The tiniest hands.
Grief punched my chest. “Oh, Locke. Is this Wren?”
Sadness flickered in Locke’s gaze, but he smiled. “The nurses took pictures of her for us. Not her face, just her hands and feet—they were smaller than my fingers, look.”
He tapped the screen without looking at it and I saw what he meant, those pixie hands and feet shrouded by his as if she’d been a soul too precious and pure for this one. “It’s been a decade since I saw any of these pictures. I don’t know how he knew how much I needed to see them now.”
Viktor. The reason Locke lived and breathed to feel the wistful pain still clouding his eyes. “He knows you.” In some ways better than I did, and I didn’t begrudge their bond. I’d grown to love Viktor. He was funny, clever, and kind, and everything Ranger deserved. “Where did he find these photos, though? They’re...”
“Old,” Locke finished for me, his sad smile turning wry. “BecauseI’mold, queenie. Some of these are snaps I took of paper photos with my flip phone.”
Sometimes the decade between us felt like nothing. Others, like now, I felt the years he’d survived to live for us in the most battered parts of me.
I passed him back the iPad. “I’m glad Viktor did this for you.”
“Me too...”
Another false contraction blew through me. I swayed on my feet, gripping the banister. “Mother ofChrist.”
Locke rose to stand behind me, bracing me again. “You sound like Embry.”
“He has a fucking point.”
“You getting a lot of these today?”
“I’ve been getting them for the last three months.”
I didn’t mean to snap, but where I’d spent my second trimester, loving all my people so much I cried every time I saw them, these last few weeks had frayed me, and I was beyond grateful for the stoic, patient men who loved me.
Locke rubbed my back, his deft fingers and thumbs easing the strain away.
I blew out a breath, my brain already drifting towards more food, my heart sensing he wouldn’t follow me—that he needed a minute. Or two, or ten. “Are you still worried about Logan?”
Locke’s fingers stilled and his hands slipped from my back. “I shouldn’t be. I spoke to him three times today already.”
“That isn’t what I asked, sweetheart.”
“I know.”
I waited for Locke to elaborate.
He didn’t.
I turned to face him, absorbing the fretting he’d been plagued with since Logan had come home late from a night shift and stopped making or receiving video calls. “How did he sound when you spoke to him?”
“Tired, but he’s got twins and it’s Christmas.” Locke’s lips twitched with a wry smile. “He’s been knackered for the last eight years.”
“You can’t just ask Remy?”
“He broke his phone. I can only talk to him through Lo or that brick the boys use to walk down the hill and back.”
“What about Galen?”
Locke’s faint humour faded. “Can’t get hold of him.”
“And that’s weird, right? He’s always messaging you.”
“Jealous, queenie?”