Page 55 of Raising Love
“Hey, hey, what’s up?” Leo said softly as he entered the room. “Shh, you aight, you aight. Come here.”
His voice sounded different. Calmer and so damn… sexy.
I brought the monitor closer to me, bringing it closer to my ear.
“Why you in here making all this noise anyway? Hmm?”
The tension in my shoulders and chest gradually released as I listened.
It was amazing how quickly Baby Love settled the moment he heard Leo’s voice.
“I got you something,” Leo said next. “The good stuff too. That liquid gold, homie.”
I snickered to myself while shaking my head.
“You know you living the life right?” Leo asked Baby Love next. “You get up whenever you want to, celebrated when you fall asleep, get someone to get you a bottle. Sometimes it’s me, often it’s that fine ass lady down there giving me hell right now. Man, let me tell you.”
I kissed my teeth.
“You are very loved, little guy,” he whispered. A second later, there was the sound of him giving Baby Love a kiss. That made me press my hand to my chest. “You still scare me, but… you are very loved.”
There was silence after that and only the sounds of Baby Love drawing milk from his bottle, making gratifying baby sounds as Leo fed him. Baby Love’s milk-drinking sounds always melted my heart hearing it in real time.
Leo was good with him. It was something I noticed after the night I left Baby Love with him. He just needed to be around more often and not acting like we didn’t just inherit an entire baby which, yes, meant our lives, and the lives we knew, had to change.
Leo was right, though. Life wasn’t life, and it had become hard without warning, but shit, I was figuring it out, and I couldn’t help but feel like I was figuring it out alone.
Especially now with the hookup in the mix causing even more confusion in my headspace.
“Aight,” he said low, taking careful steps down the stairs behind me. I glanced over my shoulder to meet his eyes. “He’s sleeping again. I fed him, burped him, all that.”
I said nothing, just kept looking at him.
He draped a long arm over the staircase’s banister. “So, we good now?”
What a loaded-ass question. And good on what exactly?
Not wanting to be the Ivy I knew got under his skin, I nodded.
“Mm-hmm,” I added.
But could we ever be good again?
“Aight.” His back was to me as he pulled open the house door, stepping out. “I’ll see y’all in the morning.”
Damn.
Just like that.
I rolled my eyes and inhaled a deep breath, my shoulders tensing and my heart too.
Did Leo feel anything the night we were intimate? I know he has a lot of sex. Vanessa was the most serious non-relationship he’s ever had. Before her, it was a different girl every other day. Random-ass women he stacked up for one purpose, to fuck, and fuck often. But did he not feel anything with those women? Any of them? Did he not feel anything with me?
I resolved in that moment that those were way too many questions to have without answers. And I’d get them… from Leo.
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