It made sense. She was Rebel’s mom, and I was just a guy that was hanging around. But it still made me feel like an asshole when we both woke up at night and only Molly got out of bed to get Rebel back to sleep. The kid wasn’t mine—but it felt wrong to not help out.

“Where’s Reb?” Molly asked blearily as I sat back down next to her on the couch.

“She fell asleep,” I replied as I pulled her against my side. “I put her in the crib.”

“Okay,” she mumbled against my ribs. “I’m so fucking tired.”

Her breathing slowed as her body leaned more heavily into mine. God, she was cute as hell. Her hair was a rat’s nest, and she hadn’t even tried to straighten it up while I was helping Rebel clean up her mess. She’d just left it that way, like she couldn’t be bothered to fix it. I pulled her body up and stretched out, situating Molly between me and the back of the couch. I pulled off her glasses and leaning over as far as I could without waking her up, I dropped them on the coffee table and snagged the remote to turn the volume up a little so I could finish watching the movie.#p#分页标题#e#

At some point, I must have fallen asleep, because I woke up later to Molly scrambling off the couch and Rebel yelling in her room.

“I thought she didn’t—” the rest of my words were muffled under Molly’s hand as her eyes filled up with tears.

“Just let me listen,” she whispered, going completely still with her hand covering my mouth.

“Mama!” Rebel yelled loudly. “Mama!”

It wasn’t the babble that we usually heard, and she wasn’t just talking to herself. Rebel was actually calling for Molly by name.

Molly’s lips trembled and she gave a little laugh, lifting her hand off my face.

“I waited a long time for that,” she said softly. Then she practically skipped down the hallway to Rebel’s room.

I sat up and scrubbed my hands down my face. She had waited a long time. Rebel was almost two, she was walking and getting into shit on a daily basis, but she hadn’t said her first word until five minutes earlier. It was a big deal.

My chest felt tight as I rolled up Molly’s comforter and set it on top of her pillow. I’d heard the baby girl’s first word. And she hadn’t been messing around, either—you could tell by her tone that she was pissed. She’d probably been in there awake for a while, but we hadn’t heard her pounding on the side of the crib because the baby monitor was in Molly’s room across the house. I grinned.

I wanted to tell someone. I wanted to tell everyone.

“Look who’s awake,” Molly said brightly as she carried Rebel into the room wrapped in the towel I’d tucked her in with. “And she’s got a new blankie.”

“She didn’t seem warm enough,” I mumbled, coughing a little. “I wasn’t sure where the extra blankets were.”

“So you used a towel?” Molly teased, reaching down to get Reb’s glasses off the table.

“Worked, didn’t it?” I smiled smugly when Reb reached for me, almost falling from Molly’s arms before I caught her.

“Who’s that, Rebel?” I asked, pointing to Molly as Reb leaned her head against my chest.

“Mama.” She said it like she’d always been saying it, like it wasn’t a new thing she’d picked up. Like Molly wasn’t watching her in wonder.