Chapter 26 #2
I guess he was young enough that it was just a fact of life for him, but it still boggled my mind.
Especially since Jeannie had only kept it a secret from him for the first week of his treatment, wanting him to concentrate on healing before giving him the bad news.
Some parents would have tried to hide it forever, but considering the hijinks Max got up to in a little over a week with my family, it would probably be a full-time job to keep that child in the dark.
“I’ll get to cooking the soup.” I toed off my shoes and moved past my daughters, who were taking off their own shoes and putting on the house slippers Jeannie had at the entrance.
“It’s specially fortified with lots of iron.
But how about I put a chicken to roast in the oven for you?
” I didn’t want to sound accusatory, but I couldn’t help at least some of the reproach in my voice as I asked, “When was the last time you had a hot meal?”
She didn’t answer immediately, and I wondered if I’d gone a little too far, but then I followed her gaze.
She was waiting until the kids were upstairs.
Right. That was smart. I was so used to my girls being up in my business and telling them pretty much everything, that I had forgotten what it was like to have a one-on-one adult conversation.
God, I’d missed her. The beginning of our story had been such a fairy tale, and now I felt like it had turned into a medical drama where Jeannie and Max were the ones suffering. It didn’t feel right, nor did it feel very fair.
“Does coffee count?” she asked wryly before nearly crumpling in on herself once the children were fully out of earshot. “I don’t know. Maybe ramen, yesterday? It’s all blurring together. There’s been a lot of appointments, and not a lot of sleeping.”
I couldn’t stand another moment apart, so I gently gathered her up and pulled her toward me.
I knew she wasn’t a shifter, so she couldn’t smell my calming alpha pheromones, but I radiated them anyway, making a rumbling sound in my chest. Anything I could do to comfort her, I would. She deserved that and so much more.
“Oh, that’s so nice,” she murmured before suddenly yanking herself away. I didn’t quite let go, but I gave her some space.
“Is something wrong?”
“I’m sorry, I must reek. You don’t want to be hugging me!”
Was her scent slightly stale, like she’d worn the same outfit a couple of days in a row and hadn’t washed her hair in a while? Yes. Did I care? No. There were so many more important things in life that I hadn’t really noticed. And even if I had noticed, it certainly didn’t matter.
“Au contraire, I can assure you, I most definitely want to hug you. And how about you take a shower when Max is finished. Stay in there as long as you want. I’ll take care of things out here.”
“But—”
I tried to mimic exactly how my daughter had done it just moments earlier.
“No buts! You’ve been burning the midnight oil for a month now.
Time to relax and let your community take care of you.
” I leaned in slightly, not enough to kiss her, but enough for her to feel my presence.
“And we’re your community, sweetheart. You promised me you would remember that. ”
I hoped my words would bring her some solace, but I didn’t expect her lower lip to start trembling and tears threatening to spill over.
“I kept telling myself I should call you, but every time I went to pick up the phone I’d… I’d…”
And then the dam burst.
“Oh, baby,” I murmured before pulling her right back to my chest. However, this time I had one hand at the back of her head, holding her, and the other wrapped firmly around her waist. She felt cold, and I hated that. “It’s okay, it’s okay. You just cry it out. I’m here now.”
“I was just so scared that if I tried to rely on you that…”
“That it would be too much?”
She nodded into the growing wet patch on my chest, and my heart burned for her.
I still had so much to learn about Jeannie, but I was certain she had good reason for being so worried about asking for any sort of support.
Hopefully one day, and maybe even one day soon, she would trust me enough to tell me the story.
“Yeah,” she managed to choke out.
“I promise, you will never be too much, Jeannie. Ever. No matter what happens with Max, no matter what comes down the road. No matter what, that will never be an issue between us.”
She sobbed and hiccupped a bit more. I rocked her gently, soothing her. I was under no impression that holding her was going to fix everything, but that was fine. Not everything needed to be fixed. It only needed to be better.
“Why don’t you come to the kitchen and I’ll pull a chair in there so you can watch me cook until Max is out of the shower?”
“I, uh…” She sniffed a little. “Yeah, I can do that.”
“Perfect. That’s my girl.” I pressed a kiss to her forehead, then got her settled before I hauled the care package to the kitchen to put some of it away.
Firstly, there were perishables in there.
Secondly, I was well aware that it was far too heavy for Jeannie to carry on her own.
She was strong, but she wasn’t shifter strong.
It wasn’t our first time cooking dinner together, and not even the first time I’d had her relax while I prepared a meal. But there was still something… different. Like I was a little closer to Jeannie than I had been before.
Once I had the oven preheated and the chicken prepped, I went about putting the perishables away.
I hadn’t just gotten her fresh ingredients, however.
As awesome as a home-cooked meal was, sometimes something that could be thrown in the microwave or eaten cold was just as good.
So, I’d gotten her some deli meats, a whole lot of cheeses, some salad mixes, some ready meals, and one-pot meals to go into the slow cooker I got her.
Was that over the top? Maybe. But I remembered her mentioning she wanted a real one.
She got a tiny one on Black Friday about five years ago, which could barely cook a bowl full of anything.
So, it had seemed like the perfect thing to get her.
“Is… is that a slow cooker?” Jeannie asked somewhat incredulously as I started setting it up.
“Uh-huh. But don’t worry, I kept the receipt in case you want to return it.”
I had been mentally prepared for her to say she didn’t need it, or even insist that it was too much, and I had answers ready. What I hadn’t anticipated was her bursting into tears again.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. It’s okay, I’m here!”
Chicken forgotten, I rushed to her again, pulling her up into my arms and then turning so I could sit down with her in my lap.
“It’s all right, just cry it out. Let yourself feel whatever you gotta feel, sweetheart. You don’t have to carry this all on your own anymore.”
I wasn’t a complete dolt. I knew she wasn’t really crying over the slow cooker. That was just the straw on top of the proverbial camel’s back. I wished she hadn’t isolated herself like she had, but she did, and it was now hitting her that she didn’t have to.
As frustrated as I was that she had faced so much on her own, that she had been hurting so unnecessarily, I kind of got it.
She’d had to learn how to survive as a single parent for an entire decade.
Those coping mechanisms didn’t vanish just because I came rolling up on the scene, no matter how badly I wanted that to be the case.
It would take time to prove to Jeannie that she was safe and that she didn’t have to take on the world as a solo act anymore.
“I-I-I’m s-sorry for b-b-being so dram-m-matic,” she said between big, hitching breaths. “It’s just like n-now that I’ve star-started, I c-can’t stop!”
“The floodgates have really opened, huh?” I mused, kissing the top of her head. “That’s okay. The way I figure, you’re owed a couple years of crying.
“And for the record, I don’t think you’re being dramatic at all. You’re dealing with things that would be most people’s worst nightmares. Anybody who would call you that is out of their mind, and I wouldn’t trust a word they were saying anyway.”
I squeezed her slightly harder. While it wasn’t quite the deep pressure therapy that a medical service dog might use, I figured it was close enough to help.
Right now, Jeannie’s parasympathetic system was going haywire with adrenaline from the emotional catharsis, maybe conflict over whether or not to believe she truly could have people fighting in her corner, guilt over leaving so many calls unanswered and texts unread.
But none of that, absolutely none of that, meant she was dramatic.
So I was fine to hold her, to give her whatever she needed, while she processed it.
“I wanted your help, I really did. There were so many times when I thought it would be nice to be able to hug you, or to have you make me laugh. But for the first couple of weeks, I was so scared of Max getting the girls sick or even them bringing him something else that could make everything worse. I didn’t think I was a germaphobe before this, but I swear, I must have spent fourteen days straight running through a year’s worth of sanitizer and cleaning wipes. I was like a woman possessed.”
I nodded, continuing to rumble in my chest and slowly stroke her hair.
Maybe, once she was feeling slightly more herself, she’d let me wash it for her.
I already had all the supplies from styling my own daughter’s hair, including the inflatable shampoo basin since it hurt their heads to lean into the sink.
If I wasn’t so thoroughly concentrated on comforting Jeannie, I might have allowed myself to daydream about such an intimate act.