Page 54 of Love Me Boldly

“I can’t leave him. Outside of you, he’s now the only family I have.”

Like any little girl growing up alone, I’d always wanted a sibling. I begged for one for years once I realized other kids had brothers and sisters. I didn’t want to be twenty-two with one, but there were worse things.

I’d already survived them.

“I could…” she started, but I shook her head.

“You have the restaurant. And your life. I’ll figure it out.”

She drew her arm from my grasp and wrapped her arms around me. “We’llfigure it out, Holly. We’ll figure it out together.”

My phone rang, and I went to the kitchen to get it, only to get sidetracked by a loud pounding at the door. The noise was so similar to what I woke up to in the middle of the night, I jumped so high I almost dove right out of my skin.

“Is it her?” Caroline asked.

I hurried to it and glanced out the side window. Probably should have thought to do that last night, too. “No. It’s just Tracey.”

“Just Tracey,” she called from the other side. “Nice. I feel loved. Now let me in. I’ve got breakfast and all the fixings for a broken heart.”

She held up a bag of donuts.

I opened the door. “I could use breakfast, but breakups are the last thing on my mind.”

“Hi, Caroline.” She glanced at me. “What’s bigger than that?” she asked, helping herself inside, dropping the bag on the kitchen table. She dug through the bag, and Jonah chose that time to wake up with a pitiful little squawk I was already starting to get used to.

Tracey froze, her hand deep in the bag of donuts, and her eyes widened. “What was that?”

“Come see.”

I took her hand and pulled her to the couch, where Caroline was starting to bend down to mess with Jonah’s bottle.

“What the heck?” she shrieked. “Holly. There’s a baby. On your couch.”

“Not just any baby,” I told her. “That’s my brother.”

SIXTEEN

HOLLY

It was after I had to retell the story of Jonah’s abrupt middle-of-the-night arrival to Caroline. After I fed him, changed him, dressed him in the only other decently looking clean outfit he had, and after Caroline left to go to the nearest store to get me some baby things.

She came back an hour and a half later and walked into me making breakfast, donuts not nearly satisfying enough. We all got caught up on the miserable ending of things with Graham, something which Tracey already knew because Tanner had called her last night to get my number and my address.

It was after I thanked her for not giving that to him, and it was after I told Caroline to get to work.

Tracey stayed with me, and we managed to figure out how to install the car seat, but an internet search told us to go to the firehouse to make sure it was installed correctly, and it was after Tracey asked me a gazillion times if I was sure I was going to do this.

Technically, he wasn’t mine. My mom was listed on the birth certificate, the father wasn’t even though I was assuming that’s where his last name Hodges came from. I had no ideahow toget legal custody, or even if I could. I had no idea how I was supposed to learn how to do any of it, but I knew exactly where to start.

Which was why Tracey decided to skip her classes for the day like I was doing and join me on a trip to the Deer Creek’s Women and Pregnancy Center. It was opened a couple of years ago when Trina Mills returned to town, fell in love with her high school sweetheart for a second time, and then got married. They actually got married on the night my dad caused the car wreck. Almost everyone in the department had been at the wedding, so it had not only taken longer to get a response team to the scene, but half of them showed up in suits.

Then they were at my house immediately afterward to tell me what was going on. Being questioned by an officer in a sharply fitted suit was something I’d never forget. But Cole’s new wife, Trina, was a sweetheart. She’d apparently always been one, and her dad wasn’t only a pastor in town, he was the pastor at the church where I’d gone when I was little. Every time he saw me in town or at the restaurant, he was kind to me. One of the few good ones who didn’t let my parents’ problems determine how they treated me.

Trina opened up the center shortly after her arrival back in town, and now, with Jonah strapped into his car seat in the back seat, Tracey in the passenger seat next to me, my hands white-knuckle gripped the steering wheel as we pulled into the parking lot. Two other cars were there, and since I’d called to make sure they were open and had already spoken to her, Trina’s car was one of them. I was guessing it was the mammoth-sized, sparkling clean, white Suburban.

“I’ll support you,” Tracey said. “I swear I will. Anything you want to do, I’ll be there for you, but are yousurethis is what you want? There are foster families. Or your aunt. You’re in your last semester and…”

“Tracey.”

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