Page 54 of Together

I look up to see Nik watching me closely, heat crackling in the space between us. I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing I was when I was watching him hold Jay.

Jay begins to fuss a little more and it’s clear I’m not capable of giving him what he needs. Dean must see it, too, because he walks over, rubbing Jay’s cheek with the back of his pointer finger. “Not your mama, Jay. You’ll have to go back to old weepy eyes over here for what you’re looking for,” Dean teases.

“Shut up, Dean! He’s just so perfect and look!” Josie wipes tears from her eyes and points to her newborn. Or is she pointing to me? I can’t really tell. All I know is that the moment Nik and I were sharing, brief as it may have been, is now broken by the whimpers of a newborn baby who seems to be hungry for his first meal outside the womb.

Reluctantly, I hand over Jay to his daddy who hugs him closely before bringing him to Josie just as a nurse walks in. After sanitizing her hands, she makes her way to Josie.

“Ready to try this feeding thing? I heard him getting a little upset so I figured it was time,” she tells Josie.

“Yeah.” Josie nods but looks a little worried. I don’t blame her.

And that’s our cue to leave. Neither Nik nor I want to stick around to watch Josie learn to breastfeed her baby so we say our goodbyes, leaving the family alone so they can have some privacy.

“We’ll leave you be. Congratulations, baby sis. You done good.”

He kisses her on the cheek and gives Dean a hug, grabs my hand, and we walk out of the hospital room.

Chapter Twelve

Nikolas

I don’t wantto release Ashley’s hand as we make our way through the quiet hallways of the hospital. Seeing her hold my nephew did something to me but it started before that. Really, it started the night she and I played darts and conceived a child. Is that normal? To have this immediate need of protecting the person who’s carrying your child? I certainly hope so.

If we weren’t in the middle of a hospital room, surrounded by my sister and brother-in-law just now, I would have had a hard time not kissing her. The way she talked so sweetly to Jay was doing me in.

Neither of us say a single word as we continue walking, all the way to my pickup where I open her door and let her inside.

When I join her in the cab, I start it up and let it idle for a few minutes before looking over at her. She’s staring straight out the windshield, her chest rising and falling.

“Your place or mine?” I ask, hoping my instincts aren’t completely wrong here.

When she groans and drops her head, I panic for a second. Then she looks at me and smiles. “Thank goodness you asked. Yours. Quickly.”

“Got it.”

The drive to my house is thankfully short, only long enough for two country songs to play on my satellite radio. The first song is all about finding yourself in a bar, and if that isn’t an anthem for how we got together, I don’t know what is. I glance over at Ashley and she returns my smirk. I almost laugh out loud with how perfect it is for us. But the second song? This one has me pushing the pedal down a little harder.

The song starts out innocently enough, but the lyrics quickly turn to pleasing a woman, taking it slow, and giving her what she wants.

Somewhere through the song, I begin singing along and grab her hand. I don’t even realize it until I feel her other hand close over ours.

I wish we were already at home so I could dance with her in my living room, holding her tight against me while singing softly to her.

That’s one of the fondest memories I have about my parents growing up.

They danced.

All the time. When I was little, I loved it because it would make me laugh. Then I became a teenager and thought it was stupid. Then I got a little older and realized that it wasn’t stupid at all. It was one of the ways they showed each other love.

It wasn’t just slow dancing, either. They’d two-step all over the house, it seemed. Dad would spin Mom out and right back into his arms without either of them missing a beat, their feet moving to the music with ease.

A memory hits me hard and sudden of my dad talking to me about dancing with my mom.

“It might seem corny, and trust me when I was young I thought so, too. But then you’ll find the girl and that thought will go straight out the window. It’ll click. Trust me, when you find the girl, it’ll all fall into place.”

“The girl?” I ask.

“Yeah. The girl you want to dance with. Under the stars, in front of the kids, in the bed of your truck, in the parking lot of Walmart. Any time she’ll let you take her in your arms, you’ll grab the chance and hold her tight because the idea of letting her go isn’t an option.”

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