“Intense enough for you?”
Like he has to ask. “I think I’ll keep you.”
He laughs, deep and rich, as he withdraws from me and crawls over my legs so he can lean over me on his hands. He looks at me long and hard, so many things in his eyes I can’t decipher. The one I can is the one that’s most important. It’s the look that tells me I am his whole world and hell if I’m going to argue with that. What sane woman would? He’s the total package: sexy, thoughtful, generous, mischievous, and most importantly, all mine. Love isn’t a strong enough word for what I feel for him.
“I don’t think you get a choice in that matter.”
“BAXTER’S NOT GOING TO BE very happy with you.”
I look up from the dog at my feet—lying on her back spread-eagle—with a smile on my face and know my dog is definitely not going to be happy when I come home with the scent of another on me.
“Hey bud. You’re right,” I say to Zander as he leads the charge of the middle school boys through the front door. “How was school today, guys?”
My question is greeted with an array of fine, good, boring, from the four of them as their attention shifts to Racer who has scrambled up from my feet to meet her boys. I love seeing how excited they all are to lavish attention on the newest member of the house.
Rubbing a hand over my belly, I lean against the counter and watch them sitting on the floor with the ball of fur. They’ve all enjoyed taking on the responsibility of having a pet better than I thought. Thankfully. I just hope she does her job as a therapy dog and helps out the latest boy, Auggie, assimilate into our madness.
I glance over to where he’s coloring quietly at the table. His head is down, but I can see his eyes angling over to watch the boys and their camaraderie from beneath his shock of sandy-blond hair. He takes in their teasing, the elbowing of each other, their comfort, and I can see him desperate to make a connection. So many things hold him back. He wants to be a part of the crew, but the PTSD, along with a plethora of other issues living in a violent and abusive home ensued—things that skated just beneath the radar of social services for so very long—hasn’t provided him the coping skills needed to assimilate. When your parents keep you locked in a dog crate for hours, if not days on end, as a punishment without any outside social interaction for year upon year, knowing how to fit in just isn’t something you can do.
To say it breaks my heart is an understatement. The therapists suggested we bring in a therapy dog for comfort, with the hope Racer will eventually create the opening for him to have a connection with the other boys.
And of course, Auggie’s part of the reason I’m so stressed about the lack of time before the baby is due. I desperately want to see him connect with someone here as much as he has with me before I go on maternity leave. If he doesn’t, then I worry he’ll feel as confined as he was in his parents’ self-imposed prison at home.
The baby moves beneath my hand, my constant reminder of how lucky my child is going to be to never have to even remotely experience any of these horrors.
“Hey Auggie? Do you want a snack before I leave for the night?” He looks over to me, a ghost of a smile on his sweet lips as he nods ever so slightly. The sight of a smile, regardless of how faint, gives me an inch of hope in this marathon we’re running together. “Oreos and milk?”
His smile becomes more surefooted at the same time Scooter pipes up, “Dude, I’m all over that!” Perfect. Just what I wanted to happen. A table of boys eating cookies and milk together. All different walks of life, making their own path together.
“Dude,” I mimic him with a grin on my face, “put your backpacks away and it’ll be waiting for you.”
“Rad,” one of them says as my phone alerts a text. As I reach into the pantry, I glance over to my cell sitting on the counter and see it’s from Colton. I’m not sure what he needs but my shift ends in fifteen minutes and this opportunity with all the boys together is way too important to break up the moment.
“Okay,” I say, as I pull out two packages of Oreos and cups. “Snacks get doled out in the order of who tells me something good about their day.”
“Pit and the peak!” Ricky says with exasperation. He likes to pretend he’s too old for this tradition we started a few years ago, but I secretly know he enjoys it.
“Yep.” I start filling the plastic cups as Kyle passes out napkins.
“Auggie goes first,” Zander says, surprising me. I think both Auggie and I startle at the comment but for completely different reasons. Zander slides me a glance that says he knows exactly what he’s doing. It may be almost six years since he was in similar shoes, but he remembers the anxiety like it was yesterday and is trying to help Auggie in the only way he knows how.
My heart swells with pride at the kind heart he has, and I’m reminded of how very far he’s come. And the knowledge that Zander could overcome and thrive encourages my hopes that Auggie will be able to have the same success.
“Z’s right. Auggie gets to go first,” I say.
And the best part about it is that in a house constantly full of bickering, they just showed it to be one weighted more heavily with love and compassion.
“Hello?” I answer the phone as I crawl along the highway, traffic moving at a snail’s pace in the last few miles to the house. I’m so exhausted. Presuming it’s Colton calling me back, I answer on the Bluetooth’s first ring, not waiting for caller ID to pop up on the Range Rover’s GPS screen. My calls have been going straight to his voicemail since I’ve left work so when I answer, I fully expect to hear the lecture right off the bat about how I need to take my maternity leave now. And I’m lucky because as vocal as he is on it, he understands the reasons behind why I haven’t. I have a feeling the compassion is waning the more out of breath I am and the more swollen my feet become.
That’s exactly why I’ve been telling him I’m perfectly fine to go to my checkups without him so he doesn’t hear Dr. Steele tell me I need to start taking it easier. And maybe that’s why I answer right away, so he thinks everything is okay instead of the actual throbbing in my rapidly swelling toes and ankles.
“Rylee Donavan?”
“Yes. Who’s this?” I try to place the female voice on the other end of the line but come up empty.
“This is Casey at TMZ and—”
“How’d you get my number?” I ask, cutting off the tabloid reporter, my guard instantly up.
“We’d like to know if the tip we received is true and how you’re dealing with it all?”
Curiosity and unease meld into a ball of discord. I stutter a response I know I shouldn’t even ask. “Wh . . . what are you talking about?”
“The video proving your husband’s infidelity.”
And it’s like my ears don’t hear what she says over the roar of disbelief and flash of hurt that burns in my chest. “Video?” And I reiterate the word more to myself, lost in my own world of upset than to her.
“The sex tape.”
I know it’s not possible but I gasp and stop breathing all at the same time. I disconnect the call instantly. My heart drops into the pit of my stomach. I struggle to catch my breath. Luckily I’m turning off on Broadbeach because my thoughts are so scattered and the adrenaline is pumping so fast that my hands are shaking.
Normally I don’t let bullshit like this get to me—after all I am married to a man who was once known as one of the racing world’s top playboys.