The Werewolf CEO's Pregnant Boy novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Sawdust

Dolores opened the front door herself.

Perry heard it from upstairs, through two floors and the old stone.

"Come in," she said. "All of you. Wipe your feet."

The woman in green came up first, with her son behind her.

She knocked on the guest room door frame and stopped there, because Perry was in bed in a borrowed bathrobe holding a two-hour-old baby.

"We don't have to come in," she said. "We just wanted you to know."

Her son stood behind her in the hall.

He was twenty-six, tall and stiff, in a gray suit.

He looked at Maggie for a long moment.

Then he looked at his mother.

"Mom," he said. "Can we go home after this?"

The woman in green put her hand over her mouth.

She didn't answer.

She just nodded, over and over, and her son put his arm around her, awkward.

Garret closed the door very quietly to give them the hall.

They stayed at Dolores's house for four weeks.

Perry learned that a newborn eats every two hours.

He learned that the two hours start when she starts eating, not when she stops, and somebody should go to prison for that.

He learned that Maggie's eyes went gold whenever she was angry, which was mostly at three in the morning.

He learned that the Alpha of the Lakeshore pack couldn't cook.

But Garret could heat a bottle to exactly the right temperature every single time.

He did the three a.m. feeds without being asked.

Perry would wake up and find him in the rocking chair by the window, in the dark, with Maggie on his chest.

They'd be looking at each other with gold eyes, having some kind of conversation Perry wasn't invited to.

Garret's hands healed slowly. By the second week the gauze was gone. By the fourth, the burns were shiny pink scars across both palms.

He held her with them anyway.

Perry's nephew came every Saturday.

"Is Maggie a werewolf?"

"Yes," said Garret.

"Is she going to bite the mailman?"

"We're working on it."

"Can she shuffle?"

"She's four days old, Peanut," said Brianne.

"So that's a no."

Dolores held Maggie wrong.

The first time, Perry thought she'd forgotten how. She held the baby too low, with her head tipped back.

"Mrs. Burkhart. Her head."

Dolores looked at him with perfect calm.

"Your posture is terrible," she said. "Come here and show me."

So Perry got up and came and fixed it.

The next day she did it again.

And the day after that.

By the end of the week he understood that she was doing it on purpose.

She wanted him to come and stand next to her and put his hands over hers.

He let her.

Garret left every morning at seven for the Tower and came back at five.

Then he spent every evening on Irving Park Road with a crew and a tool belt.

He rebuilt the studio with his own hands.

Not all of it. He wasn't stupid. There were electricians and a roofer and a man who did floors.

But one afternoon Perry came down with Maggie in a sling and found him on his knees in the gutted studio.

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