Do babies ever stop crying? That was the only thought running through my head while I watched my wife struggle with our one-and-a-half-week-old daughter three days after we brought her home. Charlotte hadn’t stopped crying in those three days, and I was certain Tenille was about to have a mental breakdown. I’d watched her steadily withdraw since giving birth, and between the never-ending crying and the fussy feeding, the vacant look I dreaded seeing in Tenille’s eyes had returned. The look that she’d had back in school when we’d first started dating. The look I’d worked hard to erase.

Reaching for Charlotte, I said, “Here, let me take her. You go lie down.”

She stared at me for a long moment before doing as I said. “I’ll just have an hour or so.”

I shook my head while ignoring the cries coming from my child. “You need longer. You’re fucking exhausted.”

The frown that crossed her face highlighted that exhaustion. “She needs to be fed soon, Aiden.”

Fucking breastfeeding. It was the thing coming between us more than Tenille’s tiredness. Charlotte didn’t want a bar of it, but after a nurse had lectured Tenille at two fucking a.m. one morning in the hospital about the importance of breast milk, my wife had been adamant that our child would be breastfed.

I took a deep breath to calm myself. We’d had a few arguments over this, and I didn’t want another one. I just wanted Tenille to get some sleep. “There’s enough milk in the fridge for one feed. I can give that to her, so all you need to focus on is lying your ass down on that bed, closing your eyes, and not waking up for hours.”

Charlotte stopped crying at the same time that Tenille’s eyes widened. “I haven’t heard that bossy tone from you in a few weeks,” she said quietly, a slow smile touching her lips. Dropping her gaze to the baby, she murmured, “I think Charlie likes it, too.”

I held Charlotte close to my chest with one arm and wrapped my spare one around Tenille’s waist, settling my hand on her ass. “Charlie, huh?”

Her smile grew, and my dick twitched. Nearly four weeks of not being inside her was far too fucking long. “Yeah, Charlie. It was on your list of possible boy names. I think it makes a great nickname for her.”

Glancing down at my daughter, I took in the way her eyes fluttered closed as her chest rose and fell before she finally drifted off to sleep. Looking back up at Tenille, I said, “It seems she likes that, too.”

Tenille shook her head. “No, I think what she really likes is being in her daddy’s arms, which I totally get. It’s the best place in the world to be.”

“Jesus, woman, you need sleep, and here you are turning me on so fucking much that I want to keep you awake all night.”

“Uh-uh, no sex for six weeks. Doctor’s orders.”

I raised my brows. “You think I give a fuck what the doctor says? And besides, I don’t need my dick inside you to keep you awake all night.”

She was silent for a few moments, just watching me intently before cradling Charlotte’s head and bending to place a kiss on her forehead. “Are you sure you’ll be okay with her while I sleep?” The smile on her face and in her eyes disappeared.

I frowned. One minute we were in the moment together, the next she’d fucking exited without stopping to take a breath. I moved my hand to her waist and pulled her closer to me. “What the fuck just happened there?”

Blinking, she shifted her gaze to the floor. “Nothing. I’m just really tired and want to go to bed, but I want to make sure you—”

“No,” I cut her off, “something happened in your head, Tenille, and I want to know what it was.”

She kept her eyes down for far too long before meeting mine again. “Can we please just leave it for now?” Her question came out more like a plea.

“No. Tell me.” If there was one thing I’d learnt in the four years we’d been together, it was that when she retreated like that, it was always something that needed to be talked about. Tenille was the queen of avoidance. Her shitty family had taught her that. But it did her no favours.

“God, you’re a pushy bastard sometimes,” she muttered as she attempted to move out of my embrace.

I tightened my hold on her. “Yeah, welcome to the rest of your life, but you already knew that about me.”

“Fine,” she started before snapping her mouth shut as if she had changed her mind. But she knew from experience that there was no way I was dropping this, so she finally blurted out, “Sex with me isn’t going to be the same. I just need you to know that.”

I frowned again. “How do you figure that?”

She stared at me as if I was the crazy one. “How do you figure it won’t be? I mean, I birthed an eight-pound baby out of my vagina, and my stomach is stretched and flabby. And I was already overweight. And on top of that, I don’t even feel like having sex or sucking your dick or doing any of the shit you like to do. Everything has changed!” Tears trickled from her eyes, and a moment later, they fell in gushing streams.

“Fuck, baby, that’s a lot of shit to be carrying around in your head and keeping to yourself. You need to be talking to me about this stuff.”

She madly wiped her tears away, not having much success because as soon as she wiped them, more fell. “This isn’t stuff I want to discuss with anyone, let alone with you.”

Always my strong girl, trying to deal with everything on her own. “Okay, so let’s go through it all, starting with your pussy. I don’t care if it’s pushed ten babies out, there will never be a day I won’t want my dick inside of it. As for your curves, I fucking live for them. I wake up thinking about them, and I count down the hours during the day until I can get my hands all over them at night. If you ever try to starve yourself to get rid of them, you’re going to have a huge fucking fight on your hands with me.” I let go of her so I could place my hand on her cheek. Stroking her jaw with my thumb, I added, “If you never want to suck my dick again, I’ll deal with it. I won’t love it, but I love you, so I’ll fucking deal. But I read some of the shit your doctor gave you to read, and it’s normal for you to not want sex straight away, so I’m fairly fucking sure that the time is going to come soon where you won’t be able to keep yourself off my dick.”

“You read that stuff?” She forced her words out between sobs, and it fucking killed me that she was so upset over this. She was supposed to be on a high after having Charlotte, and yet the last week had been nothing but tears and anxiety.

“Of course I read that stuff. I’m your partner in all this, Tenille. You’ve done the physical stuff. Let me help you with everything else.”

Something I said clicked with her, and she sagged against me, her arms tight around my body. The three of us stood together for a long time while she cried and allowed me to comfort her. We’d been together for a while, but I knew she’d always held a piece of herself back. It was in the way she refused to cry in front of me, and the way she clammed up when we talked about certain topics, and the way she was guarded about her dreams for the future. I’d always vowed to break those walls down; I’d just never known how to do it. Maybe this would be the beginning of those walls shattering.

After I’d settled her in our bed and Charlotte in her cot, I headed into the kitchen to find something to cook for dinner. My mother’s voice drifted from the lounge room. “You’re just like your daddy. Smooth with your words. I hope you don’t turn out like him when it comes to sticking around long term.”

I stilled in the hallway, her words cutting through me like sharp blades. Turning, I entered the lounge room and found her sitting in the corner, taking a swig from her bottle of scotch, watching me through eyes that betrayed so many toxic emotions. My mother and I had always had a hard relationship, but the birth of my child had stirred some nasty shit in her, and I’d dealt with nine months of this bullshit.

“How long will you be staying with us this time?” I asked, choosing to ignore what she’d said.

“What? You don’t want your mother staying with you?”

Not particularly. “Answer my question.”

She narrowed her eyes at me as she stood and walked my way. “That right there, that’s your father coming out in you. Refusing to answer my question, but demanding I answer yours.”

My patience frayed at the edges, and I couldn’t hold my asshole side back. She’d turned up on our doorstep three days ago, and if her history was anything to go by, she’d still be with us in three weeks. Tenille didn’t need her around, and I sure as fuck didn’t need to listen to shit about my father for another minute. “I never knew my father, so I wouldn’t know if I was like him or not.”

She stiffened. She hated being reminded of the fact the only man she’d ever loved had walked out on her when their child was seven months old. The sting I’d intended hit its mark. Pushing her shoulders back, she said, “Take my word for it, you have plenty of your father in you. I’ve never felt as abandoned as I did when I was quitting the coke. The way you chose Shane Gibson over me hurt in a way I’ll never forget. And that was true McVeigh style.”

Fuck. She liked to throw out the shit about “McVeigh style” as often as she could. It was the surname I shared with my father—the one he never gave her but that she made sure to give me in her desperate effort to keep him. “What the fuck are you going on about? I was there for you when you quit the drugs.” Hell, I was seventeen at the time and knew more about surviving in this shitty world than most adults. I’d made sure my mother made it through the detox, and I kept our home running while finishing my last year of high school and holding down a fucking job.

“Shane Gibson offered you a job and you jumped at it. You did everything to help that man, and I was the one who suffered. You might have been around a few hours a day, but I needed you more than that. It was the only time I ever really needed you, and you let me down.” She paused for a beat. “I hope your wife and child never know the coldness of your back to them or the despair of you deserting them.”

Before I had a chance to reply, she exited the room, leaving me alone with my thoughts. I had no desire to go after her. This was the way our interactions tended to go. She unleashed her mean streak on me when she’d been drinking, only to take it all back the next day. It was our vicious cycle.

But her words clung, and I spent far too long thinking back over that time in our lives when she’d finally kicked her drug addiction. It hadn’t been her first attempt, and perhaps there was something to what she’d said. I hadn’t had faith in her. Not after all the other times she’d half-heartedly tried. And I’d been tired of dealing with her crap. So when Gibson offered me that job, I’d taken it and given him 200 percent. I’d wanted to escape the hell of my life. So I had to admit to myself that there was some truth in my mother’s words. But the shit she’d said about me abandoning my wife and child? That would never happen. Tenille and Charlotte were everything to me. There was no way I’d ever turn my back on the two people I loved more than life itself. I was not that kind of man. I was not my father.