Page 96 of Hold Me Until Morning

Not when she’d lost so much. Not when she’d sacrificed everything for them. Working three jobs and then coming home to take care of them, cooking and cleaning and showering them with love when he knew she didn’t get more than three hours of sleep at night.

He could chip in this little bit, and one day, he would get to the place where he could finally take her burden away.

Permanently.

“This isn’t just your struggle. We’re a team. A family,” he told her.

She pulled her hand from his chest and set it on his cheek. “How could I ever deserve you?”

“I’m the one who got lucky. So just let me give this little bit, yeah?”

Because he would always, always take care of her. No matter what it took.

TWENTY

HAILEY

Tinkling laughter nudged me from sleep. Confused, I pushed up on my elbows where I’d been sleeping face down, and I squinted at my pillow as I turned my ear to the sound that echoed in the distance.

Maddie.

I’d be able to identify her sweet laugh in a crowd of a thousand people, though this morning it was muddled, coming from somewhere outside the house.

Alarm raced through my veins when I came to the swift realization she wasn’t inside, and I tossed off my covers, flew out of bed, and fumbled through the latch on my bedroom door. My feet smacked against the hard floor as I raced to the back door, my heart in my throat and fear churning through my senses.

She knew she wasn’t supposed to go outside alone.

Especially after Pruitt had shown up last night.

Only I skidded to a stop, my hands shooting out for support and my nose touching the glass panes as I stared out at the scene.

Cody was facing away and kneeling on one knee, sifting through the disorder of plastic pieces of Maddie’s playhouse that were dumped out on the lawn. Maddie was dancing around him, on her toes, clapping her hands and talking nonstop, though I couldn’t make out her words from inside.

Only I was sure they were a form of her sweet manipulation that she’d used on him.

Inhaling a steeling breath, I opened the door and stepped out onto the back porch.

It was still cool enough, though the sun climbed its way from the horizon into the sky, the vast stretch above pinked with the first light of morning.

A slight breeze wisped through the trees, birds flitting and chirping and rustling through the leaves.

I eased toward the end of the porch and somehow managed to find my voice. “What’s going on out here?”

From over his shoulder, Cody swiveled to look at me, grin tweaking wide. “Good morning, Shortcake,” he said, rather than answering.

“Hi,” I barely managed.

Though Maddie clapped and jumped, all too happy to fill me in on the details. “Guess what, Mommy? Mr. Cody said he bet he could put my playhouse together since you already said it was so many pieces and there was no way on this godforsaken earth you were going to be able to put the damned thing back together.”

I cringed.

Maddie’d overheard me mumbling it yesterday afternoon when I’d been out there in that exact same spot as Cody was now, rifling through the pieces and having no clue where to even begin. I’d made the mistake of taking it apart when we moved, and I didn’t have the instructions to put it back together.

“Mommy didn’t mean for you to hear that. I was going to figure it out,” I explained.

“I think Mr. Cody is probably way better at it than you.”

Yeah, I thought he probably was, too, but still, I was reprimanding, “Cody isn’t here for you to swindle him into doing jobs for you, Maddie.”

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