Healing Hearts (New Hope Falls #6) - Kimberly Rae Jordan Page 0,11
him on how the day had gone, doing his best to keep the other man involved in the business while he was removed from it due to his injury.
When Lani showed up, Ryker didn’t linger, eager to get back to his own place. Though he was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to fall into bed, he wasn’t sure how the night would go. The image of Bryson’s fear-filled gaze wasn’t quite as fresh in his mind, so he really hoped that his physical exhaustion would be sufficient to sink him deep enough into sleep that his dreams wouldn’t torment him.
It was a bit of wishful thinking on his part, Ryker knew. But these days, if he didn’t have that, he’d never be able to convince himself to sleep after what had happened the previous night.
CHAPTER THREE
“Momma.”
Sophia looked up from where she sat on the lid of the toilet, scrolling through her phone. Bryson sat in a shallow amount of water in the tub surrounded by several toy boats, and he lifted one of them to show it to her.
Some might have said she’d gone overboard with the toys she’d bought him, but considering he’d had none for the first four years of his life, she wasn’t going to keep them from him now. Shortly after their return to New Hope, Nana had given her three hundred dollars for each of them, stating it was for the birthday and Christmas gifts she hadn’t been able to buy them for the past five years.
Though she’d protested at first, in the end, Sophia had accepted the money because she really did need things, especially for Bryson, and she hadn’t had the funds to buy him anything. With money in hand, they’d gone to several thrift stores, and Bryson had picked out a bunch of toys, gravitating to the toy boats and cars as well as the books.
Thankfully, she’d been able to buy quite a few clothes for him and several things for herself as well at the thrift stores, so the money had stretched more than it would have had she gone to even the discount stores. She’d used some of it to buy groceries to set up the pantry at the house, then she’d put the rest in the bank. Once she’d had money coming in regularly from babysitting Vivianne, she’d established a budget and started to set aside a few dollars each week for future toy and clothing purchases.
“Are you almost done playing?” she asked him as she pulled a towel from the cupboard. “I still need to wash your hair.”
He wrinkled his nose at that, but he nodded. Baths were a novelty for him since they’d only had access to showers where they’d lived before.
Together they put his toys into the bucket Sophia had brought into the bathroom to hold them. When that was done, she turned on the water and quickly washed his hair since it wasn’t something he enjoyed very much, even though she now bought the shampoo that wouldn’t irritate his eyes.
“All done, Momma?” he asked after she’d used the handheld showerhead to rinse the shampoo away.
“Almost, baby. Can you stand up?” She pulled the plug before quickly washing his body then rinsing away the soap bubbles. “All done.”
“Yay!”
She helped him out of the tub to stand on the mat and dried him off, wrapping a towel around him since he had a tendency to get cold. Before leaving the bathroom, she grabbed another towel to dry his hair.
Because they’d previously lived their lives according to a rigid schedule, Sophia had initially thought that she’d abandon all schedules once they were free of that life. While she might have been okay with that, she’d quickly discovered that wasn’t the case for Bryson. He needed to know what was coming throughout their day. So each night, he got a bath as part of his bedtime routine.
“Which pajamas do you want tonight?” Sophia asked as she herded him into the bedroom where his clothes were kept. Earlier, she’d laid out two different pairs on the bed in an effort to encourage him to make a choice for himself.
He stood wrapped in his towel, looking back and forth between the two pairs of footed pajamas. She didn’t rush him, knowing that even though they’d been back in New Hope Falls for a few months now, being able to choose like this was still new to him.
“These ones,” he said, patting the pair that had toy cars on them.