Not Quite Mine (Not Quite #2)(51)
Author: Catherine Bybee

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 hotel interior designer, charts and lists had become something she couldn’t live without.

“Let’s start with the bright side, shall we, Savannah?”

Savannah pulled in her cheeks and blinked.

“Pros…we get to see Dean every day,” she whispered. And I can sleep with him every night.

“You can have your own room. It’s a house and not an apartment.” Not that she minded living with Monica, but compared to what she was used to, her current personal space was smaller than her closet back home.

“If Jessie were to drop in to visit Monica, we’d be busted.” Katie put a few pluses next to Jessie’s name on the paper.

“I can work from Dean’s house some days. Oh, and carpool.” Not that she’d ever worried about that in the past.

Now for the cons…“We’ll miss Monica.” Yet even as she jotted Monica’s name on the con side of the paper, she had to write it on the plus side, too. Monica would never complain, but Katie had ambushed her into staying with her in the first place. She was young and single. Taking care of a baby after helping her own sister with her nephew couldn’t be on top of her list of things she wanted to do. Besides, visiting Monica would be easier and more appreciated if they didn’t live together.

“Babysitter?” She wrote the word with a big question mark next to it. Mrs. Hoyt was the only babysitter Savannah knew outside of Monica. Maybe Mrs. Hoyt could be bribed to drive over to sit with Savannah. Katie would have to ask or start her search for a sitter again.

Katie put aside her pen and removed the bottle from Savannah’s lips to burp her midway through her meal. After only a few encouraging taps on her back, Savannah belched better than a fan at a baseball game and then settled in to the remainder of her meal.

She tapped her pen on the paper, searching for another con. Everything else she could think of fell under the unknown category.

How would Dean react to being a full-time live-in with an infant? With her? Would they tire of each other? Would their feelings fade?

The question that kept popping up in her head was, would she regret not taking a chance if she didn’t move in with him? The answer was a big, huge yes.

Placing her notepad aside, Katie removed the bottle from Savannah’s slack lips and carefully lifted her into the bassinet. Then Katie settled back in her bed.

As Katie drifted off to sleep, she lost most of the fear she’d been thinking about all night and replaced it with excitement.

Outside of a weekend engagement, she’d never lived with a man she wasn’t related to. There would be challenges, but Dean was right. She confronted life’s tests head-on.