Read Online The Girl with my Heart (Summer Unplugged #8) by Amy Sparling - Free Book Online Page A

into the kitchen. It’s empty, too, and there’s still no reply. Maybe she’s in the shower.
    I head down the hallway, peeking into our bedroom and the bathroom and she’s not in there and Jett’s screams are louder than ever as I approach his bedroom at the end of the hall. “Bay?” I try again.
    And then I see her.
    She sits cross legged on the floor right in the middle of Jett’s room, on top of a baby blanket that’s been spread out and covered with baby toys. Her back is to me, but her shoulders are slumped and I can tell she’s looking down into her lap.
    Jett stares at me with chubby cheeks and tears all over his face. He’s lying in his crib, his tiny little hands balled up into tiny little angry fists and he’s crying like a maniac.
    “Bay, are you okay?” I ask, heading toward the crib. She doesn’t say anything.
    I check Jett’s diaper but it’s clean. There’s a full baby bottle on the table next to the crib so I grab the bottle and offer it to Jett. He just shoves it away and keeps crying. Just as I had expected—he’s just crying for no reason. Or, no reason that we can figure out.
    I bend over and scoop up my baby, cradling him in my arms while I rock him back and forth, trying to get him to calm down. He sniffles and stares at me for a few seconds and then bursts into tears again. I turn around and carefully hold onto the screaming bundle of baby in my arms as I kneel down to my knees and sit in front of Bayleigh.
    “Honey, don’t be upset about Jett. He’s just in a bad mood or something. It’s not your fault.”
    Jett’s screams seem to get even more annoyed, as if he’s mad at me for saying he’s in a bad mood. I bounce and rock him, making gooey baby faces at him, but he just closes his eyes and screams. I reach up for the bottle and try again, but he smacks it with his hand and sends drops of breastmilk all over his face.
    He definitely does not want to eat. Curiously, I turn him over, lifting up his shirt and then checking his arms and legs. Maybe he’s injured and hurt and that’s why he’s crying. But his skin is soft and pale and I don’t find any bruises or scrapes or, hell I don’t know, like a spider bite or something.
    I remember reading in a baby book for dads that the three reasons babies cry are because they’re either hungry, sleepy, or need a new diaper. Jett’s probably sleepy. I lift him up on my shoulder where he loves to fall asleep and gently pat his back. But he’s having none of it. He kicks and screams and shoves, doing everything in his power to get away from me.
    With a resigned sigh, I stand up and put him back in his crib. “I guess you’re just going to cry no matter what, little man.” I frown as my heart breaks. I hate when my kid cries like this. I hate not being able to fix it.
    Bayleigh’s mom has told us before that sometimes you just have to let a baby cry and get it out of their system. But I hate every second of it.
    I walk over to my wife and put my hand on her shoulder. “Honey let’s just close the door and let him cry for a while. He’ll probably wear himself out and go to sleep soon.”
    “I’m staying here,” she says, the first thing she’s said since I got home.
    “Honey, it’s pointless to stay here. You’re going to go deaf listening to his screams.”
    “I don’t care.” She stares at her hands, her hair falling over her shoulders and blocking her face from me.
    “What’s wrong?” I try to look at her but she won’t look up at me. “Is this about the baby or something else?”
    “The baby doesn’t hurt me, Jace.”
    Her words are ice and my skin crawls from the venom in her words. “If the baby didn’t hurt you then why are you acting hurt? What’s wrong? What happened?”
    She looks up at me now, her eyes red and swollen from crying. She looks like an adult version of Jett, only her anger isn’t for no reason. It’s directed straight at me.
    “I don’t want to see you right now.”
    “What?