4. Chapter 4
Cameron
The dark of night gave way to a saffron sky. Drops of dew gave the grass a reflective quality. The whole thing would have been beautiful if not for the fact that I was so tired I was dizzy. I hadn’t slept a wink since Sebastian left with Mason.
There was too much to worry about. Was Rosie here?
Were they safe? Was Mason okay? I had been texting Sebastian every time I thought about Mason, hoping for an update.
But, he remained radio silent. I knew I could have easily texted her, but I didn’t want to stress her out more than she already was.
Instead, I tried to be productive with my worries.
I cleared out the room that was going to be the nursery and assembled the crib.
Once that was done, I washed all of Rosie’s clothes with the special detergent Lucian insisted she would need–something about babies having sensitive skin.
Recently, I’d been asking him for advice a lot.
After all, he was the expert when it came to how to care for a newborn.
At the ripe age of twenty-two, he had two of them, and while I had helped care for the twins after they moved to Hartwood, he pretty much cared for them on his own for the first six months.
Sophia footed the bills and let him stay home, but seeing as she didn’t want or make the kids, she wasn’t much help.
Lucian let me know that his sister, Leona, had changed more diapers than Sophia.
After I finished what I could with the nursery, I baked a tray of brownies.
Mason had been wanting chocolate, and while I couldn’t go see her, Luce and Soph were coming back today. I could send the treats with one of them.
I pressed a finger to the crackled top of the sweets. Warm chocolate from the chunks I had folded into the batter stuck to my fingers, but it didn’t hurt. With that in mind, I grabbed a knife from a nearby drawer and cut the brownies into very generous squares.
I wished I could send some ice cream to her, too. It’d go well with these. I gritted my teeth as a sudden wave of anger washed over me. Mason was in the hospital with my baby, and I couldn’t even see her.
Out of everyone in this house, I should be the one holding her hand. Instead, I was stuck at home and worried sick.
And I was making all this worse by letting Dale continue to steal moments of my life. For years, I had been content with sacrificing making memories if it meant keeping my family safe. I thought that’d be enough. I guessed that was the difference between surviving and living.
When you’re surviving, you’re on this earth and safe. The world exists in shades of beige, and you take comfort in the lack of excitement. If nothing exciting happened, that meant nothing bad happened. I had been fine with that being my life for years.
But I was sick of just surviving. I wanted to live.
I wanted memories with my family and not to constantly worry that one wrong step was going to ruin my life.
My white-knuckled grip on the knife started to shake.
I wasn’t a violent man. Hell, I wasn’t even an angry one.
But I wanted to hurt Dale. And while I thought the knowledge I could do that would be comforting, now that the adrenaline from last night ran dry, the fact that I thought I could kill someone scared me.
Maybe that was just the exhaustion talking.
With a heavy sigh, I headed to the half-empty coffee pot and blindly grabbed yet another mug from the cupboards.
The cup I picked was one Lucian got me when we first started dating.
It had a crab smoking a cigarette on the white ceramic.
He said it reminded him of me, and to this day, I don’t think I understood his sense of humor.
I grabbed the blue plastic handle of the carafe and poured myself what felt like my tenth cup of coffee.
The machine did a good job of keeping the leftover coffee warm, but as I brought the mug to my lips and the incredibly bitter substance filled my mouth, I realized it did a shitty job of not burning it.
I went to the fridge, grabbed one of Sophia’s many overly sweet creamers, and added a generous amount to my cup, hoping to make my drink more palatable.
I took another sip before adding a little more.
Just as I finished making my coffee not taste like sludge, I was greeted by the feeling of my phone vibrating in my pocket. My heart beat a little faster when I lifted the device to see Sebastian’s name.
My first thought was that Rosie was here, which would be as exciting as it was scary. Once she was born, it would officially mean she was safe. But, I had done a lot of reading about premature babies, and the idea of my daughter being so… fragile terrified me.
I took a deep breath to collect myself before I answered his call.
“Is this Cameron?” Sebastian already sounded disinterested in the call.
“Who else would it be?” I tried to laugh.
“I do my best not to contact you. I just had to make sure.”
His comment was something I could deal with later. “How’s Mason? Is the baby here?”
“No baby yet. Mason is okay. The doctor said it was false labor, and it was probably caused by Lavender getting into a better position . ”
Sebastian continued to talk, but to be honest, I didn’t really listen. Lavender was a name I hadn’t heard since Mason and I renamed our girl. Did he genuinely not know Rosemary’s name? Or was he just ignoring the fact it had changed?
“...There’s nothing we can do to prevent it from happening again. We just need to make sure she’s not stressed and stays hydrated. Oh, they also gave her a shot to help the baby’s lungs–just in case.” Sebastian finished.
“So, she’s just randomly going to be miserable for the next seven weeks? ”
“Essentially, yes.”
The more I learned about Mason’s pregnancy, the worse I felt for being the one to knock her up.
“Does she at least get to come home?” I asked.
“She does… but I don’t think you should try to talk to her, not at first.”
My eyes widened. “Any particular reason why?”
“What are you, stupid?” He snorted. “She is almost thirty-three weeks pregnant and spent the night terrified and in pain while her baby-daddy refused to support her. She’s pissed , Cameron.”
Giving Mason space when I was worried about her was hard . What made it even worse was that when she came home, she didn’t look mad. Instead, she made eye contact with me for exactly one second before looking away.
While I couldn’t see her face, Mason wasn’t a quiet crier. The sound of her sadness broke my heart in ways I wasn’t quite prepared for. I wanted to comfort her, but I didn’t want to risk stressing her out.
So, instead of chasing her, I waited for Sebastian to come back downstairs. On the bright side, that didn’t take long.
About twenty minutes after they went upstairs, he came down with a stainless steel water bottle in hand.
“How is she?” I asked as he walked to the fridge.
He screwed the cap off before placing it on the counter and pressing the top of the bottle to the ice dispenser. The refrigerator hummed for a moment before spitting out crushed-up chunks.
“Who, Mason?”
“…Who else would I be asking about?”
He shot me a knowing smile before withdrawing the bottle.
“She’s asleep. They kept her on a pretty steady drip of medicine while she was there, and she’s still pretty wiped out. She’s in my bed, by the way. ”
The tone of his voice told me he was bragging. But I didn’t care about that. Mason could sleep where she wanted, something else had already caught my attention.
“Medicine? What medicine?”
If she was fine, why would she need medication?
My panic caught Sebastian’s attention as he stalked toward me with the cup still in hand.
“Was there some kind of drug used in the rituals of the Sons of Christ?” His voice was low as he questioned me.
The rituals? No, not usually, but I knew Dale had access to some pretty nasty things. Whatever he injected me with years ago knocked me out for almost a week. But, that wasn’t information that’d help Seb, plus, I had a feeling he wasn’t going to cooperate anyway.
“ Don’t talk about that stuff in the house.” I warned on a breath.
The last thing I needed was for him to be yapping on about case details and for someone to walk in on us, especially Mason.
“She has my baby in her belly. I have a right to know if they’re putting anything weird in her system.” I continued.
Sebastian’s expression pinched as his icy gaze pinned on mine.
“Are you sure? Because the last time I checked, you weren’t the one holding her hand while everything happened.
” He held up his hand to show a few crescent-shaped marks lingering on his pale skin, acting as if they were a badge of honor.
“Plus, even if Lavender unfortunately shares your DNA, I’m the one who has been there for everything.
Also, it’s still Mason’s body. You’re really showing your age by thinking you own her just because you came in her once. ”
“Actually–it’s been much more than once.” My taunt slipped before I realized that wasn’t important. Still, I liked seeing Sebastian’s face tighten in anger.
He ran a hand across the square of his jaw, his expression morphing into one of amusement. He let out one quick, breathy laugh before looking back at me.
“Calm down, Daddy.” Sarcasm dripped from his baritone voice.
My pulse skipped, and I almost choked on my saliva.
“Don’t call me that,” I warned .
“Why not? I hear Mason say it all the time. You’re the one who she’s referring to when she does that, correct?”
“You ain’t my partner,” I warned. “You’re a pest.”
“Awe, Calvin.” He cooed. “If you feel threatened by me, I can quit my specific case, move back to Portland, and let you figure out how to keep Mason safe.”
My shoulders tightened, and my blood went cold. “You wouldn’t dare.”
He smirked before shrugging. “Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn’t… Are you really willing to test that out?”
The answer to that was no. I didn’t have a great track record of partners surviving once Dale was in the picture. And even though last night he told me that he was only returning to take over the operations of the local Hospital's chapel, I didn’t believe him.
Sebastian was a killer, and that meant he could protect my girls even if I couldn’t.
“That’s what I thought.” A smug smile unfurled on his lips, causing one dimple to pop as he stepped back from me, creating distance between the two of us. “Now, if you’re willing to be a good boy and cooperate with me, I have a question.”
I liked having him call me good boy even less than I liked daddy .
“What could you possibly need?” Other than to harass me, of course.
“Do you have any pictures of Dale?”