Page 40 of Knot Convenient

Every surface of the house was covered in the scents of the alphas, making the house a fragrant bouquet of smells that I was now associating entirely with the pack. I could already distinguish each one easily. Emmett’s apple scent clung to me after sharing a bed with him all night. Maybe I could have showered, but everyone probably knew what had happened already. And we were bonded—we all knew what that entailed—and proximity was a big part of that.

Still, I found myself running my hand over the chair Marshall had been sitting in, inhaling that deep metallic smell that was uniquely his.

The tub in my bathroom was huge, so I carried Milo upstairs and gave him a bath. He’d always been a water baby and adored bath time. Seeing as he was covered in toast and scrambled egg, he certainly needed one. Baby wipes weren’t going to cut it. Before Milo, I had never really given it much thought to how often babies needed to be bathed, but now I realized it was almost a constant mission.

Pouring a shallow bath, I stayed with him the entire time, using a washcloth and a cup to provide some entertainment. There was already some baby bubble bath next to the tub, which I hadn’t bought. One of the guys must have thought ahead. Milo liked to watch the droplets fall through the air and rain on the surface of the bathwater.

Now I had a little money in my account, maybe I could buy him some rubber ducks?

Once Milo was clean, dressed, and numbed up so his teeth weren’t causing a problem, he started to drift off in my arms for his first nap of the day. I rocked him for a little while, humming to him as I turned on his night-light and sound machine. He hated falling asleep to the dead quiet, and I, for one, agreed.

Lowering him gently into the crib, I watched him sleep for a few minutes before I moved back. Milo looked so peaceful when he was resting, and my chest squeezed pleasantly, even as I thought about how big he was getting. He’d be walking any minute now, talking after that.

Time really did fly when you were watching your kid grow.

I stood in the middle of the room, at a loss for what to do now that he was sleeping. After a moment, I realized that my chest felt slightly uncomfortable, the distance from Emmett unpleasant. There was a reason people usually took bonding leave. The bond demanded closeness in the early days, but I wasn’t angry. Emmett had an important job. He was a lawyer, after all, and his clients depended on him.

Wanting to give Milo space to rest without worrying about waking him up, I left the room quietly, knowing I’d hear him the moment he cried with the house so quiet. Still, his morning nap was usually just under an hour. That was a decent amount of time to kill. What was I going to do?

I had all this space to myself and no idea what to do with it. I wasn’t used to being alone with nothing to do, but I couldn’t just jump back into school or go to work. My life had been carefully planned until now. Every ten minutes was accounted for, so having a day with nothing to do was… unsettling. Milo still needed me, and I didn’t know about hiring a babysitter or nanny. The whole point of me being here was that I wouldn’t have to work, so there was no need for me to get someone else to look after him.

That, of course, left me scratching my head. I needed something to do, some way to feel useful and like I was contributing. The guys had been so incredibly generous with their money, and I wasn’t going to just do nothing back as a thank you.

Walking down the hallway outside the bedroom, I glanced to the other side where the guys' rooms were.

I didn’t want to snoop. That’d be rude. Still…

Maybe I can clean up or something…

After a few minutes, I was going out of my mind for something to do, so I decided to poke my head into their bedrooms.

Laundry.

Each room had a hamper that was partially full.

Smiling at the prospect of something to do and a way to be helpful, I grabbed each hamper and carried them down to the laundry room. I also noted how each of the rooms was so very different.

Emmett had the messiest space, dirty clothes draped over a chair and several empty cups that needed to go down to the sink and get washed. He had notebooks stacked on a desk, and more empty notepads and pens than anyone could possibly need. Then again, I imagined that a lawyer needed to take a lot of notes. The only organization I observed was his closet, with casual clothes on one side and his suits on the other.

Tobias’s room, on the other hand, was sparkling clean. It made sense after what I’d seen in the medicine cabinet, everything all precisely organized.

When I went into his closet to get the laundry basket, I was surprised his socks weren’t alphabetized, not that I knew how that would work. Everything was arranged by type of clothing and color, though. All the tees together in rainbow order, which really only included red, blue, gray, black, and white. All the suits were together, the pants hanging below the jackets, and he even had a special drawer for his undershirts.

I laughed to myself. “It’s a little much, but at least I’ll know where everything goes.”

Again in another not-surprise, I found Noah’s room with textbooks and notes everywhere. There were shelves and shelves of them, and other books too. Various volumes about history in general and then divided into areas of the world, historical fiction novels on another shelf, and even a bit of fantasy thrown in.

It was clear Noah was a reader.

Marshall’s room was last, and I was actually taken aback when I went in. It was utterly plain, no real decorations or chaos, no splashes of color or things lying about that might’ve clued me into what he enjoyed.

It was as if the space were an afterthought.

Something about that made me sad, like Marshall didn’t think his room, his personal space, merited being decorated. And there was hardly anything for me to do. I’d cleaned up the other guys’ bed and dirty clothes—hamper or no hamper—but Marshall’s bed was made, there was nothing amiss, and I couldn’t find his hamper at all.

It was already in the laundry room when I got there.

“He works so hard.” I sighed but started the laundry. It was the least I could do. As the loads were running, I checked the time. It’d been thirty minutes. I still had an hour, so I went downstairs, intent on cleaning up after breakfast. It wasn’t too bad, but I could wash a few dishes and get Milo’s lunch ready for when he woke up.