Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 74554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
I loved my grandmother’s house.
But once Caymen started working on fixing it up, he’d found so many issues with it that he recommended I not step foot in it until it was practically stripped and rebuilt.
That was when Kylo and I officially moved in together.
And once we did, I don’t know, I just fell in love with the townhouse with all its great windows, winding neighborhood for long walks, and someone else to do the lawn care.
After the repairs were finished, we both decided that it made the most sense to rent out the house and keep living where we were.
“Yeah,” I said, sucking in a slow breath. “Anxiety is a little high tonight,” I admitted.
Kylo moved in, sitting off the side of the bed with me, his hand sliding up and down my spine in a familiar, comforting way.
“Do you want to take a walk?” he asked, knowing it was one of the best ways for me to calm down.
“Too nauseated,” I said, leaning over to press my head to his shoulder.
“How about a dip in the neighborhood pool?”
“It’s closed,” I reminded him, looking out the darkened window.
“Pretty sure no one would arrest us for taking a dip in the pool at night.”
“I’m too tired.”
I was always tired these days.
It was like adjusting to new meds.
Except I was off all my meds.
I’d weaned off the day after the second line developed on the pregnancy test stick.
Sure, some women could take antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds during pregnancy, but my team and I decided that I was in a stable enough place to wean down and off to reduce any chances of complications.
I had been, as a whole, okay. Probably because I was either too busy throwing up or sleeping to be anxious about anything.
There’d been breakthrough anxiety and panic, but it had been pretty easy to calm with a long walk or a talk with Kylo.
This was the worst I’d felt since going med-free.
“Want to talk about it?”
“It was my own fault. I was reading the comments on a video about childbirth. It was like everyone had a horror story.”
“Aw, darlin’, never scroll the comment section,” he said, pulling me closer for a little side hug. “If you want some good stories, the club is full of women who have been through childbirth over and over with hardly an issue. Hell, you even have her grandmother and their friends, who went through this back before there were advancements to make the process easier and safer.”
“That’s true,” I agreed, sucking in a deep breath, then releasing it with a big huff. “I don’t want the baby to feel all this anxiety.”
“I get that. But the baby is like a kidney bean right now,” Kylo reminded me. “I don’t think he or she is feeling anything. You’re anxious because you’ve been so sick. Once you can eat again and stop getting sick all the time, your anxiety is going to get a lot better.”
“You’re right.”
When I didn’t feel well, everything spiraled for me.
And while I was bone-deep tired, my sleep was clipped and short thanks to the rolling in my stomach that kept waking me up.
“How about we try to get a nap now?” he asked, fingers rubbing at the tension in the back of my neck.
“I’m supposed to be giving Ernest a bath.”
“Ernest will appreciate having another day without being traumatized like that.”
“True. And him getting a bath means I get a bath, and then I need a shower. It’s a whole thing. Okay.”
I slid up the bed and under the blankets, trying not to think of the dozens of things I needed to catch up on since I started feeling so crummy and couldn’t do any of my usual chores.
Kylo, bless him, had been picking up the slack. But I felt guilty spending most of my day on the bathroom floor or moaning in misery on the couch.
“Come here,” Kylo said, sliding an arm under me and curling me up onto his chest. “I can practically hear those gears turning. Try to shut those thoughts down.”
“I haven’t done anything in four days.”
“You don’t have anything you need to do.”
Work wise that was true. With the job from Teddy finalized several months back, it became abundantly clear that I needed some extra help at the shop. To replace Traeg, but also to help pick up the slack. Eventually, those employees got good enough to handle things on their own. I mostly dropped in on delivery days and came in to do all the trimming of the mother plants to make new baby ones.
It meant I had a lot of free time on my hands.
But I always kept my days full. There were always chores to do. Sometimes I worked in the garden out front, or visited my grandmother, or even went to the clubhouse to hang out.