I loved Willow too, but Christ, my kid was still hard work. Her messages dizzied me. I navigated them with a growing frown and switched to Kara’s with one eye already cinching closed with the fuckin’ stress of it.
Kara:You need to tell Willow that Orla’s baby isn’t her sibling
Nice. But not unexpected. Kara was still having trouble with the poly element of my love life. She liked Nash—who didn’t—and had warmed to Orla in recent months, but the idea of the three of us together was one she couldn’t quite believe, and Orla falling pregnant had only made it worse.
I reached hard for some diplomacy and messaged her back.
Locke:we don’t get to decide what they are to her
Kara:Oh, come on, Locke. Be reasonable. It’s not your baby
Locke:we’re a family
Kara:For how long?
Locke:what does that mean?
Kara:It means I’m not happy about Willow and Nicky getting attached to someone else’s children
Locke:then you’ll just have to live with being unhappy. i’m not policing their relationships
Oof. I was going to get it for that one, but what the fuck was I supposed to do? Lie, and tell her that any baby Nash and Orla had meant fuckin’ nothing to me?
Nash stirred, pressing his lips to the bare skin he’d been using as a pillow. “What are you stressed about?”
“I’m not stressed.” I dropped a hand on his head, waiting for him to look at me.
When he did, it was with sleep-heavy eyes and sheet lines on his face. Nash was good at unending sleepless nights, cutely terrible at waking up. “You feel stressed.”
“I’m talking to Kara.”
Understanding crept into Nash’s bleary gaze. I passed him the phone. He read the messages with a grimace.
“That’s really where she is on this?”
I shrugged. “It’s where she’s choosing to be. If she ever wants something else, that’s up to her. I don’t give much of a fuck anymore.”
A hard truth. I owed Kara a lot for not shutting me out when life had made me a terrible father and an even worse husband, but things had been different a long fuckin’ time now, and I was over explaining my relationships to her.
Nash went back to dozing. I sloped off to the tiny bathroom and squeezed myself into a shower the size of an air vent shaft. Washed the road, a marathon sex session, and every emotion under the sun off my skin.
Then I crawled back into bed, clicked into the rest of my messages, and found myself grinning at a photo Liliana had sent of Mateo sleeping with his mouth open.
She’d sent it fromhisphone. Given that meant there was zero chance he wouldn’t see it, I kept my reply to a laughing emoji, glad she was seeing the funny side of another parent getting sliced open, trying not to revisit her reaction to a phone call that had left Embry drained of colour and crouching in the dark. The raw fear in her young fuckin’ eyes. No kid deserved the shit she’d been through.
“You’re stressing again.” Nash pushed himself onto his elbows, his sky-blue eyes more alert than they’d been the first time he’d woken up. “Willow get a boyfriend or something?”
“Don’t even joke about that. You’ve seen the mopes she calls friends.”
“Are they mopes or normal fucking teenagers? I don’t have much to compare it to.”
“They’re mopes.” I kissed Nash’s scarred knuckles, enjoying the peace of a few hours in bed with him. “How’s the leg?”
“It’s all right. How’s your back?”
“Shite.”
“Hmm.” Nash stretched, then gave me a gentle push. “Roll over.”