Carolina Wren

Chapter 47

Wren's POV

Given a choice between Kota and Nathan's houses, I would have chosen Nate's to babyproof any day of the week. The Lee household felt more like a home, warm and inviting, but also filled with things. I wouldn't call it cluttered by any stretch of the imagination, more of a natural accumulation that comes from living a normal life, but it was clear that the kids who lived there were old enough to be trusted not to chunk something ornamental across the room.

Besides his bedroom, Nate's house felt like a model home. Impersonal was a good word to use to describe it. If I didn't know better, it would surprise me that someone, especially a lone teenage boy, lived here. There were only a few photographs and very little left out in the open. Even so, any time Keegan pulled up on anything or reached for anything, Nathan would tense up and ask me if it was safe for him. He had the same faintly terrified look on his face that I'd had on mine when Keegan started moving independently for the first time.

Even before he figured out crawling, he'd mastered the art of rolling across the floor as a mode of transportation. Unprepared didn't even begin to cover it, especially in a house with a raging alcoholic and drug addict.

I wasn't doing much better than Nathan. From the first moment I looked around, I'd pinpointed countless risks. Something about it being someone else's house, a house with a dad I knew was abusive, made it that much more nerve wracking that my brother might decide to practice for his future in professional baseball with some glass orb thing. In the hours after everyone left, I felt like a mad woman trying to pinpoint everything that needed to be moved. I didn't want to be the reason that Nathan got in trouble.

And if I missed something, Keegan tried helping by finding them for me. At first, he'd been contained in the living room with Gabe and Dylan but then I left the room to work in other parts of the house and Juni fell asleep on Gabe, effectively turning him into stone for fear of waking her up. Keegan, knowing an opportunity when he saw one, decided to follow us around, picking up anything he could reach that either looked shiny or like a toy.

Not being allowed to play with Nathan's zombie figurine definitely led to a tantrum.

By the time Silas showed up, I was ready to toss in the towel and tell the boys that they were both napping twice today. They hadn't been bad once we got food in their bellies, but I was still tired and at the end of my rope when it came to keeping a toddler alive. The look of excitement on Dylan's face stopped me, though. He needed something good, something he was looking forward to.

Someone had set up Juni's pack and play in Nate's room already, so I let the guys give the boys the rules to use the pool while I got her down for a nap. Keegan was only excited because Dylan was excited, but I didn't expect him to absorb any of the rules, anyway. Dylan was practically buzzing, but Nate had made it clear that he wasn't going to be allowed in the water unless he was sure that he'd been paying attention.

"Here," Gabe said as I quietly shut Nate's door behind me, a stack of swimsuits with two packages of diapers lying under them in his hands. "I ordered swim diapers for Keegan and Juni back when we bought the swimsuits. Hopefully they're the right size."

My anger and frustration with them sat like a bitterness in my stomach, no longer actively seething but coloring every action they took. Thoughtful moments like this made the queasy mass churn uneasily with the echoes of the feelings I'd had for them. They clearly cared but it was such a contrast to how they had treated us over the last few weeks that it mostly left me confused. "Thank you," I murmured as I took the stack from his hands, my arms feeling awkwardly stiff.