In my defense, I figured with Remy being so strong all the time and Toby not even being a year old, they’d be easier to look after.
More fool me.
FOUR
SANTANA
9am the next morning…
I’d only just leaned my head back on the couch to try and squeeze in a nap when the knock on the door sounded.
Fighting back tears of exhaustion, I checked on where Toby was fast asleep in the nest I’d made him on the floor and moved quietly over to it. Because his routine was out of whack, he’d been out of whack, and had woken up every hour looking for cuddles.
Given that he had an injury and had seen his dad’s nose explode like Krakatoa, I’d given in each time until he’d fallen back to sleep. At around two in the morning, I’d decided that putting him back in his crib wasn’t going to work. So I’d brought him downstairs with me, along with pillows and blankets, and had made him a bed on the floor.
And Remy… He’d had two further bleeds from his nose through the night, meaning I’d had to help him change his bed and clean up. We’d finally decided to put a towel under his head when he’d run out of new sheets and pillowcases, but if it continued today, I was taking him back to the ER to get it checked.
This meant I was exhausted and emotionally drained, so being interrupted just as I was about to have a nap was the last thing I needed.
Without checking the peephole, I pulled the door open, ready to tell the person on the other side to be quiet but froze when I saw who it was.
My favorite person in the world, along with one of my brothers.
“Pawpaw?”
My grandpa was my stepdad’s father, but he'd been everything to me from the second I’d met him. He’d taught me to drive, taught me self-defense, had wiped my tears up the first time I’d fallen off a horse, and then told me to get back in the saddle and show the bitch who was boss.
To put it mildly, he was the shit.
“Went to your place to surprise you, but no one was there, so we came here figuring you were babysitting.” When I just stood there staring at him, he sighed and held out his arms. “Since when do I not get a hug?”
That did it. Coming unstuck, I threw myself into him and hugged tight enough to make him groan. “I’m so happy to see you. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”
“Kinda defeats the point of a surprise, Bub,” he wheezed around the vice-like hold I still had of him. I loved that nickname, which was why I’d given it to Toby.
“Hey, what about me?” my older brother, Croix, snapped.
Ignoring him, I pulled back from Pawpaw and grinned up at him. “Thank you for the surprise. I needed it.”
“Well, there’s one more back at your place, so we’ll need to pick up the boy and make our way back over there.”
“Uh, still standing right here,” Croix growled.
“Let me just go and wake Remy up to tell him where we’ll be, and we can do that.”
The smile dropped off Pawpaw’s face. “Excuse me?”
“Yeah, he and Toby had an accident last night, so they had to go to the ER. Toby’s fine, but Remy has two black eyes and a nose that won’t stop bleeding.”
The stiffness in his shoulders disappeared, and the smile popped back on his face. “Ah, okay, then. You go and do that, and I’ll check on the little guy. Where is he?”
Croix threw his hands up in the air. “Jesus Christ, will you just say hello already?”
Pawpaw raised his eyebrows as he looked over his shoulder at my brother. “Damn, when did you get here? Why didn’t you say you were coming? We could have saved on gas.”
“I was in the car with you on the way here, and I had to sit in the back because all of your shit was in the front,” he bit out. “I even bought you a coffee when we stopped for gas, and you went for a piss.”
“Huh, that’s weird,” Pawpaw shrugged. “Next time, speak up some so I know you’re there.”
I couldn’t help it, I burst out laughing, accidentally waking Toby up. I knew for a fact my grandpa had known precisely where Croix was in the car and had deliberately found junk to put in the passenger seat, just to irritate him.
My parents had split up when I was seven and Croix was ten. Obviously, like with most kids, it’d rocked me and had taken away the stability I’d taken for granted. Then she’d met Merrick a year later, and it’d been like a nuclear explosion emotionally. All I could think of was how step-parents were portrayed as evil, and that’d been made worse by some of the kids at my school who’d told me he’d hate Croix and me.