Page 77 of This Wild Heart

Get your shit together,I hissed in my head. Instead of ogling the shirtless man making a bottle (God, I could live off that visual for the rest of my natural-bornlife), I busied myself with Leo, situating him in my arms as I slid up in the bed, resting my back against the headboard for support.

Parker’s old room was small enough that there wasn’t enough space for a chair, but for a few nights, it would suffice. With the pacifier furiously bobbing in his mouth, Leo snuggled into me, laying his hand against the space above my heart, and the sweet ache unfurled in my chest before I could stop it.

Parker walked back toward the bed, shaking the bottle to help the formula dissolve, and with an unreadable face, he slid back under the cover, handing it to me silently.

With my pinky, I plucked the pacifier from Leo’s mouth, smiling at the immediate frown lines that appeared above his wispy little eyebrows. The moment the nipple brushed his mouth, he latched on.

I closed my eyes, resting my head back as he ate, and even without looking, I knew Parker was watching us. Watching me. My awareness of him was a tangible thing, and trying to wrap my mind around how quickly that had happened was still a work in progress.

All the vital decision-making parts—the body and the head and the heart—were all conspicuously quiet the longer I sat there. It took me a few moments longer to work up the courage to open my eyes, and once I did, I found myself wanting to avoid his gaze.

“You’re good at this,” he said quietly. “You just … know what to do with him.”

I smiled a little, brushing the tip of my pinky along his downy soft cheek. “I was ten when Violet was born, fifteen when Willa came along. They felt likemybabies. I always wanted to change their diaper, help with bath time, rock them to sleep. Isabel loved the help but drew the line at letting me take a nighttime feeding with Violet even though I asked a million times. With Willa, I wanted to so badly. Isabel finally caved when she was a couple of months old. I guess my begging finally paid off.”

“Why?”

“There’s something magical about a time like this, I guess.” I smiled down at Leo. “Everything is quiet. Everyone is asleep. It’s just you and the baby. No one else in the world gets to be a part of it.”

For a moment, Parker was quiet, and when I risked a glance in his direction, he was staring down at his hands, a furrow in his brow that reminded me an awful lot of the baby currently cuddled in my lap.

A million questions hovered on the tip of my tongue, and something told me to keep them all right where they were.

“Are you upset at me for not helping more?”

My eyebrows rose at the hushed question. “No,” I said slowly. “I’m not upset. It’s sudden. And shocking. I’ve always been someone who does well in both of those situations. I can roll with almost anything, but I might break down about it later.” I gave him a wry smile. “So if you keep this up for too much longer, expect to walk in the room and find me sobbing over a Hallmark commercial or something.”

“Noted.” His eyes darted briefly to the baby, then to my face. “Is that how it was with He Who Shall Not be Named?”

“Voldemort?” I whispered. “I think we can say his name now.”

Parker’s mouth curled in a pleased grin. “So you do remember some things from that night.”

I hummed, relishing the lightness between us for a little bit. “Don’t give me a pop quiz any time soon. But yes, I remember you coming to the table.”

I didn’t want Max to intrude on this moment, but I knew why he was asking. It was Parker’s turn in the seat of vulnerability. It was his background under the spotlight. His decisions. His past. And even though it was the last thing I wanted to think about, my head and my heart told me to ease up on the grip holding that particular box shut.

I gave him a quick look, and he was staring across the room, waiting patiently to see if I’d answer. “That’s sort of how it was, yeah. I was just doing my best to keep myself from crumbling. Shoving everything down. And it worked for a while. But then you stop, and you reposition, and it justhurts. Like when you sit too long on a limb, and it’s not until later that all the blood rushes back.” I paused, a heaviness spreading through my limbs, like it happened five minutes ago, and I was still sitting with Isabel, scrolling numbly through the article. My body would remember how that betrayal felt for a very long time, and God, I wished it would forget. “That’s what I didn’t want my family to see. Because I moved back home right away, I cried in my car a lot,” I said, shifting my hold on Leo slightly. “I didn’t want them to think that I was broken. That this thing someone else had done weakened me until I didn’t even look like myself anymore.” I turned my head to stare at him. The deep brown of his eyes made my heart skip. “It’s the hard part of everyone around you being so strong. Like nothing in the world could take them down. You don’t want to be the one they have to tiptoe around, you know?”

Parker didn’t say anything for a long time, and after a few moments, I had to sever the intensity by looking away.

“I do know.” His voice was hardly much more than a rumbling whisper. “They’ve been tiptoeing around me for almost two years. The only reason they didn’t today is you.” He paused, his hand curling up in a fist where it lay on the bed. “And him.”

“Then I guess we’re doing our jobs very well.” I tickled Leo’s foot. “Aren’t we, little lion?”

The silence between us was heavy, only the gentle sucking sounds of the baby eating as our soundtrack, and I wracked my brain for what to say next. It was during these moments with Parker, when the playfulness subsided and the mood switched, that everything felt so weighted with meaning.

“If you haven’t tried it yet, I recommend crying in the car,” I said teasingly. “I can attest to its healing properties, though you probably won’t listen to female rage ballads when you do it.”

Parker’s mouth didn’t lift in a smile like I expected, but he leveled those eyes at me again, and I felt them like he’d clipped my nervous system to an electric panel.

“I haven’t cried since the day my dad died.”

At his admission, my head reared back. “Really?”

Slowly, he nodded. “I don’t ever want to feel like I did when I got that call from my brother. Or the day I said goodbye to him. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.” His throat worked on a hard swallow. “I think I’m still waiting for the blood to rush back to those limbs. Some days it feels like it never will. And others …”

“Others?” I asked, unable to help myself.Tell me more,I wanted to beg.Tell me everything.

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