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“The Wagner’s don’t want to have to go through this again in a couple days, I don’t want to put him in another home for a couple days, and he’s going to be there anyway. You win. Vander’s going home with you today.”

“Oh my God. Paxton, go find us plane tickets,” I said, not even trying to hide the freak-out going on in my mind. This was real life. This was really happening. Vander was safe, where I would always take care of him.

Vander was going home.

Sixteen

I can’t even begin to explain the high that I was on. Vander filled a void I never knew I had, and I was proud of my sister for the young man he was. Polite and happy, just like I expected. And Paxton, oh my God, Vander loved Paxton. They ate their nasty lobster and I enjoyed my cream pasta with asparagus and a garden salad, feeling happier than I think I ever had in my life. We walked around a park after lunch hand in hand while Vander ran up ahead, happy and as energetic as a little boy should be.

We sat by a pond and called Mi to tell her the good news and that we couldn’t get a flight back out until the next afternoon. Mi didn’t mind at all, Nick was there and they were going to build a moat on the beach, then build a fire and roast marshmallows. Paxton tried to protest the dangerous fire, only because he needed to be there to supervise. I elbowed him to get him to stop talking over my shoulder while I FaceTimed with Mi, and then the girls.

“Did you go see that little boy?” Ophelia asked when Mi handed over her phone.

“Yes, and guess what?”

“What?”

“He looks like you.”

“No he doesn’t. He’s a boy.”

“But he has the same eyes as you, the same skin, and the same hair. Do you want to say hi to him?”

“Okay.”

Rowan popped her face in, too, causing an instant fight.

“She said me,” Ophelia whined while shoving her away.

“I want to see him, too.”

Vander looked at me with wide eyes and a grin when Mi whistled, stopping the fight as quickly as it started.

“Hi, Vander, I’m Mi. How are you?” Mi said in the phone, her face too close to the screen.

“Good,” Vander shyly replied into the phone.

“This is your cousin, Ophelia. Say hi, Phi.”

“Hi, Phi,” Ophelia said through her crackly laugh.

Van laughed, too, but didn’t say hi. I guess it was a little awkward for all of them. We didn’t really expect things to roll this fast. I thought I had a few weeks, not days. Nonetheless, they were about to be roommates, and I was about to be the mother of three. Holy smokes.

Paxton left us alone at the hotel pool later that evening, telling me he had something to do, I didn’t even care what. Vander told me more about his mommy than I would have ever known. He loved her, he missed her, and the way he kept staring at me, made me feel sad for him. I knew what his little eyes were seeing. His mommy, that wasn’t his mommy. Poor little guy.

Had I not been exhausted from lack of sleep, I could have stared at him the entire night. His little arms moved below his body, and he slept on his tummy. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day.

“Let’s go in the bathroom,” Paxton whispered from behind me.

Okay, maybe that was the perfect ending. Paxton made love to me with my ass on the sink, and his hand over my mouth. Just a quickie, no foreplay involved, not really. I lay in his arms, staring over to Vander, feeling safe and content.

“I thought Ophelia looked like me until I met this kid. She’s definitely got more Delgardo than Pierce.”

“I know. It’s crazy. I think it’s a twin thing,” I said and then shifted my focus with the shift in thoughts. “Where did you go, Paxton?” I questioned as my eyes closed, finding peace.

“When?”

“You know when. When you left. Don’t do that.”

“I went to the home Izzy grew up in. I wanted to take you there, but she said no. She said she didn’t want to be a part of Izzy’s life anymore, that she tried to help her, but she wouldn’t let her. Izzy stole a lot of money from her, and a necklace that was family heirloom. She’s not letting that go.”

“She was sick.”

“I know, but she did give me a box of her things, pictures and stuff. She said she didn’t have any need for them.”

“Where are they?”

“I dropped it off at the UPS store with Van’s things. I went by her place, too, hoping someone saved something. They didn’t. It was rented to someone else a couple months ago. They sold what she had to pay her back rent.”

I turned to Paxton and placed a hand on his cheek. “Thank you for trying. Thank you for all of this.”

“Tell me you love me.”

“What?” I asked with a frown.

“You never say it back. I tell you I love you all the time and you never say it back.”

“I do, too. I just said it today.”

“No, that was a, yeah, yeah, love you, too.”

“Same thing.”

“No it’s not, Gabriella. Tell me you love me. Look into my eyes and tell me you forgive me, and you’ll be here to keep pushing me to be a better person.”

“I don’t push you to do that.”

“You do. You make me want to be a better person. Tell me you love me, Gabriella.”

I took a deep breath and shifted my eyes to my hand on his chest, pondering the simple gesture. “I didn’t know that I did until today.”

“You didn’t know if you loved me?”

“No, I mean, I knew I did, but not enough to put it out there like you do so freely.”

“What does that mean? You think I’m bluffing?”

“Not anymore. Not since you pulled me into the men’s bathroom and let me cry all over your shirt for ten minutes without a word. I love you Pax, I am so madly in love with you, our life, and our family. I’m so stoked to make new memories.”

Paxton lifted my chin and kissed my nose, and then my lips. “I promise to make them better than the ones you forgot.”

I grinned and kissed his lips, snuggled into his chest, and slept. I’m not sure I moved the entire night. I rested better than I had in weeks with my sister’s Clyde right next to me.

~~

I knew by the time we landed back in Tampa that Paxton would no doubt love another man’s child, because he was already falling. Vander was extremely interested in the pool graphics that Paxton worked on. Paxton was more than eager to tell him about it. Vander wanted a waterslide like that with a secret tunnel. I don’t think my smile left the entire flight home, and then I cried. I literally had to get up and walk to the bathroom.

“Look what I got for you,” Paxton said when he remembered his gift from Mi.

“I already gots one. My mommy has one, too. You have one, too, Gabby. My mommy said so. A Indian with big feathers gave it to my mommy, and your mommy, and you. Like me,” Vander said as his black rock clicked with Paxton’s, creating an instant smile across his little face.

I didn’t remember that, and I wanted to. How ironic was it that my mom believed in the same magical stones that Mi believed in? I went to the bathroom and cried. Where was my stone?

Paxton never mentioned the incident, not once all the way home. He asked me if I was okay, and that was it. We never discussed it again.

Vander fit into our family like an old glove, joining Rowan and Phi like he’d been there from the beginning. Even their first encounter was like they were old cousins who’d known each other for years. Phi showed him his dinosaurs and they spent hours in the pool. Rowan and Phi even played in it more because Van loved it so much.

It wasn’t all peaches and cream though, far from it. It was either Vander and Ophelia fighting, or Rowan and Ophelia. Never Rowan and Vander. Ophelia kept calling him Mini-Van, thanks to Paxton. I swear that girl didn’t forget anything. Vander hated it. Of course that made her do it more.

I spent three full days tangled up in love. Only one thing could have made me happier, and that was my sister. If Izzy would walk through that door and claim her son, I would have been the happiest girl alive. I thought about her all the time, and I continued to search every missing profile site out there, but I never had a lead worth pursuing. She was just gone, vanished into thin air.