32

32
ALICIA
“So, you’re going out with Brandon again?” Kayla says knowingly.
“You must be getting so tired of babysitting.” I’m dressing Emmy in a new outfit, one of several that Pat dropped off for her. The clothes belonged to David’s sister’s children, who are all over the age of ten now, and Pat acted like it was no big deal to give them to me because there was no established place for them to go. There are no more children on David’s side of the family. Still, I appreciate the effort. Every little thing my family does makes me more and more aware of the fact that I haven’t had a support system for most of Emmy’s life, and that now I do.
Fuck, I shouldn’t have stayed away so long. Not just because I could have used the help, but seeing them again is making it blatantly clear to me just how much they care about me. Just how much they’ve missed me too. It isn’t right the way I’ve left my family behind-they deserved better from me. They deserved to know Emmy.
The moment I get Emmy’s clothes on her, Kayla reaches out to scoop her up.
“Kayla!” Emmy flings her arms around her.
Kayla laughs. “Emmy! Ready to hang out with me again tonight?” “Yes, and color.”
“We’ve been digging the crayons,” Kayla explains.
I’ve never seen Emmy have a good relationship with anyone who wasn’t me. It’s something she’s been robbed of by not having a father-and by not having a pack.
Honestly, the longer we’re here, the more I wish we could stay.
“I don’t have to go,” I tell Kayla. “I know watching Emmy isn’t your job. I can tell Brandon no tonight.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kayla says firmly. “You want to go out with him.
And I want you to go. Are you two official yet?” I groan. “I have no idea what that means.”
“Well, is he your mate? He keeps coming around,” Kayla says. “I don’t think he minds that you rejected him. I think he’s over that and he’s ready to start fresh with you.”
I can’t even argue with that, because Brandon has made it so abundantly clear that that’s how he feels. “Even if that were true,” I say, “how could I possibly get into a relationship with someone when I’m lying to him about the fact that I had his baby?”
“There’s a really simple solution to that problem, you know,” Kayla says gently.
“I can’t tell him, Kay.”
“Well, it’s up to you. But don’t you think your life would be easier if he knew?”
“You just can’t understand what this is like, Kay. I’ve been raising her by myself for the past two years. Every decision that needed to be made, I’ve
made on my own. The idea of having to share those decisions with someone else-even if he’s trustworthy, even if he has her best interests in mind…I mean, what if we disagree about what’s best for her? How could I let someone else’s opinion override mine? I’m her mother. I know what she needs.”
“And you don’t think she needs her father?”
I sigh. “I don’t know,” I admit. “I don’t know what to think about that. But I’m afraid to take the chance.”
“Don’t you think he’d be good for her?”
“I think he’d be great for her, to be honest with you,” I admit. “He’d probably do anything for her.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I don’t know. It’s a lot to ask of him. We can’t raise her here. He would have to leave the pack.”
“You don’t think he’d do that?”
“Maybe I just don’t want to be the reason he has to.” I sigh. “Deidre and Lonnie would come at him hard if they knew about this, Kay. I already fucked his life up once when I rejected him as my mate.”
Kayla bounces Emmy on her hip. “I understand,” she says. “Do you?”
“You’ve always been like this.” “No, I haven’t,” I protest.
“Oh, sure you have. Why do you think you had such a hard time getting along with Deidre?”
“Um, because Deidre was a bitch?”
Kayla laughs. “Okay, yes, fair enough, she was. But even given that, you had more trouble with her than me and Pat combined. She really hated you.”
“Because I was a troublemaker.”
“No, we were all troublemakers in our own way, and Lonnie was King Troublemaker. Deidre’s problem with you was that she couldn’t control you. From the moment Dad married her-back when you were young-you resisted her. If she tried to give you dinner as a baby, you wouldn’t eat it. If she tried to put you down for a nap, you’d scream and scream. You never let her tell you how to live your life.”
“I never realized our conflicts had been going on that long,” I said. “I sort of thought I just started acting out against her as a teenager.”
“Hell no, it was going on way before that,” Kayla says. “You never cooperated with her. Pat and I tried, before we realized what a fucking control freak she was. But you knew instinctively right from the start, and you weren’t going to let anyone tell you what to do.”
“Huh.”
“And that’s exactly what you’re doing now,” Kayla says. “You’re not going to let anyone tell you how to raise your baby or how to live your life.”
I nod. She does understand. “That’s right.”
“But Brandon isn’t Deidre,” Kayla says. “He wouldn’t try to control you the way she did.”
“I know he wouldn’t” I say. “But he knows what he wants. He’s always known what he wanted. And if what he wants is this pack, I’m not going to try to come between him and the life he’s chosen.”
“That’s not fair. He chose this life without knowing he had a daughter.”
“I like Brandon, but even so-he’s always been awfully willful. He’s not the type to bend to someone else’s opinion any more than I am. It’s why he always got in so many fights when we were younger.”
“But have you heard of him being in a fight since you’ve been back?”
“Well, no. But it’s not like he’d come report to me about it.”
“I’m telling you, he’s different than he was,” Kayla says. “I think he just wants the chance to prove it to you.”
“And you think I should let him.”
“I think you should, yes. You should see if there’s any potential for you to have the father of your baby in your life, because I think both of you deserve that.”
“I want to trust him,” I say.
“You have feelings for him, don’t you?”
“I do,” I admit. “I’ve been trying to resist, but I don’t think I can do that anymore. I can’t keep lying to myself.”
“And you shouldn’t,” she says. “Let yourself feel what you feel. He cares about you. Let yourself love him back, if you can.”