Falling In Love: Of All The Dumb Luck (On Hold)

Chapter 35

So, I didn't tell Jared about what Mateo said about taking Adalyn with me. At that moment, it was the furthest thing from my mind. She was only a month old, and I could never take her away from her father, they were inseparable. His shifts at the hospital were already to long to be apart, they wouldn't have been able to last a week, let alone a month.

Until I didn't have a choice in the matter. Either I left Adalyn with Jared or she came with me.

"What do you mean? You're not taking our daughter across the country with you." Jared yelled.

"Lower your voice; the kids are sleeping." He scoffed.

"I can't leave her, and I have to go."

"She can stay here with me." He whisper-yelled.

"You have to work. You can't take care of a baby."

"I'll take time off." His voice grew louder, then softened, sentimenal. "I don't want to be away from her."

"I know..." And in that moment, I knew what had to happen. "If you can get time off from work, I'll leave Adalyn with you." My voice broke unwillingly.

"Babe." His arms wrapped around my shoulders. I buried myself deeper into his body.

"You can take Adalyn with you." He whispered.

I pulled myself from his grasp, looked into his eyes and wiped the tears from my face. His face was searching mine, curiously. His eyes were, still, the same chestnut brown they had been all those years ago in the café.

"No. No." I wiped a stray tear from my cheek. "Adalyn can stay here with you. I'm going to be so busy with the book tour and I think she'd rather spend time with her daddy."

"Are you sure?" I nodded.

"I'm sure she'd rather spend time with you than be stuck at a book signing. It's three weeks. It'll go by in a snap."

********** Two months later

We'll I lied, not intentionally, but I did.

These three weeks were going anything but fast. I was a week into my trip and it felt like a decade.

I sat in my hotel room, waiting for the phone to ring. Waiting for his face to pop up across my phone's screen.

A dreaded fifteen minutes later, Jared's face illuminated on the screen.

Jared and Adalyn popped into frame over FaceTime.

"Oh my God. Look at my baby girl. Look at how big you are. Mommy misses you."

"Say, 'We miss you, too, mommy.'" Jared said in a baby friendly voice.

Then he yelled over his shoulder, "Mikey! Aurora! Come day hi to mommy." Then back, "And guess who slept through the night."

Adalyn giggled in his lap, and he blew bubbles on her belly, followed by more giggles.

I missed milestones. Smiling, laughing, and sleeping through the night. My face fell.

"Babe. Are you okay?" Jared watched me.

"Yeah. I'm great. Just taking in all the giggling."

"Yeah. You should have seen it. Adalyn was in her bouncer and Mikey decided to jump off the swing. He fell and she broke out laughing. She laughed for twenty minutes straight."

"I've told him at least a hundred times not to do it. He's going to get hurt one of these times."

"Yeah. We had a talk about that."