Page 86 of Bad & Bossy

“I know you’re having a shit time but you need a break,” she said. “Come on.”

I blinked at her before briefly locking eyes with Cole. “Lots, I love you, but I’m not leaving Drew.”

“I know,” she grinned.

Sticking her free hand into the bag at her side, she fished out a little nanny cam and stuck it to the desk opposite Drew’s bed. “You can keep an eye on him while we go get bagels or something downstairs.”

“But—”

“I’ll watch him, Dana,” Cole said, his voice thick with sleep and the weight of nearly forty-eight hours of tense silence. He sat up straight in his chair. “Go.”

I stilled, glancing between the two of them. I didn’t want to leave him alone with Cole if what I thought was true. But I’d also been with him nonstop for almost two days. If he was drinking, the only privacy he had was the en suite bathroom. He appeared sober, acted sober, but so did Mom when she fucked up.

Lottie gave me a single nod. “He’s got it.”

“Okay.”

————

I stared at the screen of Lottie’s phone, watching as Cole walked a little plastic dinosaur across Drew’s legs and forced a sickly giggle from him.

“You have to eat,” Lottie said, shoving a cream-cheese-filled bagel into my hand. “If you want to take care of him, you have to take care of yourself, too.”

We were sitting outside, away from the stale hospital environment, trying to get some fresh air. I sighed and set the phone on the picnic table, leaving the stream running.

“I just feel fucking sick. It’s all too much.”

“The bagel or the world?”

“Both.”

“Well, you can’t fix the world,” Lottie sighed, breaking off a piece of the bagel and holding it out for me. I glared at her. “But you can eat the bagel.”

I plucked it from her fingers and stuffed it in my mouth, savoring the first real food I’d had in days.

“You’re not a bad mother, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Lottie said gently. “You couldn’t have prevented this.”

I snorted as I took another bite from my bagel. “I absolutely could have. I could have gotten a second opinion. I could have gone back to the doctor instead of waiting for the meds they gave him to work. I could have kicked my piece of shit sister out the moment she arrived. I could have stayed in Hawaii.”

She shot me a glare. “If you’d stayed in Hawaii, you wouldn’t have Drew.”

“I wouldn’t have Cole.”

“You can’t possibly regret Cole enough to wish your son wasn’t born,” she deadpanned, side-eying the monitor and taking a bite of her bagel. “I know you better than that.”

“No, of course not,” I sighed. “But fuck, life would be easier. And I wouldn’t have all this guilt and all these problems.”

“You’d have just as many problems, just different ones.”

It was my turn to shoot a glare at her.

Silence fell between us for a moment as we both ate, our gazes locked on Cole as he climbed onto the side of Drew’s bed, careful of the wires and tubes, and settled in next to him to read him a book. I hated the way that it tugged at my heart.

“Do you think he’s relapsed?” I asked, the words hanging between us for a moment. I wished I could hear what Cole was reading him. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

Lottie sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t think so, but it’s hard to tell with him,” she said, her voice small, quieter. “If you’re asking if I know anything, I honestly don’t. I’d tell you this time.”

“I need to know for sure,” I breathed. “I don’t know what to do. I need to tell him the truth, but if he has fallen down that path again, I can’t do it. I can’t have him around Drew. Not after this, not after the shit with my mom, but I don’t want to keep him from his son, either.”

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