Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
cameron
CHLOE AND I HAD a busy evening. After a trip to the store, we threw together our scratch pizzas, and Chloe had asked if we could dye the crust blue—a nod to Percy Jackson, whose mom always made blue food for him, his favorite color.
I couldn’t exactly say no to that, so after a quick look in the cupboards and procuring some food dye, we made homemade pizzas with blue crust.
While they were in the oven, we went back to the front patio and planted a row of sunflower seeds in the empty garden bed.
And since Chloe had been slightly appalled in the store when I told her how long it would take before any flowers might actually appear from the seeds, we also arranged some fresh cut sunflowers in a vase, placing them on the counter for Natalie when she got home.
“She’ll like those,” Chloe said decidedly as I slid a slice of pizza onto a plate for her. It was a little misshapen because the dough hadn’t quite cooperated with me the way I’d hoped—probably because of the dye—but it tasted good, and who really cared what shape the pizza was in, anyway?
“I think so,” I agreed. “Your mom has always seemed very…sunny to me.”
Chloe cocked her head in thought. “Lately, she has been.”
I hesitated before handing Chloe a napkin, noting how the sauce burst from the edges of her mouth when she took a bite of the pizza.
I dove into my own slice, trying to withhold the question that wanted to claw its way out of my throat. But it wasn’t my place to dive into Natalie’s past by using her daughter.
“Maybe it’s because you call her Sunshine,” Chloe added, causing me to freeze again. “I think she likes that.”
Fuck.
I should really clarify something here. Natalie would want me to clarify things with Chloe so she didn’t get the wrong idea and end up getting hurt. Even if I’d rather live in a world where hope lived, too. Chloe and I could be hopeful together.
In another world, at another time, maybe.
“Chloe, you know I really like your mom,” I started tentatively. “But we’re not—”
“I know,” Chloe cut me off, adding five extra syllables to the word through her groan. She said it in a way that made me think this was a repeat conversation for her. That maybe Natalie had already had this talk. “But why? You just said you like her. And she says she likes you.”
My lips twitched as I tried to control my reaction to that.
They’d definitely had this conversation before, and while I knew that meant that Natalie and I needed to be more careful around Chloe, it also warmed parts of me that I’d recently learned existed.
“Because there are rules about that,” I said, giving her a factual answer. “Since I’m her lawyer.”
Chloe pouted into her pizza for a moment before flashing a look filled with curiosity. “But you do like her?”
I nodded with a gentle smile. “Of course I do. I like her. I like you. I like your whole family, Chloe.”
She narrowed her eyes at me, perceptive enough to know that I was avoiding fully answering her question, but she dropped the topic.
I got Chloe to bed by nine, and honestly, I wasn’t sure if that was normal for her.
But even if it was a little later than usual, it was summer, and Chloe said she didn’t have day camp tomorrow.
I wondered how that might work with Natalie’s schedule, especially depending on how long she got stuck at the hospital, but if I needed to take a day off to help, I’d take a day off.
Or Chloe might even like to take a little trip to Gardner Law.
I didn’t hear from Natalie for most of the night.
I got one response from her around ten, after I’d sent an update that Chloe had gone to bed and all was well.
She said that it was still going to be a while, that she was so sorry.
I told her not to worry, knowing that she probably was.
I was fully prepared to camp out on her living room couch tonight.
But to my surprise, Natalie walked in the door a little after one in the morning, wearing a vacant expression that terrified me more than any tears might. It wiped away all the relief that I felt just from seeing her make it home again.
I stood from where I’d been hunched over paperwork at the kitchen island and took a tentative step toward her. She looked skittish.
“You’re awake,” she said with a dumbfounded look. “I should have told you. I—you could have slept.”
“I know,” I assured her. “But I had some things I had to finish up. And I was waiting…in case you got home.”
Like hell would I have been able to sleep before she made it back to me and Chloe.
Natalie nodded. She stared down at her feet, like she didn’t know how to move them.
“Why don’t you sit down, Natalie?” I offered, using the softest voice I could muster, walking around the island to grab her electric kettle from the corner of the kitchen.
Natalie watched me, unmoving, while I filled it up and turned it on.
Just like I had the first night I was here after one of her shifts.
Tonight was different, though. She was different, more broken, and I could barely handle seeing it. Especially when I started toward her as the kettle began heating, and she took a step back.
I felt a cracking sensation just behind my sternum.
It took everything in me, but I retreated, moving instead through the kitchen to find the tea packets and a mug.
“I already gave Annabeth her nighttime treats,” I said. “She came looking for them earlier, and I couldn’t say no. She didn’t get more than two, though. I promise.”
Natalie was silent. A glance over my shoulder told me she was processing, her eyes glazed over, her head nodding.
“Thank you,” she whispered after a second. She’d still been holding her bags but slowly lowered them to the ground, plopping them by her feet. She stepped over them, slipped her shoes off, and then quietly padded to the barstools at the island, sliding onto one of them.
She froze, sending me into a panic until I realized she’d spotted the flowers on the counter. Her lips parted as she stared at them, almost like she’d never seen flowers sitting in a vase in her kitchen before, like it was an entirely new concept.
“Chloe wanted to get those for you,” I murmured, trying to focus on making tea but continuing to get sidetracked by Natalie—everything about her. She reached out, brushing her fingertips over the petals of a flower. When her eyes flicked to mine, they were watery.
“Chloe wanted to get these for me?”
I nodded and dunked a tea bag into the steaming mug before handing it to her.
“Chloe wanted to get me flowers?” she repeated.
“Yeah.” My lips stretched in a smile. “She did.”
“She picked out…sunflowers?” she asked, and the corners of my mouth tilted further, my grin growing.
I suspected she knew the answer to that question, but she seemed desperate for a response. So I just shook my head and said, “No, Sunshine. She didn’t pick them out.”
Natalie swallowed hard at my response, her eyes glistening.
“I love them,” she breathed, studying the flowers a moment longer before dropping her gaze to her tea. She blew on it, took a tentative sip, and then looked back to me. “Thank you.”
I smiled at her and thought about mentioning the sunflower seeds we’d planted but decided to let Chloe do it. I might have decided on the kind of flower, but the idea had been Chloe’s. And she deserved to have a part in the surprise.
Busying myself with preparing coffee for the next morning, I gave Natalie space as she drank her tea.
Every sip seemed to be bringing more life back into her, but her demeanor was still shuttered.
A wall that didn’t usually exist between us stood erect, and I wanted to give it a chance to fall before I had to knock it down.
Because I refused to let Natalie suffer alone tonight.
When the tea was gone, the coffee was prepped, and Natalie’s head was drooping lower and lower, I gently urged, “Let’s get you upstairs.”
Natalie nodded, and I thought she might let me help her, but then she abruptly stood, though a bit unsteady on her feet, wincing.
She was sore. Of course she was sore. That was probably the first time she’d sat down since she left the house over sixteen hours ago.
“I got it.” She waved me away. “You should go home and get some rest. I’m really sorry, I should have said that a half hour ago.”
Not a chance.
“I wouldn’t have gone a half hour ago, and I don’t plan on going now.”
Her lips pressed into a line. “I appreciate you babysitting Chloe, but you don’t—you don’t need to babysit me. I’m okay.”
Ignoring the pang in my chest, I considered her. “Are you?”
She was making it hard for me to believe that was true.
Natalie didn’t answer the question. And when she spoke, she looked at the ceiling, like she couldn’t bear to look at me. “I’ve been dealing with terrible nights and terrible shifts for years on my own, Cameron.”
And that thought alone broke my fucking heart. Did she not realize that?
I took a deep breath, trying to keep myself steady for her. “I know you’re capable of spending tonight on your own. I know you can take care of yourself. But is that what you want?”
If I went home right now, I’d spend the entire night worrying about her while trying not to get sucked back into my own grief.
But if she insisted that I leave, I would.
Because this had never been the plan, and I was well aware of it.
Natalie knew it, too, and I suspected she was struggling with that.
Natalie was still blinking at the ceiling.
The plan can change, baby. Let’s change the plan. Let me be here for you.
When she didn’t respond, I couldn’t take it any longer. “I don’t want to leave you like this, Natalie,” I said, my voice low, grave, pleading. “Please don’t push me away.”
Her face crumpled as she lowered it again. “I’m not—I’m sorry, Cameron. It’s just today was—” She broke off with a choked sob, pressing her hand to her mouth, and I moved in closer, wanting, needing for her to let me hold her.