I thought about how it made me feel to see my mother broken and bruised because of him. I did those things to Morgan because of him. I did unthinkable things, broke her, bruised her, and worst of all, I put her here, struggling for her life.”
“Let’s wrap it up till next week,” Deidra softly spoke.
Drew turned, like he was being pulled from a daze. I stood when he walked to me, taking both my wrists. “I’m going to call you a cab,” Drew said.
“No, Drew. I want to be with you,” I insisted I didn’t want him to push me away. I wasn’t worried about him snapping. This wasn’t that kind of emotion. This was pain. Drew was hurting, and I wanted to be with him.
“Morgan, I just need to be alone for a bit. Please?”
“I have a suggestion,” Deidra interrupted. “How about a drive? How about you don’t go to work and hide behind exertion? Take Morgan for a drive, out of the city, somewhere quiet?”
I turned back to Drew, hoping he’d say yes. He smiled a weak smile and ran the back of his hand down my cheek. “You want to go for a drive?”
“Yes, I’d love that.” I smiled, feeling like we were getting somewhere for the first time since we’d started seeing Deidra.
Chapter 26
I couldn’t have been happier with my life. Well, other than that stupid key hidden in the bottom drawer in my jewelry box. I still couldn’t get that out of my mind. Drew knew the key was at the estate. Why would he hide it there? There was something very mysterious about the whole thing.
“You’re not leaving this house while I’m gone,” Drew demanded, pulling me from my investigating mind and taking Nicky from my arms.
“Uh? Yeah, okay, I won’t,” I promised, watching Nicholas giggle when his daddy tossed him to the air.
“What are you going to do?” Drew asked,
“I don’t know. Stick around here, I guess. We’ll stay busy, uh, Nicky?”
“I’ll take you to the beach house when I get back on Wednesday.”
“We have to see Deidra Thursday, but I would like to go there.”
“We can miss one appointment.”
“No, we can’t. You were getting to a good part.”
“That’s not a good part. I’ve got to go. I’ll call you later. Stay here,” Drew demanded again while handing me Nicky and pulling close to rub my ass in a warning to heed to his commands. “I love you and you,” he added to Nicky, kissing us both.
“I love you too,” I sighed, bored already, thinking about him being gone for three days again. I couldn’t wait until he was down to enough stores that kept him home. I didn’t want him running all over the world anymore, and I didn’t want to be in bed without him.
Nicky and I sat on the shiny floor and shopped online for some new clothes. I swear that boy grew every day. I hated it. I didn’t want him to grow up. “You like that?” I asked him when he left the red truck for the keyboard, pressing a whole line of letters. “Daddy wouldn’t like that, he says that color makes you look like a sissy,” I said, removing him from crawling across my keyboard.
My days were filled with Nicky and trying my best to keep him on all fours. He was so closed to walking and I didn’t want him to. I wanted Drew to be there to see it too. Every time he let go of whatever he was holding onto, I grabbed him. He was ready, I could have easily gotten him to take a couple steps. As much as I wanted to do that, I wanted to wait for Drew more.
Drew actually saw him take his first step before I did. I was running him bathwater when my phone rang. Nicky was standing by the tub, trying to reach the water. I walked to the other side of the bathroom to get him a towel when Drew stopped me.
“Morgan! Turn around.” I turned just in time to see Nicky’s little naked butt move from the tub to the toilet in three wobbly steps. Of course, his hands went right to the toilet water.
It wasn’t the memento I wanted of his first steps, but at least Drew got to see it too.
***
I anticipated Thursday morning for days, thinking about Drew describing my return, anxious to hear his feelings and thoughts about my reappearance.
I talked first, explaining to Deidra and Drew about coming out of the coma not knowing who anyone was, including myself.
Drew stood and walked away from us to face the dumpster alley, resting his head on the windowsill. Drew began his story, “Five weeks, I waited for this day. Five weeks I waited for her to wake from a coma. Staring myself down in the mirror, I thought about how I was going to feel when she was finally awake. The last few weeks wreaked havoc on my sanity. I was feeling emotions and thinking about things I’d never thought about, ever. Could I hang onto it when she opened her eyes and saw me? Did I want to?