Layla gave me a small smile, her chocolate eyes full of understanding. “She’s fine. Just exhausted.” She carefully placed Mia in my arms before turning to put the monitor on a table. “I’ve been listening for Emmie. She’s probably starving. I made dinner so you can just reheat it when she’s ready.”

I glanced from Layla to Mia, who was safely bundled up in my arms. She was frowning up at me, and I suspected that she was making a mess in her diaper. “Thanks for helping, Layla,” I told the woman that had become such a lifeline in my life lately. Emmie didn’t listen to anyone but Layla right now.

“No thanks needed.” She pushed her long cinnamon hair out of her face and gave me a smile. “If you need anything, just call or come over.”

After Layla had gone home, I carried Mia upstairs and took care of the diaper issue. I had only changed about five diapers since she had been born, and never one so messy. But I muddled through, talking quietly to the baby as I cleaned her up and put a new sleeper on her. Mia was only a few weeks old, but she listened to my voice so intently that it seemed like she understood every word that I said.

Exhausted from having only gotten a little over an hour sleep the night before, I dropped down in the rocking chair beside Mia’s crib in the nursery and cuddled my baby close. “Mommy has been bonkers lately, huh, Mia?” I grinned down at her when she frowned at me yet again, not to fill her diaper but as if she didn’t like me talking about her mother like that. “But we still love her, don’t we?”

The baby’s only reply was to blow a bubble at me. “Daddy’s going to make sure that Mommy doesn’t get like that again.” I realized that I hadn’t been acting much like a daddy lately. Instead of staying away in hopes that Emmie would just get better on her own, I should have been insisting on helping her. I felt like I had let both Em and Mia down.

Determined to make it up to two of the most important people in my world, I brushed a kiss over Mia’s forehead. “How about a story, baby doll?” I crossed my legs and put the baby carefully on my lap, stroking my fingers over her face and peach fuzz hair that I knew was going to be just like her mothers. “Once upon a time there was a beautiful little girl with a tear streaked face. She had no idea that the boy next door was going to spend the rest of his life loving her…”

--

A cool hand brushed over my cheek and my eyes snapped open. Big green eyes set in a thin, pale face filled my vision. There were dark circles under Emmie’s eyes, so bad that it looked like bruises. Memories of her actually having a black eye from one of her mother’s rages filled my mind, and I reached out a hand to grasp her.

She gave me a small smile and sat down on the edge of the rocking chair. “Hi,” Emmie murmured before turning her gaze to the sleeping baby lying across my chest on her stomach.

“How are you feeling?” I whispered, trying not to wake the baby. I hadn’t remembered falling asleep, but it must have been a while ago. My neck was stiff and my body was protesting from sitting too long.

Emmie sighed. “Better. I slept eighteen hours.”

“This is my fault. I should have made you let me help out with the baby. Instead, I took the easy way out and let you deal with it all.”

Emmie rolled her eyes. “Since when can you make me do anything, Nik?”

I wrapped my free arm around Emmie’s tiny waist. She had lost the pregnancy belly and had lost more weight than I wanted to think about since Mia had been born. Gods, I sucked at taking care of my girls. “Yeah, but I need to start.”

“If you say so.” She leaned against me, putting her head on my chest much like Mia was. “This is my fault, Nik. No one’s but my own. I was jealous. Mia loves you so much, and she does nothing but cry when I hold her.”

I sighed. “Ah, Em, she can sense your stress. That’s why she cries so much when you hold her. You have been so tired, so anxious. Mia can feel all of that. Fuck, baby. We all could.” I combed my fingers through her hair, trying to soothe her as I had done to Mia earlier. “If you would just relax everything will be okay.”

“I want to be a good mom…” Emmie whispered with a small hitch in her voice that told me she was close to tears.

“You are a great mom. The best mom. Mia is so lucky to have you, baby.”

How could I relieve her fears? How did I make her understand that she was never going to be the mom her own mother had been? I wasn’t sure that I, or anyone else, ever could. If she didn’t get things just right in her own estimations on how a mother was supposed to be, Emmie thought she was a bad mother. It was going to drive her—and everyone around her—insane.

“Listen to me, Em. Worrying about being a good mother, about getting it right… That alone is the sign of a great mom. You love Mia and you want what is best for her. Fuck, Em. You have put her well-being before your own already. In my book you already qualify as mother of the year.”

She gave a soft, quiet little laugh, and I brushed a kiss over the top of her head. “You had the worst mother in the world, Em. I hate that and her. But you know what not to do because of her.”

“What if I mess up?”

“Then you learn from it and move on. But guess what?”

She raised her head. “What?”

“We can mess it up together. Mia has us both.” I glanced from Emmie to the only other person in the world that could stop my heart from beating by just looking at her. “I want to be a good daddy just as much as you want to be a good mom. I didn’t have much of a role model either.”

“Are you as scared as I am?”

“Probably more.”

“She’s going to have more than we did.”

I chuckled softly. “Of course she is. She’s a rock princess after all. Mia is going to own the world.”

A giggle escaped Emmie and the sound went straight through my heart and down to my dick. It had been months since I had made love to Em. The last trimester of pregnancy had been too uncomfortable for Emmie to have sex. We hadn’t done more than heavy petting for so long, and my body felt like it was on constant alert for any signs of attention. It hadn’t mattered to me that we hadn’t made love. I wasn’t going to do anything to hurt Emmie.

That didn’t mean I didn’t ache for her though…

“I meant love, stupid,” she corrected me. “Yeah. Mia will have plenty of that,” I assured her with a tender kiss on her lips.