The Redo (Winslow Brothers #4) (58)

Jude: Fucking finally!

Ty: How soon?

Me: I can free up some time tomorrow after I take Lex to the Mavs game.

More texts vibrate through, but when Izzy squirms in my arms, I ignore them, put my phone back in my pocket, and look down at her. “Keeping you happy and giving your momma rest is the priority tonight, sweetheart.”

Everything and everyone else can wait.





Sunday, October 6th

Maria

For the first time in I don’t know how long, I wake up simply because my body decides it’s time. Not because there’s a tiny human screaming or a cramp in my still-recovering uterus or because I had a dream that babies suddenly can’t breathe if their moms are asleep. My body’s clock finally got to ring its own bell, and the feeling is somewhat disorienting.

I rub a hand down my face and sit up, only then realizing that I’m not in my bed. Instead, I’m on my couch, and the waistband of my jeans has officially fused itself to the center of my stomach.

“Ow,” I mutter, rubbing softly at the harsh indentations in my skin.

Looking from side to side, sleep confusion still clinging to the edges of my consciousness, I search the room for something. There’s something important, something I need to—oh my God, Izzy! I have a baby named Izzy!

I shoot up to standing like I’m a bullet being shot from a gun, her empty bouncy chair making my heart kick into overdrive.

Where is she? What in the hell time is it? How did I forget about her for even a second?

I run from one end of the living room to the other, thought and strategy both things of the past. The sun is so bright it blinds my sensitive eyes, tripping me out even more. Holy shit, it’s morning already? On my next panicked jog from one end of the room to the other, I catch sight of the clock beneath the TV—9:03 a.m.

Oh my God. OH MY GOD.

It’s then, in a desperate effort to prevent self-destruction, that my brain calculates the events of last night, and I remember that Remy was here.

Oh yeah. Is he still here? Does he have Izzy? Please, God, let him have Izzy.

“Remy?” I call out and sprint into the kitchen, for what, I don’t know, only to backtrack and make a beeline toward her nursery.

“Remy!” I shout, my voice rising with panic.

Did something happen to them? How in the hell did I sleep through at least two of Izzy’s feedings? Is she okay? Is she alive? Holy shit, I’m the worst mom in the whole wide world!

Instantly, tears prick my eyes, and my bottom lip quivers.

“Remy!” Emotion hovers along the edges of my voice as I move like a madwoman down the hallway, turning to crash through her door like the Kool-Aid man, when a hard body stops me and pushes me back and away from the door slightly.

“I’m right here,” Remy consoles, his two strong hands working gently on my shoulders.

“Where’s the baby?” I nearly shout. “Is she okay? Did something—”

“Hey, it’s okay. She’s okay,” he reassures in a hushed voice. “I just fed her a bottle about two hours ago, and she’s sound asleep in her crib.”

Her crib? Somehow, he got her to sleep in her crib? Izzy never wants to sleep in her crib.

What kind of Twilight Zone have I woken up in?

“Just take a deep breath, Ria,” he adds with the kind of gentleness in his voice that could melt concrete into a puddle. “Izzy is fine. I promise.”

“Okay.” I nod and inhale, but all I can manage is an unsteady breath. “Okay.” I put a hand to my chest and try like hell to slow my racing heart. “I just panicked when I woke up and didn’t know—”

His face is gentle with remorse. “I’m sorry your morning had to start with an adrenaline rush. Definitely not how I was hoping it would begin.”

I nod. I know he didn’t mean to cause this—hell, if anything, I should be thanking him. I just have to get my body to open the memo somehow.

Thankfully, under the coaxing of his firm hands, the tension in my shoulders eases, and the cloud of fear hovering around us starts to dissipate.

Okay, yeah. God. His hands feel good.

I let my head fall back and take a final deep breath, expelling all the rest of my worry at once.

“There’s my girl,” Remy remarks on a whisper, bringing a smile to my face and my neck back to upright.

And that’s all it takes to kick my heart back into an uncharacteristic rhythm.

Remy is practically naked.

I’m talking bare chest, wet hair, water dripping down the firm muscles of his stomach and biceps naked. Only a single white towel around his waist stands between his penis and me and a permanent stutter.

“Y-you took a shower?”

A wry grin forms at the corner of his lips. “We might have had a little accident this morning.”

I tilt my head in confusion, trying to force my body into taking the right cues—you know, the ones that come from him talking to me, rather than the ones coming from my imagination’s rabid attempt to mock up a picture of what I’d be seeing if the towel weren’t blocking my view.

“It was a blowout kind of situation,” he explains, but despite my best efforts to stop perving, I’m still hardly listening.

Good God, the muscles. There are so many of them, and they make the perfect little obstacle course for several persistent drops of water. I don’t know if my screams left him with no time to dry off or if the water is just as desperate to lick around the perfect V muscles at his waist as I am, but I’ll be damned if I haven’t been willing every single droplet that travels that path to be the tipping point to the loosely tied knot on Remy’s towel.