“You know how much I take to that,” Noa retorted seriously as she watched Bishop move around the small space preparing bottles. She’s anxious because she’s only barely comfortable holding Jackson, let alone feeding him. But she doesn’t show it. More than anything she works on looking serene. Concentrates on the fuzz of Jackson’s baby fine hair, and the way he’s latched his little fingers around one of hers. “Caring or not.” She laughs a little out of surprise when the baby in her arms squawks a short, frustrated noise. It was reminiscent of the fussing his brother had just been doing, but not identical.
She continues to watch Bishop as he finishes up in the kitchen, and hesitantly takes the bottle that’s meant for Jackson. Noa is floored by the realization of how much fatherhood has become second nature to him, and she’s frustrated for just a flash of a moment that leadership has fallen to his shoulders on top of everything else that he’s been carrying around.
“I wish I’d gotten a goodbye,” she says softly, breaking the companionable silence that had developed while the two boys ate. Even the admissions surprises her. Noa hadn’t wanted to talk about the shard of hurt that had been logged into her heart. “And it ain’t fair that his people are left mopping up the things he walked us into.” Her words aren’t angry, though there’s an undercurrent that speaks to the fact that it’s the most annoyed and frustrated she’s ever been with the man who’d formerly worn the Dog King title. “I never figured him a coward.”
But then she’d never figured a lot of things that had happened in recent months. It felt like there’d never be an end to the things that tested her resolve.