Total pages in book: 197
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
“Why is that so easy for you?” Catrina asked.
Dante passed her a look that she couldn’t decipher. “Pardon?”
“The baby—everything is easy for you with her. She’ll sleep for you, and eat for you. She doesn’t cry for you, and when she does, you soothe her like it’s nothing. I try everything you do, and everything everybody else does, and she just ... it doesn’t take. It’s like I don’t fucking know how to take care of her or something.”
Dante just stared.
Catrina swallowed hard, and glanced down at her clenched hands mumbling, “I don’t know.”
She had never felt so entirely out of place with something in her life before. Never so entirely useless at the one thing she should be good at. This was her baby. She made her, and birthed her. And she didn’t even seem to know how to keep her alive, for Christ’s sake.
“Cat,” Dante said softly, “why don’t you go relax for a minute. Lucian called to let me know he came to pick up Michel earlier, so I know he’s not going to be back for the night. And I’m home now, so I’ve got Catherine. Just ... go have one of your salt baths, and take five minutes to breathe.”
“I—”
“Go.”
His tone offered no room for argument. Usually, that would be the cue for Catrina to stand up, and do exactly that. Their entire relationship was built on the fact he loved her because she was a challenging woman who liked to challenge him.
They wouldn’t be them, otherwise.
And still, she hesitated.
Still, she was too exhausted for even that.
So, she didn’t.
She just did what he said.
*
Catrina came out of the bath to find her house was ... strangely quiet. She knew it was just about the time Catherine would need to feed, and so, the baby’s cries should have been filling up the house until she finally got a bottle.
And even then, she still cried sometimes.
What a strange thing ...
“Oh, you’re out, Cat.”
Catrina tightened her silk robe a little more at her waist at the sound of her mother-in-law’s cheery voice. Leaning out of the nursery, Cecelia wore her usual sweet smile.
“Dante didn’t say you were coming over,” Cat said.
Cecelia shrugged. “He called me to come over a little while ago, actually.”
Oh.
“Why?”
“Because he thought ... well, he thought maybe I could help,” Cecelia said.
Catrina’s throat tightened a little bit, and her chest ached. She had the strangest urge to be pissed at her husband, and yet grateful at the same time. She wanted to refuse and deny any help or the idea that she needed it because of foolish pride, and the need to make everyone believe she was entirely in control of every single aspect of her life.
And yet, she couldn’t do that at all.
“I thought this would be easy,” Catrina said quietly. “Not ... taking care of a baby, but just ... I don’t know.”
“I do,” Cecelia said, stepping out of the nursery and closing the door behind her. “Suddenly, you get this baby shoved into your arms, and the first thing you think is, Oh, I love them. And then the second thing is, What the hell am I supposed to do?”
Cat laughed. “Even you?”
“We all have moments when we feel out of our element, Cat. There’s nothing wrong with you, either, just because you’re feeling that way. Not every woman is born knowing how to be a mother, and that’s okay, too. Some have to learn it, but as long as you love your baby with all of your heart, then the rest will work itself out.”
“You think?”
Cecelia smiled in that way of hers again. “Oh, I know. And since you have me here, I would love to show you all the things that helped me with fussy little Dante. Did he ever tell you about the night he was born?”
“No. What happened?”
“He cried loud enough to keep his entire wing up for hours on end. They released me early just to get him out of the hospital, I swear. And he kept crying, and crying. I swore he only stopped crying when Antony held him during that first week, or if I swaddled him tight enough that he didn’t know if he was still in the womb, or out in the world.”
“Huh,” Cat said.
Cecelia nodded. “But it passed. All of this passes, Catrina. Eventually.”
“I do, though.”
“What is that?”
“Love her entirely,” Catrina said. “I just wish I didn’t feel so fucking bad at it.”
“That is the very last thing you are bad at, I promise you.” Cecelia waved a finger. “And that feeling? Yeah, that will pass, too.”
Her mother-in-law was right.
Cat just needed someone else to tell her it.
Sometimes, that was just how life worked.
The Birth
Dante peeled open his eyes, and knew without turning over that his very pregnant wife was not in bed with him. So was Catrina’s ways, lately. Her moods, and sleep—or lack of it—determined whether or not he woke up alone, or warm with her beside him.