at him and whispered, “All right, mister. Don’t make your ol’ man look bad.”
I placed the tip of the bottle at his mouth, dabbing a little milk on his bottom lip, and to my surprise, he opened up and tried to latch on. He was mostly nipping at it, but it was progress. Jessica chuckled as she said, “Looks like Dad might have the touch after all.”
“Look, Beckett. He’s actually taking it.”
Not wanting to disturb him, I nodded and leaned back in the chair, gently rocking him back and forth as he tried to take his first real go at the bottle. After several minutes, he’d had enough and pushed the bottle out of his mouth. While he hadn’t drank much, it was definitely progress. I kept rocking him until he drifted off to sleep. I glanced over at Alyssa and found her staring back at me with wonder in her eyes. “You want to hold him?”
“He’s good where he is. Just let him rest a bit.” She smiled. “I’ve been thinking about this whole moving in together thing.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Mm-hmm. If we’re going to do this, I think we need to set up some ground rules.”
“Ooo-kayyy... This should be good.” I chuckled as I asked, “What kind of ground rules?”
“I’m kind of OCD about things being where they’re supposed to be, so no dirty socks and drawers on the floor.”
“I can do that.”
“If I cook, you do the dishes. If you cook, I’ll do them.”
“Fair enough.”
“I’m not going to be the only one changing dirty diapers.”
“What about the gross ones?”
She laughed as she answered, “I think a big, tough guy like you can handle a gross diaper now and then.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“You know it’s been a while since we’ve ... you know, um ... had sex.” She wiggled her eyebrows. “So, when we’re able, I’m gonna need you to make up for lost time.”
“Freckles, I’m down for that anytime, anyplace. You just name it.”
“Good to know.” Alyssa’s smile faded as she said, “When it comes to the club stuff, you don’t have to tell me everything, but I need to know that you’re safe.”
“I can do that. Anything else?”
“No, I think that just about covers it.”
“Well, I have one rule.”
“Okay, what’s that?”
“We have to go skinny dipping at least once every summer.”
A big smile crossed her face as she replied, “I think I can handle that.”
“Then, I guess we’re all set.”
“All right then. Looks like you got yourself two new roommates.”
“No, babe. You’re both much more than that. You’ll be my ol’ lady and future wife, and we’ll raise our son together.”
“I love you, Beckett.”
“Love you more, freckles.”
And just like that, my girl was back, and I had a son to boot. As far as I was concerned, life couldn’t have been any better.
20
Alyssa
When Beckett asked me to move in with him, I had my reservations. We’d been apart for so many months, and even when we were together, it was only late at night when he’d stop by my place after work. I worried that we were fooling ourselves in thinking that we could just slip back into what we had before, but to my pleasant surprise, things were going better than I could’ve ever expected. After I was released from the hospital, Beckett brought me to his house, and to my utter surprise, all of my things were already there and in place. He’d even started working on a nursery for JT. He’d put together the crib and changing table, and was getting ready to paint. I had no idea how he’d found the time to get it all done, especially with work and all the trips back and forth to the hospital. I think it got his mind off of JT having to stay in the NICU. While his oxygen levels had improved dramatically, he still wasn’t eating as much as the doctor would like, so we had no choice but to be patient.
We’d just finished one of our daily visits with JT and were on our way out of the hospital when we ran into Gus and Samantha. I was surprised to see that Gus was looking really good. In fact, other than the scar, he looked just like he had the last time I’d seen him. Beckett smiled at them both as he said, “Hey, I wasn’t expecting to see y’all today.”
“We just wanted to come by and see how the baby was doing,” Gus replied.
“He’s still got a ways to go in the