Sweet Twins For My Brother's Best Friend: An Enemies To Lovers Romance (The Sweet Twins Collection)

Chapter Thirty Five

Hannah

I wake up a few hours later on top of Chris’ chest, though he doesn’t seem to mind.

He snuffles slightly, no snoring but noises coming from him that sound like a restful puppy.

I move away from him to go back to the guest room, and he pulls me in again, his arm around my waist. He lets out a little grumble of dissatisfaction and whines as I scoot out from under his arm.

I smile at the boyish way his face crumbles into a dissatisfied frown, his brow furrowed.

I kiss the bridge of his nose and smooth it out with my index finger as though I can erase his feeling of discontentment. Chris sighs gently and rolls over onto his stomach.

I open the door slowly and tiptoe out and down the hall, trying to keep my steps light so that I don’t squeak the floor underneath me in a way that will wake up either Chris or my mother.

I make it almost to my bedroom before I hear my mother say, “Hannah?”

I stand for a moment with my shoulders clenched before turning around with a smile on my face. “Hey, Mom, why aren’t you sleeping?”

She smiles at me and pulls her knees into her chest, grabbing the bottom of the blanket that covers her. “Come sit.”

I walk over to her reluctantly and take a seat, covering my knees with the blanket and fanning it around me. “What are you doing up?”

“Just thinking. Thinking about you as a little girl and how you’re going to have your own little ones soon.”

She reaches over and tugs at a few strands of my hair like a doorknob before twirling it around her finger and letting it drop against my shoulder.

She smiles ruefully, and I can see that her eyes are rimmed in old mascara. She’s either been crying or it’s been rubbed off by sleep.

“I hope they get your beautiful copper hair.”

When I was younger, it always struck me as so odd that she called it my beautiful copper hair as though she wasn’t a redhead herself, but now, faced with the idea of having children myself, I think I understand how something might be beautiful on a little girl but not on myself.

I smile back at her and sigh before relaxing against her knees. “Your beautiful copper hair.”

“Your grandma’s beautiful copper hair,” she corrects even further, running her finger over my scalp and massaging it the way she used to when I was a kid. “Hey, do you want me to braid your hair?”

“Sure, Mom,” I tell her and close my eyes, feeling the gentle tugging of my hair as she braids close to my scalp.

It’s like a deep tissue massage for my head, one that she used to do when I was a kid when she’d work avocado oil into my hair. I used to complain then, having no idea that I would one day work avocado oil into my own hair and wish that someone else was there to do it.

“You have such beautiful hair. My hair has faded,” she says.

I look back and see that she’s self-consciously running a hand through her hair.

“Your hair is beautiful, Mom. It’s changing. Change is okay.”

She kisses my forehead. “When did you get so wise?”

“Guess it comes with the mom territory,” I tell her.

“Don’t wiggle,” she chides me, bumping my arm with her elbow before tying off the end of one of my braids.

“Sorry.” I sit ramrod straight as she finishes off the braid. “Did you know that you’d be a good mother?”

“Hmmm,” she says to herself, the hair band she grabbed out of her purse dangling from her clenched teeth. She wraps it around my second braid and bumps my arm to let me know that she’s finished.

“No. No one knows. Everyone worries. It’s natural. Look at me, Hannah.”

I turn around and look into her mascara-smudged green eyes.

“You have been my perfect Hanny Bee since you were a very young girl. Do you remember that you used to balance our checkbook?”

I nod, the anxiety-ridden memory overshadowing the brief moment of joy I felt remembering the nickname she had for me as a kid: Hanny Bee.

“But you need to know that no one expects or wants you to be perfect. All you need to be is yourself. That’s what your children will want most from you.”

I nod quietly, taking in the information. “Sure.”

“I mean it. And that’s what Chris wants from you, too. Trust me. He really cares about you, Hannah. I know this isn’t how you planned this. That doesn’t make it any less special. Capiche?”

She says the last part while holding a pretend toothpick in her mouth.

I roll my eyes at the motion but kiss her fragile cheek as I stand.

I remember when her cheeks were fuller and round, but as she’s aged they’ve gotten thinner and softer. Big changes that aren’t bad. When my own children kiss my mom’s cheeks, they’ll only know how soft she is.

“You’re right. Thanks, Mom. I’m going to go back to bed now. Try to get some sleep, okay?”

As I walk back down the hall toward the guest room, she calls out after me, “Hannah, the deed is done. You’re already pregnant. You can stop pretending you and Chris sleep in separate rooms. Go back to his bed. You two need each other right now.”

I hear her laugh trailing after me as I pivot on my heel, sending my nightgown flailing around me, and walk back towards the room I came out of, my cheeks flushed with embarrassment.