“It’s okay, son,” I crooned loudly over his wailing. “Almost there, bud!”

I rolled onto our short, gravel driveway, and was out of the car as soon as I’d placed it in park.

“You’re okay,” I said, pulling him out of his seat, “Good grief, it’s like I haven’t fed you in days!” He looked at me for a second, all noise paused, then screamed again while I laughed at his frantic fingers gripping and pulling at my shirt.

“Okay, let’s get inside.”

I turned to the front door and stopped short.

Patrick.

I watched his face as his eyes landed on my son, screaming and squirming against me, and I could barely breathe.

He looked good. More muscular than he’d ever been before, his beard reaching the top of his collarbone, and tattoos peppering his defined forearms. God, I’d missed him. Missed him and hated him for so long.

“Your mum’s at work,” I finally choked out, bouncing Nix, who didn’t give a shit that I was freaking out.

“I—” Patrick ran his fingers over the top of his hair that was pulled into a stubby ponytail at the back of his neck. “Can we talk? It looks like ye need to get her inside.”

I startled, looking down at my son’s cream one-piece outfit, and smiled fondly. I guess it was a little hard to tell…

“He’s a boy,” I replied, finally continuing toward the house.

“Shite, I’m sorry,” Patrick replied, his face turning red.

I laughed a little at his discomfort. Leave it to a baby to break the ice.

“Well, he’s not in blue and he’s kind of pretty,” I said with a small smile. “How would you know?”

I let us into the house and moved right toward the couch in the living room, grabbing a thin receiving blanket on my way. Nix wasn’t going to wait any longer, and after five months, I’d lost most of my anxiety about breastfeeding him in mixed company. Patrick would just have to deal.

We sat at opposite sides of the couch, and I ignored Patrick as I threw the blanket over my shoulder and Nix’s head, quickly pulling up my shirt and unclasping the front of my bra. The house was so quiet that we both heard as Nix latched on hungrily, and I felt my face heat as the slurping noises ensued. Christ on a cracker.

“He was hungry,” Patrick said quietly, chuckling a little.

“He gets pissed when he has to wait for a feeding,” I replied, looking up to finally meet Patrick’s eyes for the first time in over a year.

My breath caught in my throat and I quickly looked down again. He was looking at us so tenderly that I had a hard time holding back my tears. Shit.

“Why didn’t ye tell me?” Patrick asked hoarsely. “Why wouldn’t ye say anyt’in’?”

My head snapped up, and I looked closely at his face.

“Who told you?”

“Doc—” he cleared his throat, rubbing at his eyes. “Doc said ye were raped?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“But why? Why didn’t ye tell me? I came for ye. I love ye.” His hand reached out as if to touch me, then dropped to the upholstery between us. “Doc told me, and I wanted to come back for ye, but Brenna was just born, and fuck Amy, after how I’d behaved, I didn’t think ye’d want to see me.”

I swallowed hard, months of therapy forcing me to tell him the truth as I tried to ignore the tears in his eyes. “I blamed you. I hated you.”

“What?” He seemed so confused that I’d blurted it out that way. Not that he’d necessarily disagreed… but he hadn’t been expecting my answer. He obviously had no idea what I was talking about, and that’s how I knew that Doc hadn’t told him everything.

“I don’t blame you anymore,” I answered, shaking my head. “It wasn’t fair. I know that now—but at the time, well, things were messed up for a while.”

“Is it because I left ye?” he asked desperately. “I didn’t want to leave ye! Ye know dat. I begged ye to leave first! God, I would have done anyt’in’ for ye, ye have to know dat. Ye have to know dat I’d—”

“Shhh,” I whispered to Nix as he startled at Patrick’s loud voice.

Patrick ran the palms of his hands over his eyes, and I noticed the wedding band covering his anchor tattoo.

Nothing in that moment could have hurt worse.

“None of that matters anymore, does it?” I asked gently, gesturing with my chin toward his hand. “I guess things turned out the way they were supposed to.”

Nix popped off my breast then, but I was frozen, watching as Patrick’s eyes dropped to the ring on his finger. He ran his thumb over it and swallowed, then looked at me sadly.

“It’s not legal. Moira just wanted—” his words cut off as Nix lost patience with me and tugged the blanket down over his face.

Half of my breast was bare, and I scrambled to pull my shirt down over it to hide the blue-veined skin.

Patrick made a low noise in his throat that I ignored as I turned Nix and situated him at my other breast with the blanket once again covering both him and my chest. My bra was still hanging on my shoulders, and I knew my nipple was hard under the t-shirt, but I didn’t let myself think about it or bring more attention to it as I tried to hide it.

“Yer bigger,” Patrick commented, his voice barely audible. “And ye’ve—”

“Stop,” I demanded, raising my hand up between us.