“I get it, you’ve got them in different places.” The corners of his eyes crinkled as he grinned at me.
Typically I’d be focused on his mouth while he did it, but I realized I’d missed out on a lot by doing that.
His eyes were a beautiful shade of grey-blue with a darker ring of blue around them, and when he grinned, the laughter lines did something that made their beauty amp up even more. Of course, if that happened to me, I’d just look every one of my thirty-eight years, and I’d likely be tempted to ask Mrs. Laidlaw for her surgeon’s number if I saw it in a mirror.
“I’d love to know what’s going through that brain of yours right now,” he said softly, the pads of his fingers gently massaging the back of my head. “Let’s get you your medication, and then you can go and sleep it off. I’ve got Cody, so you don’t need to worry.”
I felt rude just lifting a hand to Tom as Alex guided me toward my room, but it was the best I could do.
My migraines were so fierce that they sometimes made my face feel like I was having a stroke. It wasn’t until my doctor at the time had explained this wasn’t an unknown side effect of chronic migraines that I’d been able to relax and not think I had a clot in my brain somewhere that was going to leave me unable to look after my child.
So talking, even to just say goodbye, wasn’t something I wanted to do a lot of. Then again, neither was thinking or operating heavy machinery like my body at that moment.
No, sliding across the cool sheets of my bed and only moving when Alex told me to lift my head and directed me through taking the medication was all I wanted to do. And when he pulled my shoes off and closed the blinds to make the room dark, I swear it was heaven.
Five weeks later…
Know what wasn’t heaven? Being only a matter of days away from a man you didn’t trust with your child's mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing, taking him for two weeks. I couldn’t give a damn, not even a tiny one, if he was his father. Biology didn’t count for shit when it came to someone’s ability to put the three things I didn’t trust Neil with first.
Any asshole could create a child, but a true parent raised, nurtured, loved, and put them first. He’d stopped doing that roughly six months after Cody was born. He’d also never asked for an update on his son’s health after the surgery, he never texted to ask him how he was, and Neil had never even expressed any interest in anything to do with him.
He also never paid for him, but I was leaving that on Neil’s conscience. Sure, I could take him to court, but I wouldn’t. I was proud that I bought everything he needed by myself, even if it meant working crazy hours and losing sleep.
I also knew if or when Neil’s sister found out he didn’t fork out even one cent for his son, that she’d lose her mind at him, as would his parents. Her ex had left her with three kids and hadn’t paid toward them until they’d gone through a nasty court battle over it. The ugly taste from it was still in all of their mouths six years later.
You’d think that would prompt my ex to do the right thing and set up a payment once a month, but nope.
I had many reasons for not pursuing him for it, including not wanting to put Cody through a situation like my former sister-in-law and her kids had gone through, and I was sticking to it.
Over the last five weeks, our lives in Piersville had changed. Before, we’d known people and thought they were all incredible, and we’d been comfortable in the town. Now, it seemed like the crisis with Cody had brought us closer to many residents.
The night I’d come home to find Tom talking to Cody and Alex in my living room was a perfect example. My son’s surgery was predominantly a problem for kids up to the age of sixteen, but Tom had gone through it just a couple of years ago. He was one of the incredibly rare cases of a twisted hydatid of Morgagni in an adult male, so rare we’re talking something like only a handful of cases since records began involved it.
I’m not saying he and Cody had bonded over their testicles, but he was like another version of Dave for him—a pseudo brother. In fact, most of P.V.P.D. were like big brothers to him now, and they were total pains in my ass the rest of the time.
Alex was also more of a family friend and less of just a neighbor to us. We babysat Bernice if he worked overnight, and we’d had some barbecues with both of our families since. When my car had begun making weird noises three weeks ago, he’d taken it to Ren to get fixed while I was shooting a taste test with the girls, and he was sticking true to his promise to train Bernice on the dog talking buttons.