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Calling.

Helping with the kids.

Checking whether I’d eaten.

My mother had damn near tried to move into the townhouse the first week.

Daddy had assembled every bed, cursed out every instruction manual and then acted like he’d done me some huge favor when I reminded him I offered to pay somebody.

And Nesha?

That bitch wasn’t going anywhere.

Thank God.

I went back to work at the ICU too.

Not immediately.

But eventually.

The first shift back had felt strange.

Then somebody coded twenty minutes after I clocked in and I didn’t have time to think about my personal life anymore.

Oddly enough, I needed that.

I needed something I was good at that had absolutely nothing to do with Xavier Lawless.

“Mommy!”

I turned.

Michael stood in the kitchen with chocolate around his mouth.

“You ate one already?”

He smiled.

Levin looked away.

“Levin.”

“I ain’t see shit.”

“You’re a terrible influence.”

Michael ran off laughing.

I shook my head.

Then my eyes landed on the picture sitting on the shelf across the living room.

Xay.

This was him with the kids.

Zion on one side.