Page 84 of Stone Vows

She’s laughing. At him. A stranger.

I’m mesmerized watching him interact with her. He doesn’t have kids, yet he’s a natural. So calm and confident. I guess it comes from being a doctor.

I quietly walk around the back of the couch, over to the kitchen where I grab a bottle of water from his refrigerator. Kyle hears me open it.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he says. “I heard her wake up, but you were dead asleep. I wanted to give you a few more minutes of shut-eye. I know yesterday was a big day for you, seeing Caden and all.”

“It’s fine,” I say, admiring the way he’s holding Ellie. “She seems taken with you.”

He shrugs. “I have that effect on all the ladies.”

I roll my eyes. “But at least you’re humble about it.”

He laughs and then turns back to Ellie, who is playing with the buttons on his shirt. “Case in point,” he says. “She doesn’t even care that you are over there talking to me.”

I come out from behind the kitchen counter and Kyle’s jaw drops. He rakes his eyes slowly up my body, starting at my bare feet and ending with what is most definitely a bad case of bed head.

I look down at myself, realizing that in my haste to get to Ellie, I forgot pants. The t-shirt Kyle gave me to sleep in covers my undies and hits me mid-thigh, revealing a lot of leg. Nothing he hasn’t seen before, but still, the way he’s looking at me—he’s a starving man and I’m filet mignon.

It makes me wonder what he’s been doing all these months. He says he’s focusing on his career. But he’s a man. A man in his twenties. A gorgeous man. Men like that aren’t celibate.

Ellie starts to squirm around in his lap. She throws her head back and cries. She’s hungry.

“I think she must want breakfast,” he says. “Are you hungry, Ellie? Do you want Mommy to feed you?”

She keeps crying.

I walk around the sofa and tell him, “Put your thumb opposite your fingers and open and close your fist, like you’re milking a cow.” I demonstrate how to do it. “Like this.”

He looks at me in confusion.

“It’s the sign for milk,” I say.

He looks down at Ellie, studying her. I expect him to look sad, take pity on her perhaps. But he doesn’t. He looks surprised, yes, but he doesn’t look at her like she’s any less of a person. “She’s deaf?” he asks me.

“Yes.”

He uses his hand to sign to her as I instructed, and Ellie immediately calms down. Then I walk over so she can see me and she raises up her arms to me.

I sit on the other end of his couch, pulling a blanket over me so I don’t reveal too much when I lift my shirt to nurse her.

“I had no idea, Lexi.”

“I know you didn’t. I left the hospital before they did her hearing test. I promised them I would have my pediatrician do it.”

“And what did her pediatrician say?”

“That she is profoundly deaf.”

“Did he talk to you about cochlear implants?”

I nod. “Yes. But I’m choosing not to go that way. I know most people wouldn’t understand my reasons, least of all doctors who want to fix everything. But, Kyle, she doesn’t need to be fixed. She’s perfect just the way she is and I won’t have anyone telling her she’s not.”

He holds up his hands in surrender. “I would never try to talk you into something you didn’t want, Lexi. As her mother, you know what’s best for her. And I happen to agree with you. In med school, I wrote a research paper on this very subject. Children who are profoundly deaf have no concept of sound. They are visual learners. Having an implant might actually confuse their senses and delay learning.”

I look up at him, floored by his understanding. His unconditional acceptance of her.

“That’s part of why I didn’t want to do it,” I say. “So many people look at deaf people as if they aren’t normal. They try to make them fit into the hearing world. I didn’t want that for her. Being deafisnormal for her.”

---