address mixed up with a nursery.
The next day a bouquet of orchids arrived along with a box of formula.
At work, Dean asked how Savannah was eating. Katie let him know she wouldn’t be hungry for weeks.
Then came star lilies with a teddy bear…then sunflowers with a handmade knit blanket.
By the time Monica arrived home from Florida, the apartment looked like a gift shop.
“My God, this place looks like a flower shop threw up in here,” Monica said when she walked in.
“Dean.”
Monica dropped her duffel bag at the door and sniffed the first bouquet. “Did you fight?”
Katie laughed. “No. He wants me and Savannah to move in with him.”
Monica moved to the second set of flowers and sniffed. “All this to convince you to change your address?”
Smiling, Katie said, “Yeah. He sent stuff for Savannah, too.”
“Wow.” Monica moved into the room and flopped onto the couch. “Hold out for something that won’t die or get used up,” she told her with a laugh.
Katie reached over and hugged Monica. “It’s good to see you. How was it?”
“Amazing. I know it’s only training…but the people were crazy-excited about what they do. It’s an adrenaline rush like nothing else. There was disaster triage training, figuring out who was beyond saving, and working on those who had a chance.”
The thought sickened Katie, but she understood the drama enough through Monica’s eyes to be excited for her friend.
“Could you leave someone who was suffering to take care of someone else?”
“I don’t know. I have to try. In the ER we’re told that one day we might have to make that choice but, as of yet, I’ve always stayed with a patient until there was nothing left. The thought of getting out there in the thick of something and working day after day to help people…I like it, Katie. Helping people is why I wanted to be a nurse.” Monica’s green eyes sparkled as she spoke.
“Thank God there are people like you out there. I couldn’t do it.”
Monica tapped her thigh and moved from the couch to the refrigerator. “Don’t sell yourself short. You’d do what you had to if pushed to the wall. I doubt you’d crumble.”
Katie shrugged. “If pushed, maybe. But I wouldn’t jump in the disaster willingly.”
“According to you, you jumped into some crazy crap earlier in life.” Monica popped the tab on a soda and drank her fill.
Yeah, she had. But with Savannah, that had all changed. Actually, shortly after Jack and Jessie had hooked up, all that had changed.
No…when she and Dean had broken it off! That was when it had all changed. “Life is different now,” she said softly.
“So…ya gonna do it?”
“Do what?”
“Move in with Dean?”
“Should I?”
“Oh, don’t put this on me. This is your decision. You two have a huge history. I couldn’t give you sound advice if I wanted to.”
Fair enough. “I want to. I think I do.”
“What’s stopping you?”
“What if it doesn’t work? How badly will it hurt if I end up leaving?”
Monica drank more soda and smirked. “The easy questions,” she said. “That’s the problems with relationships. You don’t know if they are going to work out. There are no guarantees and tons of heartache along the way.”
“Some work out great, like Jack and Jessie.”
“Some suck, like your parents and mine.”
“That’s cold, Monica.”
Monica looked beyond Katie to a bundle of flowers. “And true, or you’d already be packed.”
She had her there. Fear was what kept her from moving her crap and giving in to the flowers and formula.
“Fear is a shitty way to live life.”
Monica leveled her gaze with Katie’s. “It’s when that fear goes away that you know you’ve found the right person to risk everything for.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Monica’s words spoke to her all night long…even during the three o’clock feeding and diaper changing of Savannah.
Fear. What did she really fear?
She feared Savannah’s biological mom changing her mind.
She feared that her secret would be revealed before Patrick could identify the real mom.
She feared…nothing else. At one point, she’d worried how Dean would react to Savannah. If the last couple of weeks were any indication, Dean was on board the baby express and more than willing to help. The fact that he knew about Savannah helped with the overall hiding of her. None of her family suspected a thing and for that, she was profoundly grateful.
With the lights in her room dimmed and Savannah sucking on her nightly bottle, Katie wrote down the pros and cons of moving in with Dean. Since she’d taken on the job as