Page 144 of Please Open Me
Mason let out a sleep-garbled whimper, and we both froze.
“If you wake her up, I’m going to hit you,” I warned before realizing the gravity of my words.
I'd threatened Dale's first chosen one. If I’d done that even a decade ago, I’d have been chained to the ground, stripped naked, and whipped until I learned my lesson.
But none of that happened. Instead, he chuckled as he ran his thumb across the curve.
“I ain’t gonna wake her. I already made her cry today. I’m sure if she saw me doingthis,I’d give her some kind of complex.” His fingers stilled before he looked up at me. “Hey, you’re a girl. Do you thinkthishurts?”
My brow lifted, both because Cameron seemed a little unsure about the girl part, and because I’d never been pregnant, so how the fuck would I know?
“You touching her?” I asked.
He shook his head. “How quickly the baby’s growing… You think it hurts?”
I scoffed before sinking into the couch. “Apparently, she’s not growing fast enough.”
Cameron’s brow deepened in a look of consternation. “What do you mean?”
It was then, I remembered he didn’t know Mason was having twins, and he also wasn’t at the appointment this morning.
“After she was in the hospital, the doctors wanted her to have an ultrasound every two weeks, just to make sure everything looks okay–” I paused, trying to figure out how to tiptoe around the things Mason would rather keep hidden. “And the doctor noticed today that the baby isn’t as big as it should be, and I know for afactshe wasn’t eating enough when she was in California.”
His jaw tightened. “She said she was fine.”
“Yeah, well.” I picked at the couch cushion and fought the urge to tell him baby A was fine. “I think Mason’s definition offinemeans she’s alive… but the baby was moving like crazy, so we know he’s alive, just tiny.”
“… It’s a boy?”
My cheeks heated. “Well, we don’t know yet. I just feel in my gut that it is. Mason thinks it’s a girl.”
Mason thought they were both girls. I just hoped for Jasper's sake that he was getting a little brother. You know, so he wasn’t outnumbered four to one.
“I… is it wrong that IwishI could force her to have a feeding tube, or something? Just to know she’s getting enough?” I wasn’t used to worrying like this, not about her, not about anyone.
Cameron blew out a breath. “There was a point after she had Rosie that she was like, scary skinny.”
I scratched my head, trying to remember if I’d known her like this, but nothing popped up.
“She’d just gotten out of the hospital. She wasn’t eating, she was breastfeeding, and whatever she had left on her justfell offin a matter of weeks,” he lamented. “Not because shewantedit to, but because she just couldn’t eat, I had no idea why.”
“What did you do?”
Cameron shrugged. “Told her if she didn’t eat, I’d make her. And when shestilldidn’t eat, I got these meal replacement shakes online—I use them in the summer when I’m working outside and physically can’t make myself eat because of the heat.”
He stopped and pulled her shirt down before grabbing the blanket off the back of the couch to tuck her in.
“They’re packed with calories, protein, vitamins, all that good stuff. I just kept them around, and any time she didn’t want food, I handed her one of those instead. It wasn’t perfect, but…” Cameron trailed off, eyes flicking toward Mason’s sleeping form, softening for just a second. “It was enough to keep her on her feet. And, after the first couple of weeks of drinking one every time she didn’t finish her meal, I think she realized she’d rather have food, and it worked itself out.”
“I might steal that idea,” I muttered, and Cameron chuckled.
“I’ll see if they have anything like that in the stores up here. I’m just glad I don’t have to be the one showing her tough love.”
“What, you’re going to make me be the bad guy?” I point to myself.
He smiled before standing. “I think you’re good for her. Prove me right.”
I nodded twice, unable to do much else, and Cameron patted me twice on the shoulder before standing up and leaving. I sat there for a moment, stunned, and Mason stirred and whimpered yet again.
