Make Me Yours (Bellamy Creek #2) - Melanie Harlow Page 0,99
about the incident with the baby and gave me a bunch of shit about being a hero—people kept coming over to shake my hand or hug me—Moretti took over the conversation, bemoaning his unsuccessful attempt to convince his parents to give him some more time to find the right bride.
“What happened to Reina?” I asked, happy to discuss something other than myself.
He shrugged. “Reina’s fine. But I just don’t think she’s the right fit,” he said, like he was talking about ceiling joists and not marriage. “Hey Beckett, how’s your old man? He seemed okay at the wedding, although he did think I was my dad all night.”
Beckett frowned. “Yeah, the signs of dementia are all getting worse. He wandered away from the house again yesterday, and a neighbor saw him walking down the highway without a coat. Luckily she recognized him and drove him home.”
“Shit. Is it that bad?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “I keep trying to lock him in, but it doesn’t work. And I can’t be inside with him all day. I’m running a fucking cattle ranch by myself at this point.”
Beckett’s parents had divorced when he was young, and his mom had been out of the picture for years. He’d been raised by his dad and two older siblings. The best student of all of us—also the biggest and brawniest thanks to all the manual labor he did growing up on a farm—he’d left Bellamy Creek right after high school on a college scholarship and hit Wall Street after that. But city life hadn’t been for him, so a few years ago, he’d left it behind and never looked back.
Even now, his cowboy hat was resting on the couch between us next to him—brim side up, and don’t fucking get him started on why you can’t set a cowboy hat down any other way. We sometimes teased him that he was more Texas than Michigan, despite having been born and raised right up the road.
“What about your sisters?” Moretti asked. “Can they help?”
“They’ve got jobs and kids, and Amy lives an hour away. They can’t really do much.” Beckett pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ll probably have to hire someone eventually. There’s no way he’ll move to a facility, and I can’t babysit him all day.”
“That’s a good idea,” Moretti said. “I once dated a girl who did that—home care for an elderly guy. She’d help him get dressed and all that.”
“Dated her for how long?” Beckett gave him the side eye.
“At least an hour,” Moretti quipped, tipping up his beer. “Long enough for her to undress me. I dressed myself.”
We laughed, and I felt more like my old self. It was good to be around the guys, even though I was so tired I couldn’t stop yawning.
“What’s going on with you?” Moretti asked me. “You look a little rough. Cheyenne keeping you up nights?”
“Ha. Right. At my mom’s house?”
“You’ll be in your new place soon enough.”
“Yeah,” I said, grabbing my beer bottle off the table.
“That’s cool about you and Cheyenne,” Beckett said. “So is it serious?”
“Um, yeah, you know.” I took a sip of beer. “I guess it’s serious. I asked her to move in with me. To the new house.”
“Shit, did you really?” Moretti looked surprised.
“Yeah.” I shifted in my chair.
“That is serious,” said Beckett.
“And Mariah’s doing okay with it?” Moretti asked.
I shrugged. “She says she is.”
“You don’t believe her?” Beckett paused with his beer halfway to his mouth.
“I do, it’s just kind of hard to believe she doesn’t have any issue whatsoever with me being in a serious relationship. She’s always been so scared of losing me. At one point she made me promise I’d never get remarried.”
“But this is Cheyenne,” Beckett pointed out. “It’s not some stranger. She’s known Cheyenne her entire life.”
“Right, but that’s exactly why she might not feel like she can be entirely honest about how she feels. She doesn’t want to hurt Cheyenne’s feelings.” It was total bullshit and I knew it, but for some reason, I couldn’t stop talking.
“And wasn’t she really tiny when she made you promise that?” Moretti asked. “I remember it, but it seems like it was a long time ago.”
“Yes, she was only five, but that doesn’t mean the fear isn’t still there—in fact, I worry that it’s moved from her conscious mind into her subconscious and she doesn’t even recognize it. But is it going to blow up later?” My lip was starting to twitch, and I covered it with my