Page 170 of The One Month Boyfriend (Wildwood Society)

Epilogue

Silas

Eight Months Later

“I just feellike we should be doing something,” Kat says, arms crossed in front of her chest as she looks down. “Shouldn’t we be doing something?”

“I can’t imagine why you’re asking me.”

“You volunteered us for this.”

“I was very specific that I didn’t know what we were doing, though,” I point out. “What’s the manual say?”

“Nothing about what we do while he’s asleep,” Kat says. “Beast, quit it.”

She bends down and gently shoves Beast’s nose away from Nathaniel, who remains fast asleep in his carseat.

“Then I think we let this happen,” I say as Beast sits down, politely curling her tail around her front paws and watching Nathaniel with an unnerving, unflinching stare. “Right?”

There’s another pause as Nathaniel twitches in his sleep, one arm waving haphazardly in the air, but then he settles back down.

“Cats don’t eat babies, do they?” whispers Kat. “Maybe we should feed Beast early. Should we unbuckle him? That doesn’t look very comfortable.”

“I don’t think he minds, he’s asleep,” I point out. “And I don’t think she has the taste for human flesh. Yet.”

Kat gives me one of her looks at yet, up through her glasses, and I can’t help but grin at it.

“Please don’t give your cat a taste for humans,” she says.

“Look, you never know,” I say. “I could get a papercut, leave the room to find a bandaid, come back to find her lapping at the drops of blood on my desk…”

Kat’s giving me a stern look, but she’s trying not to laugh.

“Then what?” she asks. “Beast develops a thirst for blood and roams the neighborhood, lurking in the shadows as she awaits her next victim?”

As if she can hear us, Beast turns her head and looks up at me with her enormous green eyes. I could swear she’s admonishing me.

“Did I ever tell you I thought she was a demon or something when I found her?”

“Only like thirty times,” Kat says.

“Mrrp,” says Beast.

“Well, now I know that,” I tell her.

“Should we watch a movie or something?” Kat asks, still staring down at the baby. “I could keep unpacking, I’ve only got like three boxes le—”

Nathaniel makes a long, plaintive noise without opening his eyes. I freeze. Kat freezes.

Beast leaves the room.

“It’s fine,” I say, as the noise gets louder. “We can do this. It’s just a baby, people have babies all the time.”

Bravely, Kat nods. Nathaniel’s eyes open. The noises get louder and more varied, but they’re clearly all unhappy noises, his tiny fists uselessly hitting the sides of his car seat.

I take a deep breath, then crouch and unbuckle him as the volume level steadily increases. Then I pause, trying to remember all the various instructions regarding my nephew I’ve been given over the past four months. Do I still need to support the head? That was a pretty big deal at one point.

It’s my first time uncle-ing without Levi or June around, and I’m not sure I’m up to the task.