19. Chance
Chance
Iwas such a fucking liar. When Rena told me about her pregnancy, I’d looked her in the eyes and told her that we could do it—that we could raise a human child. That it would be great. I’d somehow convinced even myself that it would be fine.
If I’d only known that the further along in her pregnancy she got, the more anxious I would get.
It wasn’t so bad in the beginning, especially once she started feeling better.
We’d found a Vampire doctor for her checkups, she had her energy back, and we’d finalized plans for a house and were in a race to see whose house was built first—Beau and Reese’s or ours.
But then, early one morning, she’d pressed my hand to her belly so I could feel a little hand or foot bumping against it. Our child, just swimming around in there.
The protectiveness that rose in me was like nothing I’d ever felt before.
I felt protective of Rena. I felt protective of my brothers and their mates. I even felt protective of my mother. But they could all take care of themselves.
The baby was helpless.
He was tiny.
It was my responsibility to make sure he had everything he needed.
I was the one who had to make sure he didn’t get hurt.
That he didn’t get sick. That he didn’t feel lonely or sad or scared.
I had to teach him how to blow his nose and wipe his ass and piss standing up.
Somehow, I had to shape him into someone who was kind, fair, humble, strong, protective, loving, funny, ambitious—the list was endless. How did you even teach that shit?
Rena and I would be the baby’s whole world. The beginning and end. The fucking sun that he revolved around.
I was panicking.
“You know, you could talk to me,” Rena said dryly as we walked down the freshly graveled driveway between the main house and the new build. “We don’t have to walk in silence.”
“Sorry.”
“What’s going on? Did you find something last night?”
I shook my head. Just like we’d planned, I’d gone over and over the files that Zeke had obtained to make sure that I hadn’t missed anything.
I’d even put them aside for a couple of months, so when I pulled them up again, I could look at them with fresh eyes to see if I could come in at a different angle or analyze the data in a different way.
It never changed. I never found anything new.
Danny and Ambrose hadn’t heard anything either.
We’d probably always be vigilant, but for now, Vampires seemed to be safe.
Even Baudelaire’s death hadn’t raised any issues, even though anyone who’d seen his body knew it was a message. We’d taken off his head, for Gods’ sake.
“No,” I said, throwing my arm over Rena’s shoulders and tugging her closer so I could kiss her temple. “All quiet.”
“Good,” she said with a sigh. “Tell me again, why are we walking out here?”
“You’ll see,” I replied. I’d been waiting all day for her to finish working.
Rena didn’t work a regular nine-to-five schedule.
Sometimes she worked all day. Other times, she worked for a while in the morning or at night.
Some days, she only had a few emails before she was free.
I loved it. I could work whenever I wanted, so I usually just copied her schedule, and then we did whatever we felt like that day.
I flew her up to Seattle for dinner at the Space Needle, and she’d given me so much shit for it, but she’d also smiled like a fucking lunatic the entire time.
We spent weekends at the lake and took a road trip with Reese and Beau—even though we could’ve flown in one-tenth the time—to see Yellowstone.
It was impossible to describe what the country had been like when we’d first seen it, but we’d tried.
Reese and Rena had spent the entire time making faces and sarcastic comments about the olden days.
Most of the time, though, we stayed home. I’d been traveling for so long that I liked living in one place for a while. I liked that we could see my brothers, their mates, and my parents whenever we wanted. Rena just loved being surrounded by family.
She went thrifting with Reese and my mother a couple of times a month, looking for baby things and our new house, while Beau, my father, and I followed along at a distance, bored out of our minds.
I didn’t really care how she decorated, but she was very invested in the whole thing, so I didn’t remind her that she could have new things delivered to the house.
She found so much, including furniture that would’ve never fit in our rooms, that we’d had a shed built just to store it all.
Basically, we’d spent the last five months learning to live ordinary lives. No danger. No stress. Just building a life together. Learning how to live together.
She hated that I waited so long to clean the drain in the shower and couldn’t be convinced that most of the hair stuck was hers.
She complained about the way I left laundry hanging halfway out of the hamper, which I thought was a non-issue since, before I’d met her, I hadn’t even used the fucking hamper.
I talked too early in the morning. I stuck my cold feet on her when we climbed into bed at night.
I ate the last of the yogurt I hadn’t known she’d been saving.
And she…well, she made every day better.
She could be rude, snarky, frustrating, infuriating, but I still could hardly believe that I’d found her.
That I got to annoy her in the morning by talking too much.
That her hand fit in mine perfectly, and when I’d had a long day, she smiled at me or wrinkled her nose, and it didn’t seem so long anymore.
“We have walls,” Rena said excitedly as our house came into view. “I bet Reese doesn’t have walls yet.”
“Hate to break it to you?—”
“No,” she complained. “They’re not even here! They’ve been in Europe for a month!”
“I know,” I commiserated, trying not to laugh. “It’s a conspiracy.”
“Either you call the contractor tomorrow, or I am.”
“I’ll call,” I said quickly. Rena always thought she was going to hurry our contractor along, but what she really did was ask him about his family and then spend an hour on the phone with him during the workday while he was supposed to be supervising.
She tried to be a hard-ass, but anyone who knew her saw right through it.
“Come on,” I ordered, tugging her toward the shed.
“If you brought me out here to complain about how much stuff I’ve found,” she warned in exasperation. “I swear there is a plan for all of it.”
“That’s not why,” I replied, unlocking the double doors.
I swung them open and waited.
“Jesus wept,” Rena whispered, her fingers covering her mouth as she slowly stepped forward. “How?”
I’d spent the last three months with my mother and Reese, tracking down jewelry, vintage housewares, clothes, and even an end table that had belonged to Irene and Joe Rossi.
Some of it my mother had remembered. Most of it came from the alerts I’d noticed Rena had set up on her computer.
Early that morning, my mother and I had moved it all from the workout room in the house that Rena never stepped foot in and displayed it on some shelves.
“Did some digging,” I replied as she stepped into the shed. “I haven’t found the cake stand yet or the pink pitcher—the glass one—but I’ve got someone on it.”
“This wasn’t—I wasn’t looking for this,” she said, her voice wobbling as she traced a finger over the delicate lace of Irene’s wedding dress.
“My mother was at their wedding,” I told her, leaning against the doorframe. “She drew it from memory, and we used that to search. I guess it was made specifically for your grandmother by a local seamstress. Her daughter saw it on an auction site about ten years ago and bought it.”
“I can’t believe you did this,” she said, shaking her head. She ran her hand down the sleeve of Joe’s wool jacket.
“Did you know your mother had a storage unit when she passed away?” I asked. “It was sold when she stopped paying the rent, and the wife of the person who bought it collected vintage shit. They’d kept quite a bit but were willing to let it go for a price.”
“She had a storage unit?” Rena huffed. “That would’ve been nice to know. At least I would’ve known where to start.”
“Getting the records of who bought the storage unit required some covert operations,” I admitted, scratching my cheek. “So you probably would’ve had to wait for my help anyhow.”
Rena laughed. “You broke into their office?”
“No, they keep their records online. I just went fishing that way.”
“This was my mom’s,” Rena choked out, pulling a housedress off the hanger. “She used to wear it on mornings she didn’t have to work. I always knew it was the weekend if I woke up and she was in her pink housedress.”
She slipped her arms into the sleeves and pulled the sides forward, snickering when they didn’t meet. “I’ll have to wait until after he gets here,” she said, sniffling. “Hopefully it’ll fit around my hips by then.”
I really hoped it didn’t, but I wasn’t about to say that. I was more obsessed with Rena’s ass now than I’d been when we met. I was asking the Gods daily not to let her lose any of it after our son was born.
For some reason, Rena didn’t find that charming.
“I can’t believe you did this,” she repeated, moving on to the shelves that held various pieces of green and pink glass dishes.
“I had some extra time on my hands.”
I held my breath as she reached the end table and curiously opened the scrapbook my mom had placed there.
“Oh,” Rena whispered with a quiet, hiccuping sob.
“My mom went through years of old photos,” I explained quietly. “She knew she had some of your grandparents, but she hadn’t realized that your mom was in them too.”
“She’s so little.”
“Mom said she always felt horrible that she hadn’t searched for your mom after your grandparents died. But she was an adult, and since she never reached out or anything, Mom didn’t want to bother her.”