Page 27 of Before You Can Blink (Rust Canyon #4)

Jett

August

The piercing cries of my infant son floated up toward the night sky as I bounced him in a futile attempt at calming whatever ailed him. He had a strong set of lungs, and the only time he wasn’t putting them to use was when his mouth was firmly affixed to his mother’s breast.

“Come on, bud. You gotta let your mama get some sleep.”

Forget that I was running on fumes; my exhaustion didn’t hold a candle to Daisy’s.

Her body was still recovering from delivering a nine-pound baby that had ripped her lower half to shreds, without the help of pain meds.

And that was before you considered that our baby boy was literally sucking the life out of her, demanding to be nursed at all hours of the day and night.

“Might as well bring him in,” Daisy’s weary voice called out from the open door of the cabin .

I hiked Tripp onto my shoulder. “Go back to bed. I’ll take him further away so you can’t hear him.”

She sighed. “Jett, you need sleep too.” I opened my mouth to protest, but it slammed shut again when she pointed a finger in my direction, warning, “And don’t you dare lie to me and say that you don’t.

It’s been two weeks of this. Neither of us are any good to the kids if we’re falling asleep standing. ”

“All that’s gonna happen if I bring him inside is he’ll wake Aspen,” I countered.

Daisy’s lips curved into a sad smile. “You’re right. But that just means we have to give him what he wants, or we all suffer.”

I arched an eyebrow. “How you fixin’ to do that?”

Barefoot, she descended the porch steps and walked across the grass to where I stood. Easing Tripp from my hold into hers, she used one hand to pull down the neckline of her nightgown to free her breast, and within seconds, his wails were replaced with the sound of greedy sucking.

Tilting her head toward the cabin, she said, “Come on.”

I knew better than to argue, so I followed her inside, latching the door behind us. By the time I turned around, she’d already eased onto the mattress, lying on her side with Tripp cradled to her chest as he nursed noisily.

“Lie down, Jett,” she beckoned me over with a drowsy whisper.

This was her plan? Sleep in the bed with the baby?

My anxiety shot through the roof. There was no way I would be getting any rest when all I could see was the mental image of my large frame rolling over in the middle of the night and unconsciously crushing my son’s fragile little body.

Daisy appeared to have no such concerns. By the time I reached the mattress, she was out cold, alongside the baby boy whose rosebud lips had already released her nipple .

Little stinker.

If he hadn’t stolen my spot in bed, I would have been impressed that at only two weeks old, he’d figured out how to play his mama like a fiddle.

Grabbing my pillow, I dropped it to the narrow space between the bed frame and Aspen’s cot.

As I lowered to the floor, my groan roused my miniature sleeping beauty, and she called out sleepily, “Dada?”

I rubbed her back in hopes of getting her to conk back out. “Shh, sweetheart. It’s nighttime.”

The rustling of sheets announced my failure, and Aspen climbed out of bed, making grabby hands toward me in the dark. “Dada.”

“Okay, okay.” I pulled her into my arms, settled her warm weight atop my chest, and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. Instantly, her breathing evened out, indicating her return to dreamland.

If there were any doubts as to whether the Sullivan kids were running the show in this household, they were laid to rest tonight.

November

With clinical precision, I manipulated the pliers in my gloved hand to remove the staples left behind on the fence post after cutting away the damaged wire that needed to be replaced. Wade was a few posts down the way, doing the same thing, the two of us working in companionable silence.

That was, until a shrill cry reached my ears, and my head whipped up.

I barely managed to stifle a groan. It was a cry that had been imprinted on my brain over the past four months.

“You hear that?” Wade called out .

My heavy sigh couldn’t be contained. “Yeah.”

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that sounded like—”

As if on cue, my ma crested the horizon, my red-faced, screaming son held in one arm as she trudged across the field.

The look of displeasure etched across her face brought with it a sense of foreboding. We were beyond fortunate that she watched the kids while Daisy and I were working, but I could see even from this distance she was at her wits’ end with my inconsolable infant.

She unceremoniously shoved Tripp against my chest. “I can’t do it anymore, Jett.” Exasperated, she huffed, “He won’t eat, he won’t sleep, and all he does is holler all damn day.”

Scrubbing my free hand down my face, I muttered, “Tell me something I don’t already know.”

My mother shook her head. “Might want to reconsider the baptism. An exorcism might be more fitting.”

“I’ll take your suggestion under advisement.”

Wincing as Tripp’s screeching reached a new decibel, I tried passing him back to Ma.

She took a giant step backward, holding up both her hands. “Oh no, he’s your problem now.”

My jaw dropped, and a disbelieving exhale flew past my lips before I regained my bearings.

“What the hell do you expect me to do with him?” I gestured to the open land as far as the eye could see.

“This isn’t a place for a baby, and we can’t afford for Daisy to quit her job just because we got saddled with an ornery infant. ”

Ma cocked her hip. “You wanna know what’s gonna happen if I take him back to my house?”

I mentally braced during the short pause before she answered the rhetorical question .

“He’s gonna acquire a taste for whiskey because that’s a surefire way to get him to shut up and pass out.” Under her breath, she added, “It sure worked on every chatty man that’s ever found his way into my bed.”

Fuck my life. Just when I thought I might be making some headway with a small step forward, I was shoved back three giant paces.

Irritation crawled up the back of my neck like a bad rash. “Fine,” I grumbled. “Better get outta here before I change my mind.”

Sufficiently dismissed, my mother turned on her heel and began walking away. But she didn’t make it far before she tossed over her shoulder, “Whatever baby-making position you used, steer clear of it for the next one.”

I almost snorted. The idea of another baby was laughable when I held the biggest cockblocker known to man in my arms. I’d barely gotten within three feet of Daisy since his arrival.

Looking skyward, I silently asked God why he continued to test me.

Was his intention to see how far he could make me bend before I broke?

Because if so, He was going to be sorely disappointed.

I was just as stubborn as the horses I used to ride and now raised.

I refused to break. Not when my family was counting on me.

“I just don’t know what we’re going to do,” Daisy lamented as we sat around the dinner table inside the Atkinses’ homestead.

Since we had hired Caroline to cook for the ranch hands, she insisted that she feed us as part of the deal until we had our own fully functional kitchen.

So, most nights, we found ourselves dining with our friends, who were all-in on this venture with us.

The success of this ranch was vital to both families’ survival.

“I take time away from my classroom to pump for him, but he won’t take a bottle. After nearly a month of this, his weight’s dropped off, and Doc Stevens has expressed his concern.”

I flinched at the mention of that doctor’s appointment. It was a hard enough pill to swallow to hear that my son was essentially starving, but to see the effects of that becoming visible caused me physical pain.

There was barely any meat on Tripp, whereas, at the same age, Aspen’s arms and thighs had featured countless rolls, showcasing how well-fed she was. Clearly, the calories he consumed in the evening and overnight weren’t enough to replace the ones he lost during the day.

It scared me to think that he couldn’t survive like this much longer.

Tripp’s lips popped off his mama’s breast, and without delay, came the ever-present howling when he was brought to her shoulder to burp.

“Here. I’ll take him,” I offered. Allowing my wife the chance to enjoy a hot meal was the least I could do after she’d been forced to learn how to do everything one-handed since giving birth to our son.

“Thank you.” Daisy sagged in her seat once the handoff was complete. This whole situation was wearing on her too. She wanted to give our children the world, and right now, we were struggling to figure out how to keep our baby alive while at the same time keeping a roof over our heads.

The dull throbbing behind my eyes intensified when Penny let out a high-pitched shriek, banging both hands on the tray of her highchair.

Great, now there were two of them.

Caroline reached over to undo the buckles of the seat before settling Penny onto her lap.

Without warning, the baby girl lurched from her mother’s arms, and if I hadn’t been quick enough to grab her mid-flying leap— thank you, rodeo reflexes —she would’ve cracked her head open on the linoleum floor at our feet.

Wade let out a chuckle, beaming with pride like his daughter hadn’t just gone full kamikaze at the dinner table. “Got a wild one on our hands.”

“No kidding.” I figured saying it under my breath would have been drowned out by Tripp’s deafening cries, but when my words carried out over silence, it shocked me to high hell.

Three sets of wide eyes were aimed in my direction, but they were focused squarely on my chest.

When I peeked down, I found that seven-month-old Penny, resting on my knee, had placed a chubby hand on four-month-old Tripp’s back where he was propped against my opposite shoulder. And miracle of miracles, for the first time in his short life, that boy wasn’t crying.

Afraid to move, afraid to breathe for fear that whatever magical spell had been cast over our inconsolable baby would be broken, I whispered, “What just happened?”

Dazed, my wife shook her head. “I don’t know, but whatever it is, we need to bottle it and take it home with us.”

“Let me try something.” Chair legs scraped against the floor as Wade stood.

He grabbed Penny and took a step away from where I sat, holding Tripp in my arms.

Instantly, both babies began to scream bloody murder.

Wade stepped forward. Penny reached out for Tripp, making contact, and silence ensued.

Step back. Screaming.

Step forward. Silence.

Holy shit.

“Whoa,” Daisy breathed out .

“Well, that settles it,” Caroline declared.

Brows furrowing, I asked, “What settles what?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Tripp stays here with me and Penny during the day.”

“Oh, Caroline, I don’t think—”

She quickly cut off my protest by holding up a hand.

“It’s clearly what he needs, and they can keep each other company while I cook.

Besides, maybe if he’s calm, he might be open to taking a bottle.

If not . . .” Caroline shrugged. “Well, we’ll do what we would if there were an orphaned calf or foal. He needs to eat, one way or the other.”

My eyes bulged before shifting to meet Wade’s after his wife boldly offered to breastfeed my son if push came to shove.

That bastard wore the biggest shit-eating grin. “Spent my whole life bailing you out. Only makes sense that my wife would jump in to pick up where I left off.”

“You’re really okay with this?”

“Brother, I’d give you the shirt off my back if you needed it. If your boy needs what Caroline’s offering in order to survive, then it’s no question in my mind.”

Next, I turned to Daisy. “And what do you have to say?”

Her eyes grew glassy as she smoothed a hand over the dark hair atop Tripp’s head. “I don’t think we have any other choice.”

“Guess it’s settled, then.” I gripped Caroline’s hand where she sat beside me. “Thank you.”

A smile tugged up on her lips. “Ranch family goes deeper than blood, and we look out for one another.”

The kindness and generosity of my best friend and his wife might’ve very well saved my son’s life. It was the reminder I so desperately needed that there was still good in the world. And that good resided right here on Sullivan Ranch.