“Baby, relax,” he murmured. “It’s too late for Jillian to be calling you. Let it ring.”
“It’s not Jillian. That’s my sister’s ringtone.” She turned out of his arms. “I didn’t call Justin back. It’s probably my sister, checking in.” She tapped her phone and looked at it when she answered, but gave a surprised “Justin? What are you doing up so late? Where’s your mom?”
“She’s sleeping.” The boy’s voice that came over the line was definitely young, but he also sounded sick. Like he had a cold.
“Hold on a second, buddy, I just got out of the shower.” Brooke put the phone on the bed and looked around, grabbing the first thing she found, which happened to be Keaton’s T-shirt. Pulling it over her head, she picked up the phone and sat cross-legged. “So, what’s going on? Why are you up while your mom’s sleeping? Is she okay?”
“She’s tired.”
Now Keaton frowned. The kid sounded really sick. Brooke must have noticed it too, because her face creased with worry. She rested the phone on her bent knee, used both hands to rub her face, then propped her elbow on her thigh and her head in her hand. “Okay, I need really straight answers, Justin. Can you do that?”
“Yeah.”
“Is your mom just tired? Or is she sick?”
Keaton finished drying himself off, knotted the towel around his waist, and leaned against the bathroom doorframe.
“Just tired I think,” Justin said.
“Can you bring her the phone?”
Hesitation. When he spoke, he whispered. “But she’ll get mad that I’m still awake and that I used the phone without telling her.”
Brooke laughed a tired “Baby,” and covered her eyes.
The amount of affection in her voice made Keaton smile, despite his lingering frustration. And fuck if everything inside him didn’t go all warm and soft.
She uncovered her face. “Okay, just be really, really quiet,” she said, lowering her voice to his level, “and point the phone at her so I can see she’s okay. Then leave the room, and we’ll talk more when you’re in the living room.”
“Okay.”
Quiet fell. Brooke curled one hand into a fist and pressed it against her mouth, the other against her chest. After a moment, a smile curved her lips, and she exhaled heavily. She nodded to her nephew.
Then she smiled over at Keaton, and he saw tears glistening in her eyes. “She fell asleep with her anatomy book open and her glasses on,” she told him, still whispering, and laughed softly as she dried her eyes on the shoulder of his tee.
Oh, man. This woman held a lot more inside than he’d realized. In fact, she probably had nerves of steel. At least until he walked into her life and upset the balance.
Keaton wandered into the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Okay,” she said to Justin, “now, where’s your inhaler?”
“In my pocket.”
“Then why do you sound like that?”
“Dunno.”
Brooke sighed. “What happened to straight answers, Justin?”
“I really just need help figuring out what I’m going to do for the science fair.” Now the kid sounded upset too, and when he got stressed, the wheeze in his lungs got worse.
“Okay, okay.” She held up both hands. “Don’t get worked up.”
“But Derrick’s doing skateboarding and physics, and he’s calling it Popping an Ollie. It’s all about doing these cool tricks. Trevor and his dad are building a freaking hover board. A hover board, Aunt Brooke. I have to turn in a paragraph on my project idea tomorrow, and I don’t have one. I’ve been asking Mom to help me, but she never has time. She promised to do it with me tonight, but then she fell asleep.”
“Oh my God,” Brooke muttered, then closed her eyes, and framed her face with her hands. She pulled in a breath, blew it out, and said, “Okay, buddy, give me a minute. It’s been a long day, and we all know I’m not that great on the fly. Let’s think about this. Uuuuum…”
Keaton had heard countless friends and staff talk about this—their kids coming to them at the last minute with an assignment or project due the next day. In this case, it wasn’t the child who’d procrastinated but the adult who didn’t have the resources to provide the child the help he needed to do the work. And here this poor kid was, sick, up late, fighting to do his homework instead of blowing it off. That was a fighter. A kid with grit. One who could really make something of his life because he had the will. The determination. He also had a mom trying to get through nursing school to make a better life for all of them and an aunt who’d sacrificed part of her own happiness to provide security for him.