Chapter 19
Terran
“Ainsley, please, work with me.”
Another loud screech pierced my eardrums, momentarily rendering me deaf.
Who knew toddlers had the lung capacity to scream at a decibel close to a rocket launching and shooting through the atmosphere?
A sharp pain shot up my arm when the heel of her little foot slammed against the bone, another following suit the second she landed the first hit.
I ground my teeth together to keep from snapping at her, something that would only encourage her temper tantrum if I gave into the desire to react to it in the first place.
One of the more challenging aspects of raising a child.
Trying to wrestle a three year old into her two piece pajama set two hours after bedtime was another one and absolutely needed to be entered into some kind of Olympic sport category because… holy hell.
“No!” She wailed as I grabbed her ankle and used it to shove her foot through one leg of her pj bottoms.
The rest of her squirmed and kicked at me from where I’d laid her down on the floor when this entire mess had started over fifteen minutes ago.
Her face was red and streaked with tears, pieces of her still-wet hair from her bath clung to her forehead from her thrashing around.
All of it was coupled by a truly anguished expression that, under any other circumstances, would’ve tugged at my heart strings.
Tonight, though, was a different story.
Her chest expanded as she got ready to scream at me again. Giving me all of five seconds to grab her other foot and force it through the left pant leg before she actually ended up socking me in the face with whatever limb she managed to wrestle out of my grip first.
This was what I got for bending the rules and letting her stay up with me for a little longer than usual to finish her movie. At this point, this was my punishment for being a sucker and not having the backbone to put my foot down against my niece’s infamous puppy dog eyes.
Two entire hours past her bedtime and I was certainly paying for it.
She was going to be a bear in the morning for my sister.
Whoops.
“Want mama!”
“Oh my god, child,” I mumbled. “Quit it.”
Her legs flailed the second I let go. “No! Want mama!”
“She’s not here, kiddo. You’re stuck with me.” I winced at another ear-piercing scream. “I know. What a horrible twist of fate.”
The charming sound of the back door’s bell carried from down the hall, causing me to whip around and check the clock hanging on Ainsley’s wall across from where her toddler bed was.
8:45.
He was early.
There was no controlling a grin from forming, hard enough to hurt my cheeks. Even in the face of my niece’s meltdown that was absolutely going to be leaving a ringing in my ears for the next hour.
What did I care if she fought me tooth and nail because I’d been dumb enough to veer from her carefully scheduled routine, when at the end of it, I got to see Silas?
Punishment turned reward, I’d say.
Butterflies stirred in my stomach. Early meant he was eager to get here. To see me.
It could be argued that his schedule simply worked out that way, but what trauma surgeon ever had the luck to get off early from a shift when their hospital was the go-between for three entire towns unless they made sure of it?
“Come on, little miss.” I scooped her up off the floor and into my arms, and she let out another soul-suffering sob while clinging to my shirt, her little fists holding onto the fabric for dear life as I stood.
Patting her back gently, I murmured a quiet, “You’re all right,” to her while sidestepping a stray stuffed animal.
Blaming her for being overtired wasn’t exactly fair when, one, I was the direct cause of it, and two, I also got cranky when I didn’t get my beauty sleep. The Bishop genes ran strong with that one and made for an unfair flaw to have inherited but hey, there were worse ones to take after.
“All right. Stay right here, I’ll be back to tuck you in in a second.” Peeling her fingers away and settling her down on her bed was another thing to be added to the list of qualifying traits to get me into next year’s Olympics.
She shoved one of her fists halfway into her mouth to gnaw on it, hiccupping around her fingers when another pitiful expression made a few more tears leak from her eyes.
Thankfully, she lay still as I tugged her blankets up to her chin and dragged my hand through her hair to move it away from her face.
Poor thing.
The last time Amelia was out of the house for bedtime was back when Ainsley was still being bottle fed.
Encouraging her to go earlier this evening had also been a little more complicated than I thought it would be.
However, considering my sister’s habit of never being able to put herself before her daughter in any capacity, even if it meant building them both a better future, I was more than happy to step in and practically shove her out the door to force her into it before she could change her mind.
My sister was still so young and so damn bright.
Letting her wait tables for the rest of her life when I knew she was capable of much more was simply not an option.
If I got the chance to foster a career, so could she.
We were in this together. Ainsley was our shared responsibility until my sister found someone she was content to spend the rest of her life with.
Then, I’d make the heartbreaking but ultimately respectful decision to take a step back from my uncle duties to give them room to grow as a family.
And who knew, maybe I’d get another little niece to run around with out of the deal. Or a nephew. I wouldn’t mind that, either.
But until that time came, I was always going to be here to deal with whatever my sister couldn’t.
With two quick swipes across Ainsley’s cheeks to dry them, I lifted myself up onto my feet again. “I’ll be right back.”
A begrudging whine followed after me, but thankfully, that was all as I headed out of her room and down the hall to the back door.
A shadow passed behind the curtain of the small cut out window in the door, illuminated by the single light shining above it.
Silas was leaning against the frame with his arms crossed loosely over his chest by the time I got the door unlocked and open.
He stood quietly in a long overcoat and a fresh pair of scrubs—a gray-toned blue this time instead of his usual dark navy—with his hair still slightly damp and brushed back from whatever shower he’d taken before leaving the hospital.
My mind latched onto that instantly, setting off another round of butterflies in my stomach. A shower and a change of clothes meant he’d gotten done way sooner than nine, enough to give him time to freshen up. That had to mean he’d been looking forward to coming over here.
Silas was too nonchalant to entertain politeness.
If none of this meant anything, he wouldn’t care to look presentable if all he was looking to get out of this was waiting for my sister to return and then whisking me back to his place for a fuck.
Looking presentable held no meaning if he didn’t care about my sister’s opinion of him.
Or mine.
“Welcome to my—” I paused to kick a stray toy out of the doorway—one of those play-pretend lawn mowers that had been begged for for weeks that was now hardly ever touched—before opening the door further. “To my humble abode.”
His eyes slowly narrowed at Ainsley calling for me farther back into the house, her voice tapering off with a whimper. His gaze drifted from me to over my shoulder where it lingered down the hallway for a long second before finding mine again. “I see you’re having a productive evening.”
“Careful making fun of me. I’ll sit you down on the couch and force you to watch cartoons with us until she falls asleep.”
His soft snort was accompanied by his breath clouding the frigid air as he leaned away from the door and stepped inside. “Can’t imagine what’s worse than that.”
“Shoving you back out into the cold?”
He glanced over his shoulder with a single brow raised and then tugged the door out of my hand to shut it behind him. “The cold would be kinder to my eardrums.”
“Wait until she starts screaming about not being read a book before I turn the lights off.”
A small muscle ticked under his left eye while the rest of his face remained impassive.
It had me laughing instantly. What a dead giveaway. Or maybe I was just getting good at reading him. “Come on.”
Spinning on my heel and expertly hopping over a play tea set conveniently set down right in the pathway heading back down the hall, I followed the soft whimpering cries from my niece, finding her half hung over the side of her bed while the rest of her was twisted up in her blankets.
The one upside to putting her in a toddler bed and not giving into all of the momfluencers Amelia had been obsessed with watching while she was pregnant preaching about putting your kid in a twin mattress lifted off the ground—was that if Ainsley fell, she didn’t have very far to go on the way down.
Face planting, while hilariously awkward, two inches from the floor versus the two and a half feet she would have had if she was in a twin was a far better alternative in my opinion.
“Ainsley Mae.” My hands found my hips. “What in the world did you do?”
She lifted her head up from the floor, her hair a wild mess falling into her eyes. She lifted her hand up in the general direction I was in, making a grabbing motion with it. “Unca Terry.”
“Didn’t I tell you to stay put?”
Honestly, child...
She was lucky she was cute.
It saved me from actually being sent over the edge.
How could I truly be mad at a face as sweet as hers?