Chapter 34
Mattie
Today had been a long fucking day. Seriously, after getting Mason home at two .a.m., she asked if I could go to her ultrasound with her. Of course, I said yes, but that meant we got four hours of sleep.
Then, at ten weeks and one day, the doctor expressed concerns about baby B being small and asked Mason if she’d been eating enough.
And I almost told the doctor no, she’s been living off of protein shakes and spite. But I didn’t, and now we had two weeks to undo everything Mason had willingly done to herself before the next growth scan.
And then we met Cameron for breakfast to talk everything out, where Mason proceeded to, you guessed it, not fucking eat the eggs she ordered.
She’d cut them into neat little pieces and pushed them around the plate like that could hide how little ended up in her mouth, and I swear to God, every time the fork scraped porcelain, my eye twitched.
By the time she declared she was full, she’d eaten maybe four bites of toast and half a strawberry. And Cameron just took that at face value and led us back to the house, where I had to stand around for the world's most awkward game of twenty questions.
But, on the bright side, I was moving in, and I just needed to go get my ferret, Nyx, and I was set.
I also got information on Sebastian that I could submit to my supervisor and hopefully get the green light that I’d given enough information to warrant Sebastian’s assassination, and then I could kill Dale and live happily ever after.
But once the conversation died down, I didn’t have a chance to run to Hartwood or call my boss.
Because Cameron had to tell Mason her belly was cute, just as I had almost convinced her to eat a Poptart and take a nap.
And to be fair, her belly was cute. But, after a week of Hollywood executives telling her she was fat and ugly and god knew what else, she didn’t want to hear that.
So instead of relaxing, I convinced her to take a shower and ran out to get the same burger and fries she had devoured last night, hoping she was actually craving them and wouldn’t be able to say no.
And, I was right.
After her shower, I let her borrow a pair of my basketball shorts and a shirt from the overnight bag I’d yet to remove from the car, and told her she could eat or not, I didn’t care.
But she had to at least sit down for half an hour. I had to make a phone call. I’d be back. Mason got a little whiny at the idea of being left alone, but when I threw my car keys on the coffee table, she quieted down a bit.
I made my phone call, reported the new information I had on Sebastian to my superior, and came back in; and when I went to check on her, the cheese fries were gone; so was about half the burger, and Mason was sprawled out on the couch, snoring.
And, I should have taken that as a hint to clean up and go get Nyx from Hartwood, but I didn’t.
Instead, like the love-sick fool I was, I sat down on the couch, put her feet in my lap, and played on my phone.
I’d like to think she’d be sad if she woke up and I was gone.
The floor creaked behind me, and every inch of my body went rigid.
“She still sleeping?” Cameron’s drawl echoed as footsteps drew near, and I wanted to vomit.
Not because I was sick or he smelled bad or anything, but because Cameron made me nervous. Sure, he was nice enough, probably nicer to me than anyone else in the house. But I’d grown up with Cameron’s sermons.
My family was so devoted to him that they made us follow him from town to town until I left for the police academy.
Every name. Every sacrifice. Every iteration of Cameron. And I didn’t trust him.
Because he’d always seemed too nice to me. Like when my family had gotten me dressed up at sixteen and tried to submit me as an offering, Cam had no interest.
He just ruffled my hair as if I were a little kid and asked me how school was going.
A man in his position didn’t have to care about age. Or his followers. Or anything. But he did. And now, he seemed not to remember me.
Which was good, both for my mission with work and fitting in again with Dale. But it kind of made me feel insignificant.
Forgettable.
But I’d never forgotten the man who helped shape my childhood.
He got close enough to walk around the couch and kneel in front of Mason, and I realized I’d been silent for too long and staring like a dumbass.
“Uh, yeah,” I mumbled, rubbing the back of my neck and looking away. “I tricked her into eating, and she hasn’t moved since—” I nodded to the takeout containers I’d yet to pick up. “eating. Which is good because we didn’t sleep last night, and I don’t know what the fuck she did in California.”
Cameron’s gaze lingered on Mason's face, soft in ways I’d never seen. Slowly, he reached to touch her face, stopping when she stirred. His outstretched fingers curled into his palm, and he gave her a once-over before looking at her stomach.
The shirt I'd given her was slightly too big and had ridden up, exposing her bump. Cameron whistled softly before placing his palm on her stomach.
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 doing this, I’d give her some kind of complex.” His fingers stilled before he looked up at me. “Hey, you’re a girl. Do you think this hurts?”
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 a fact she 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 of fine means 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 I wish I 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 just fell off in a matter of weeks,” he lamented. “Not because she wanted it 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 she still didn’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.
I figured that was as good a sign as any that she was about to wake up, and I should probably clean up our mess. So, I snuck out from underneath her, grabbed the styrofoam clamshell and foil wrapper, and headed to the kitchen.
I dropped them into the garbage before realizing I should probably get her something to drink. The doctor also said Mason needed to try to drink a gallon of water each day, and I couldn’t remember if she’d had any water. So, I started to root around Sebastian’s cabinets.
I wasn’t short, not in the slightest, but the cupboards felt higher than they should have been. But, seeing as this place reeked of someone obnoxiously showing off their wealth, Sebastian’s gargantuan ass probably had them specially hung that way.