“One thing you’ll learn about me if you stick around,” I say with a chuckle as I pick up Nicholas, “is that I love the holidays. My village is my pride and joy.”

“Seeing all this, I have no doubt.”

“Grab the diaper bag and follow me.” There is more décor around the house, but he can find those things later. I tried to act tough and make it sound like stinky diapers don’t bother me, but there’s no denying this is a ripe one. “You can watch me change this one, but you’re helping with the next half dozen ‘til you get the hang of it. After that, it’s fair game, buddy.”

Now that I know why the bedrooms are a mess, the thought of having to clean them is pissing me off. Nicky must feel the tension coming off me from my irritable thoughts and starts to wiggle and whimper a little as I pull of his clothes, swap his stinky diaper for a fresh clean one, then wrestle him into some jammies.

“Can I lay him down?” Tiny asks from my right side where he’s stood watching every step of Nicky’s nighttime routine.

“Here,” I hand him the now half-asleep zombie baby. “I need to heat him a bottle.”

From there, feeding the little man, and getting him settled in his crib for the night goes pretty quick and with no muss or fuss. I switch on the baby monitor, grab the receiver, and pull the bedroom door almost shut, leaving it open just a crack. Tinyfollows me into the kitchen and I grab us both a beer from the fridge. He accepts his with a nod.

We’re both a few sips in and I can feel the sexual tension rising. Before anything happens that shouldn’t, because of too many reasons to name right now, I need to get out of the same space as him.

“Feel free to eat whatever you find in the fridge.” I point at the stainless-steel appliance like he’s never seen one before and needs to know where it is. “We’ve got satellite T.V. and a couple streaming services. Feel free to watch whatever you want.”

“And what are you gonna to do?” Tiny is leaning against the counter in front of the sink, arms and ankles crossed just like he was when he was using his body as a humor shield to stop me from grabbing the baby and running out of that office. He looks way too comfortable in my kitchen.

I point toward the hall. “I’m going to go search Taylor’s room and see if there’s anything in there that can tell us why she ran or where she went.”

“I thought you looked in there before you came to find Nicky?” Tiny tips his beer back and drains the last bit before setting the bottle in the sink.

“I mostly looked at the mess she left behind. I didn’t dig through the carnage to see what all was left behind.”

Opening the freezer door, Tiny inspects what his options are, not that there’s too much because I haven’t been to the grocery store in a couple weeks. Shopping was on my agenda for tomorrow, but with this new situation still developing, who knows when I’ll make it.

“Go see what you can find,” he says as he pulls out two frozen pizzas and heads for the oven. “I’ll heat us up some dinner and we’ll have that chat while we eat.”

“Yes sir.” I give a mock salute to his back and back away.

Tiny turns in my direction so fast, I don’t think I blink before he’s got me backed against the nearest wall. “Don’t start anything you don’t plan on lettin’ me finish, little Vixen. Because once I get you under me, we won’t be doin’ much talking.”

“We won’t?” I don’t know who asks, but it surely couldn’t have been me. My heart is racing too fast, my palms are sweaty and pressed flat against the wall at my sides, and my mouth is dry. The heat radiating from Tiny, soaking into my pores, sends shivers all across my body.

“I’ll be telling you what to do,” he almost purrs as he uses the tip of his nose to trace my cheek, “and you’ll be calling out my name as I push every inch of my cock into your pussy,” his lips find a sensitive spot behind my ear, “but there won’t be much else until after I make you come all over my dick.”

I let out a sigh, melting where I stand. My eyes close as he licks a short line down my neck. “Please,” the whore in me begs out loud. I don’t know when she was invited to the party, but the hussy is falling too quickly for this man’s wicked ways. I just wish I knew how to push her back to wherever it was that she came from.

“And while I would love nothing more than to fuck you right here on the kitchen floor,” I feel myself start to fall from the aphrodisiac high that Tiny set me on and crash into the freezing cold pool of reality, “we have too much to sort through before I take you to bed.”

Untangling myself from his arms, which somehow ended up holding my hips, I continue my backward journey to Taylor’s room. “While I can’t deny a small part of me wishes that can happen, we can’t. Nicky is too important to risk us getting involved.”

“Whatever you have to tell yourself, Vixen.” And with that, he turns back to the oven and I escape down the hall.

Our house sits on a wide lot, attached garage on the left, house to the right. When you walk in the front door, the kitchen is on the left, dining room further back, main bathroom behind it, and my primary bedroom and bathroom at the back. The hallway runs down the center, with the living room to the right, Nicky’s bedroom next, and Taylor’s bedroom in the other back corner. I kick my shoes off into my room, then march into the madness.

It doesn’t take me long to find what I didn’t know I was looking for—Taylor’s journals. I had no idea she wrote in journals. How did she keep this hidden for so long? She has a stack of ten notebooks, filled with dated entries going back to when she was fifteen. I flip through a few of the oldest ones, but once I see that they’re her private thoughts about what happened to her as a teenager, I move those to the bottom of the pile and let them remain her private thoughts.

All of the journals are different. Some are spiral bond, while others are the perforated composition style notebooks. Some are a full eight and a half by eleven inches in size, a few are smaller and various different sizes. It looks like she bought something new each time she ran out of pages, because no two are the same. I find the one with a date I recognize and start the reading.

June 15th—I just had a baby boy. Brown eyes and black hair just like his daddy, not that Tiny has any hair on the top of his head. He’s shaved smoother than a cueball.

Nicholas Scott Wilkenson.

I don’t know if we’ll eventually shorten it to Nick or Nicky, but I’ve always loved the name Nicholas. Scott is to honor dad’s memory. I don’t remember anything about him, but Riley tells me he was the best dad. Giving his name to the next generationjust feels right. I hope daddy is looking down on his grandson and keeping him safe.

Speaking of Riley, the look on her face when I told the nurse the name, she burst into tears.