Hold On(139)

“You won’t,” his sister repeated.

He looked back out the window.

CeeCee had the ball again. And again, she threw it right at her father’s feet.

Blondie retrieved it.

Tanner took it and let it fly.

Blondie chased after it.

“How?” he asked.

“How what?” his sister asked back.

“How’s it go away?”

She didn’t answer, and he was about to look at her again when he felt her fingers sliding into his as she got close to his side.

She held his hand and they watched what was happening on the porch. Blondie in the yard, retrieving the ball. Tanner looking down at his baby girl. CeeCee’s blue eyes tipped up to her daddy, her mouth moving. She had only a few words in her arsenal, so that meant she was mostly babbling at him. But it was clear Tanner didn’t mind by the way he was smiling down at his little girl.

“I’m pregnant again, Merry.”

Garrett’s head snapped around as he looked to his sister.

“That…” She tipped her head to the window. “And this…” She put her hand to her belly. “That’s how it works.”

“Cher wants kids,” he told her.

“You both get to that place, give them to her,” she returned.

He shook his head as he looked back out the window and pulled his hand out of her hold. He lifted his arm, catching his sister around the neck and tugging her to his side.

He kept his eyes aimed out the window as he turned his head and kissed the top of her hair.

For Rocky’s part, she’d wrapped both arms around his middle.

“Pleased as fuck for you, babe,” he muttered.

“Me too,” she replied.

They held on and watched the antidote to Raquel’s poison hold his daughter and play with their dog.

“Falling in love should be good,” she said gently. “It should make you happy. It should make you hopeful. It should make you look forward to the future and savor what’s happening in the now. I want that for you, Garrett, but it’s not only that. It’s the way it should be.”

“I hear that. But bein’ fucked up, destroying havin’ that with Mia, on edge that I’ll do that shit again, that’s just not where I can be with Cher.”

She gave him a squeeze. “Nothing’s going to happen to Layne. Nothing’s going to happen to you. Nothing’s going to happen to me.” He looked down at her. “But even if it does, Merry, I have this. This moment with you. What’s happening outside. The baby girl I gave my husband. The baby he gave me that’s growing inside of me. We can’t live crippled by what we’re scared might happen. We have to live in the moment, happy with what we have.”

“I hear that too,” he told her. “I just got no clue how to get there.”

“Your problem, honey,” she started softly, “is that you aren’t recognizing you’re already there. You just won’t let yourself be there.”

Garrett stared down at his sister, his throat starting to burn.

“Jesus,” he muttered.

Rocky smiled. “Be in the now, Merry. The now would make you happy if you just let it be.”

He tightened his arm around her neck. “Sucks, but you were always smarter than me.”

“Yes, but you were never afraid of spiders.”

A sharp chuckle bolted out of him.

Fuck, his sister was crazy.

“I see I got the upper hand here—you’re smart as a whip, but I can kill spiders without freakin’ out,” he remarked.

“You live a life in Indiana terrified of daddy longlegs, then we’ll discuss it.”

He had to admit, she had a point there.

He grinned at her.

She gave him a squeeze.

They both looked back out the window.

Blondie was running.

CeeCee was babbling.

Tanner was smiling.

His sister was pregnant.

He felt it.

He held on to it.

Because, in the now, all was just as it should be.

It was happy.





Chapter Seventeen


Tough Chick

Cher



Monday Evening

Mom was in my house, kicked back and watching TV with Ethan.

I was in the Equinox, backing it out in order to head to work but wishing I was going to Merry’s.

We’d had our awesome Saturday night and Sunday morning, and Merry had hung with me and Ethan before he’d taken off to spend some time with his sister.

And as we’d rushed toasting some bagels before getting my kid, we’d agreed that we’d find time to meet for lunch that week and I’d arrange it so one of my nights off, it was just him and me; the other one¸ it was family time.

Family time.

Merry hadn’t used those words. I hadn’t either.

But I liked thinking of it that way just as much as it freaked me out.