Sugar Daddy (Travis Family #1)(27)

A groundswell of silence moved between us. Trouble on the surface and even deeper currents beneath. There was so much I wanted to confide to him...Mama's troubling distance from the baby, and the guilty question of whether I had somehow taken Carrington from her or if I had just stepped in to fill a vacancy. I wanted to tell him about my own longings, and the fear that I would never find anyone I loved as much as him.

"It's time to get the baby," Hardy said.

"Okay." I watched as he went to the door. "Hardy.

"Yes?" He stopped without looking back.

"I—" My voice wobbled, and I had to take a deep breath before I went on. "I'm not always going to be too young for you."

He still didn't look at me. "By the time you're old enough, I'll be gone."

"I'll wait for you."

"I don't want you to." The door closed with a quiet click.

I threw away the empty pizza box and plastic cups and wiped off the table and counters. The weariness was coming back again, but this time I had reason to hope I might survive the next day.

Hardy returned with Carrington, who was quiet and yawning, and I rushed to take her. "Sweet baby, sweet little Carrington," I crooned. She settled into her usual position on my shoulder, her head a warm weight against my neck.

"She's fine," Hardy said. "She probably needed a break from you as much as you did from her. Mom and Hannah gave her a bath and a bottle, and now she's ready to sleep."

"Hallelujah," I said feelingly.

"You need sleep too." He touched my face, his thumb smoothing the wing of my eyebrow. "You'll do fine on the test, honey. Just don't let yourself panic. Take it step by step, and you'll make it through."

"Thank you," I said. "You didn't have to do any of this. I don't know why you did. I really—"

His fingertips came to my lips with feather-light pressure. "Liberty." he whispered. "Don't you know I'd do anything for you?"

I swallowed painfully. "But.. .you're staying away from me."

He knew what I meant. "I'm doing that for you too." Slowly he lowered his forehead to mine, with the baby cradled between us.

I closed my eyes, thinking, Let me love you, Hardy, just let me. "Call me if you ever

need help." he murmured. "I can be there for you that way. As a friend."

I turned my face until my mouth touched the shaven smoothness of his skin. His breath caught, and he didn't move. I nuzzled into the pliancy of his cheek, the hardness of his jaw, loving the texture of him. We stayed like that for a few seconds, not quite kissing, suffused with each other's nearness. It had never been like this with Gill or any other boy, my bones turning liquid, my body shaken with cravings that had no previous reference point. Wanting Hardy was different from wanting anyone else.

Lost in the moment, I was slow to respond when I heard the door open with a rattle. My mother had come back. Hardy pulled back from me, his face wiped clean of expression, but the air was weighted with emotion.

Mama entered the trailer, her arms filled with a jacket, keys, and a take-out box from the restaurant. She took in the scene with a single glance and shaped her mouth into a smile. "Hi. Hardy. What are you doing here?"

I jumped in before he could reply. "He helped me study for a math test. How was your dinner, Mama?"

"Just fine." She set her things on the kitchenette counter, and came to take the baby from me. Carrington protested the change of arms, her head bobbing, her face flooding with color. "Shhh," Mama soothed, bouncing her in gentle repetition until she subsided.

Hardy murmured goodbye and went to the door. Mama spoke in a carefully calibrated tone. "Hardy. I appreciate you coming here to help Liberty study. But I don't think you should spend any more time alone with my daughter."

I drew in a hissing breath. To deliberately drive a wedge between me and Hardy, when we had done nothing wrong, seemed an ugly hypocrisy coming from a woman who'd just had a fatherless baby. I wanted to say that, and worse things.

Hardy spoke before I could, his bleak gaze locked with my mother's. "I think you're right."

He left the trailer.

I wanted to scream at my mother, to hurl words at her like a shower of darts. She was selfish. She wanted me to pay for Carrington's childhood with my own. She was jealous that someone might care for me when there was no man in her life. And it wasn't fair of her to go out with her friends so often, when she should want to stay at home with her newborn. I wanted to say those things so badly, I nearly suffocated beneath the weight of unspoken words. But it has always been my nature to turn my anger inward, like a Texas skink eating its own tail.

"Liberty—" Mama began gently.

"I'm going to bed," I said. I didn't want to hear her opinion of what was best for me. "I've got a test tomorrow." I went to my room with swift strides and closed the door in a cowardly half-slam, when I should have had the guts to do it full-out. But at least I had the mean, fleeting satisfaction of hearing the baby cry.

CHAPTER 8

As the year went on I had begun to measure the passage of time not by the signposts of my own development, but by Carrington's. The first time she rolled over, the first time she sat on her own, ate applesauce mixed with powdered rice, the first haircut, the first tooth. I was the one she always raised her arms to first, giving me a wet gummy grin. It amused and disconcerted Mama at first, and then it became something everyone accepted matter-of-factly.