The Complete Series Boxed Set (11 page)

She was taking this way too seriously.

Or personally. Likely both.

Then again, so was Mike.

Marching into t
h
e kitchen, d
e
termined to get more than three consecutive syllables out of him, she found him blending some ungodly green glop and pouring it into an ice cube tray.

“What is that?” It looked like something she’d vomited up after ha
v
ing her wisdom teeth removed after college.

“Kale/pear sauce. I figured Jillian could give it a try next.” The slow march toward solids was not going as well as planned, as Miss Jillian The Milk Vacuum had decided that warm and directly from the tap was how she liked her nutrition.

Like an Irishman and his Guinness.

“Sounds delightful,” she lied. “Now, can we talk about something other than the latest vegan baby trend and get to you let me in? I am so sorry, and I’ve said it a thousand times, but I can’t apologize if you won’t hear me.”

“I hear you.”

“No, hear me. Really hear me. Let me understand what’s going on and tell me how you’re feeling and then let me reflect and all that gooey interpersonal interplay that the Mike I thought I knew was into.”

“I’m sorry I’m not being the person you thought I was.” His voice was pleasant enough, but the words felt like little poison darts aimed right at her soul.
That kind of detachment chilled her and made a deep part of her suddenly very, very vulnerable and afraid.
 

“What does that mean?”

“It means exactly what I said.”

Oh,
this
game. She knew what he was doing. Saying words she was supposed to turn around on herself and take on, as if she were the one acting like a different person, as if she were in the wrong here, when all she’d done was had a lovely romp with one
of
her men. Mike’s head games weren’t going to work.

Maybe he’s right,
her guilty conscience chimed in.
You haven’t been as eager in bed with him as you have with Dylan lately.
 

Fuck off.

The voice skittered away.

She must have been glaring at Mike, because his eyes narrowed and matched hers. Great concentration was the only way she could relax, and as her face muscles shifted down to neutral he mimicked her subconsciously. Whatever was going on inside him wasn’t intentional—that was helpful to realize.

Didn’t make this any easier, though.

Glop delivered and smooshed into the trays, he put the entire mess in the freezer and washed his hands. Was he pretending the conversation was over? Acting like she wasn’t there? Uncertain and confused—and also quite upset—she stood in the doorway. Dylan had Jillian right now, so they could avail themselves of all the time in the world. Talk. Sex. Coffee. Even—God forbid—a few runs d
o
wn the slopes. Laura hated skiing. Hated it almost as much as childbirth. But she’d do it for Mike.

She’d do damn near anything for him and Dylan, and he knew it.

Which made this all the more perplexing. Had she been unfair? Yes. But they’d never treated their relationship as something to be equally doled out, as if each needed exactly 33.3333333333333 percent of some kind of relationship pie. This wasn’t about making
percentages
add up. Emotions and time and sex and attention weren’t like that. If they’d tried that kind of math they’d have failed long ag
o.
 

Instead—she thought—they’d all loosely fallen into a less-distinct process, a more cooperative way of living that involved everyone giving their best and hoping it would work out. Take when you needed to take and give when you needed to give. For nearly a year and a half that had worked, but this breakdown now showed her that clearly, something wasn’t working.

As his strong back faced her, arms scrubbing furiously as he washed his hands, the scent of orange mint floated over his shoulder, the new dish soap inviting and fresh. Too bad life couldn’t really be as clean and open as that soap seemed to prom
i
se, as if a scent could make the atmosphere happier than it really was.

Hesitant, then plunging in, she raised her hands and touched his shoulders, gradually laying her palms flat against the broad crossbar of the T that made up his shoulders and backbone. She expected him to stiffen, knowing that breaking through with Mike could be a slow-to-warm process.

Having him slump forward and rest his hands on either side of the sink as a slow, deep breath
c
hanged the landscape of his entire body was definitely a su
r
prise. This was the act of a man deeply conflicted, of someone grappling with a core issue.

“
Laura,” he said with the rush of an out-breath, his tone of voice so hard to read. Was that passion? Exhaustion? Discord? That he said anything at all, though, was good.
 

Had she miscalculated? Invalidated his feelings? Misjudged so badly that she’d compromised the very center of what she held dear with him? Tears filled her eyes before either said a word, and as he turned to her there were so many layers of emotion in his face that she could spend an en
ti
re year alone with him before she could unpack all those messages.

“I’m not jealous,” he said, the words coming out around a second sigh. His head tipped down and alarm shot through her
at the way he said it
. The hair on the nape of his neck was a golden brown, the same color as Jillian’s, and much like h
e
r own blond locks. His shoulders slowly released as he added, “I am hurt.”

O
h.

Ouch. Her hands would have started to shake if they weren’t firmly flattened against his shoulders. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

Lean in
. Her heart told her what to do. One step forward, so awkward and hard, and she rested her cheek against his spine, her belly pressing into his thigh.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, the teardrops mottling the back of his shirt. She reached the middle of his back like this and it made her feel childlike, small and wrong.

One out of three was true.

He turned around and somehow, the unbre
a
chable was broken, the wall of thorns stripped away, the wall vanquished, as his arms wrapped around her shoulders and she twined hers about his waist. The heady aroma of orange and mint on his hands now had the scent of hope and renewal, of wholehearted love and faith.

Mike was so tall, so stalwart and steady, that she had taken for granted that his sheer size meant he was unbreakable, never shaken, always strong. Selfish of her to think it, she now realized.

He was fallible. And soft and vulnerable like her, too.

On the inside.

“When you acted like it was no big deal and Dylan said I should get over it and just take two nights in a row you both really made me feel as if my feelings didn’t matter. How I felt in that moment has nothing to do with divvying up everything. It was a feeling, and they can’t be spreadsheeted.”

Her smile made her lip catch on of the buttons on the front of his shirt, which made her sniffle, which made her snort, which made him laugh.

“Sorry.” She coughed. “I always get a stuffy nose when I cry.”

“I know.”

She loved that he knew.
He pulled her back and gently wiped each tear from her face, the pad of his fingers tracing the path, w
o
rking to give the rolling drop eternal companionship, a traveling partner in pain.

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For telling me why you’ve been so closed up. And for having the courage to open up after I didn’t treat you well.”

Dylan’s voice surprised her from behind. “
We
didn’t treat you well.” With a half-turn she could see him, a sleeping Jillian on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, dude. I had no idea you were that bothered.”

Mike arched an eyebrow and Laura got it. Got it. What Dylan said wasn’t an apology. She thought it was, and Dylan probably did as well, but seeing someone else deliver it like this gave her a new perspective.

“Dylan,” she said quietly. “The fact that he was bothered at all is something we all need to deal with. It’s not just Mike’s issue.”

Mike nodded quietly, his chin bobbing against the top of her head. “You get it,” he whispered, squeezing her gently.

Blinking hard, Dylan shifted the baby to the other shoulder, resettling her head on his shoulder as she snored lightly. Absentmindedly, he stroked her hair, cupping the back of her head in a soothing manner that made Laura so ridiculously happy she co
u
ldn’t put words to it.

“I think I understand. I basically just fake apologized, huh?”

Mike nodded.

“Like ‘I’m sorry you were offended’? Where I’m apologizing for your emotional reaction and not for my action?”
Dylan’s lips pursed with the intensity of his realization.
 

“Someone’s been watching Dr. Phil,” Mike replied, as if impressed. Laura bit her lip, trying not to laugh.

Dylan pointed to the sleeping baby. “Blame her. Three o’clock nap.” His
brown
eyes went soft as
they
jumped between Laura and Mike, friendly and apologetic. “I’m sorry, Mike.”

“Much better,” Mike said, a sad smile on his face.

“But…?” Dylan
a
nd Laura said in unison,
drawing out the word like a question
.

“Something’s off. I don’t know how to put it in words.” Mike pulled back, leaving Laura frantically scrambling inside, like a gerbil on a wheel. Not knowing how to get off, but getting nowhere by being so panicked.

Dylan looked as worried as she was, which was a comfort.
I
t’s not just me
.

“And maybe it is me, but it’s not
just
me,” Mike
said
. “
We’ve been through so much in what feels like a short time span.” The look he gave Dylan made Laura focus on Mike’s eyes, so dark and conflicted, yet childlike in their openness and blessedly hopeful nature. The churning inside him was coming to the surface and she could taste his fear. What could be the source of this?
 

“Jill died, then we struggled, we met Laura, we screwed up—”

H
er sudden laugh was like a guilty bark, making the baby jolt on Dylan’s shoulder, waking with a start and grousing. No amount of head stroking made a difference, and Dylan gave Mike a sympathetic look.

Mike seemed determined to continue now that he’d given himself permission to really share. “—Laura shut us out, we missed so m
u
ch of the pregnancy, then the fire…and that’s not even the half of it.”

The fire.
That’s right
, Laura thought. The fire. Sometimes she blocked it out—needed to forget it—because the implications of what could have happened were too strong. Raising a baby without her mom was hard enough, but remembering how her grandparents died, her own confusion in the flames and smoke in her little apartment, how Dylan preternaturally knew what to do, instinct kicking in for him in a way that it should have for her…
r
uminating on it was too much.

She felt like a failure.
The thought made the smallness return, a tiny ribbon of shame slipping into the cracks of her consciousness, where insecure dragons lurked behind every corner, waiting to attack.
 

“I can see you pulling away,” Mike said quietly, and she flinched. “It’s not just me.” A storm of emotions bubbled inside her, each feeling flying past as she tried to identify it, too slow and too late. By the time she could even feel anything, the feelings turned into a blur, like a tornado of chaos inside that was so enormous she needed to numb it. Kill it. Cover it.

Feed it.

Pretending it didn’t exist never worked, because the steady spiral of ever-moving tumult inside had a sound of its own, a high-pitched whine that made her vibrate from within. And not in a good way. Leaving her shaky
and filled with trepidation, she knew this state only as discomfort.
 

Mike studied her; she felt his eyes lingering on hers, knew he sought to understand what she was thinking an
d
feeling, and in that moment what she had always felt as extraordinary discomfort turned into a completely different sense.

Authenticity. Vulnerability. A peaceful, if painful, settling in that she could only do with Mike and Dylan. Only.

Ever.

“Hey,” Mike whispered, and then Dylan interrupted as Jillian let out a loud, juicy sound from her diaper region that broke the contemplative moment, shattering the deep resonance
she had just begun to feel. Leave it to a baby to strip you bare of any sense of decorum or deep anything. They lived on the very surface of life, all sensation and experience, without any of the baggage adults drag around like anchors weighted with pain.
 

“Whatever I was thinking has been replaced by a fleeting thought of baby wipes. Do we have enough?” she asked Dylan, who just shook his head with a healthy dose of good humor, waving his hand in front of the stinky baby’s bum.

“We hit Costco last week, so we’d better.” A quick look rippled among the three, an ackno
w
ledgement that pragmatics trumped all. And, she hoped, a promise to revis
i
t what had just been a turning point inside her. What it meant, she didn’t know.

Its evolution was more important than its
purpose.
 

“I’m going to go take care of Stinkbug here,” Dylan said quietly, his voice modulated in an attempt to keep the baby calm, though she began to wiggle and fuss, rendering his attempts fairly useless. “I’ll change her and feed her and we’ll go for a nice,
long
walk,” he declared.

If he’d wiggled his eyebrows and thrown glow-in-the-dark condoms with lit sparklers attached, he couldn’t have been more obvious.

M
ike managed to nod, frown, smile and sigh—all at once. “Thanks,” he said. Laura watched Dylan’s back and Jillian’s face as they faded down the hallway, his cooing adorable and Jillian so settled in (one of) her daddy’s arms that she could complain and still be taken care of and love.