1. Torin

Chapter 1

Torin

Bella looked so peaceful as she finished off the last of her bottle. The final bag of her mother's frozen milk from the supply I had been rationing to her each day.

After the freak accident that took my wife's life a month ago, I'd been doling out the frozen milk—cut with prescription formula—one little bottle at a time.

But Bella wasn't gaining weight because she couldn't process most of the formulas I'd tried. We finally found a prescription formula without the ingredient that seemed to bother her little tummy the worst, but it was ridiculously hard to get my hands on. The pharmacy allowed me to order a can each week, but as she got bigger, she'd need at least double that amount.

Human milk was the only other alternative that stayed down.

Jocelyn, the woman next door, was sympathetic to our situation after Stacy died and offered me up gallons of the frozen milk she had left over after weaning her son. That helped me supplement, but I was starting to get nervous about the future.

If I didn't find a milk bank or personal donor in the next couple of days, my baby would be hungry or in pain…or both.

Tears I didn't know I still had in me dripped down my cheeks as I thought about that possibility.

Bella was so sweet and innocent and deserved only the best things in life. She'd already lost her mother, and I wasn't doing the greatest job at being a single parent. Laundry was piled up, I'd been living off takeout, and my work was suffering. I could work remotely for the long-term as a project manager, but since I only had small bits of time to devote to work each day, I was missing more and more meetings because Bella needed me.

Once the bottle was bone dry and she was completely asleep, I slipped out of the chair and placed her in her crib.

The temptation to hold her a little longer and just stare at her sweet face was strong, but she was finally in a deep sleep, and I didn't want to ruin that with my fidgeting.

I snuck out of the nursery and went to bed myself. That had become my makeshift office, because after working from bed for a few days after the accident, it was getting harder to feel comfortable at my actual desk. Especially when all I wanted to do was sleep.

For the hundredth time, I checked in with the local milk bank to see if I had been matched up with a regular donator. The waiting list was long, and it took months to get matched. I'd gotten several offers of individual donations from kind moms who had extra frozen supply or had recently weaned like Jocelyn, but with Bella's allergies and sensitive stomach, the doctor recommended I find one person who could supply her through her first twelve months, if possible.

So far, it wasn't looking good.

I read through all the messages and was surprised to see several of the moms recommended the Lactin Brotherhood private milk bank. There wasn't a lot of detail about the organization, but each recommendation said they were reliable and adhered to all the same quality standards as the community milk bank. The downside I could find was that they were pricey.

But price was no longer an issue for me. At first, free or very low-cost milk from the community bank sounded great. But now, knowing how difficult the process could be, I was willing to pay more than the highest quality bourbon just to make sure my baby was healthy and well-nourished.

I found a request form for a human milk service that offered the option for a fresh or frozen delivery service or for a live-in wet nurse. Wet nurses were practically impossible to find, and the waitlists were years out, so I didn't have much hope that would be a possibility. But I checked all three boxes and noted I would pay market rate for the first available wet nurse my daughter was compatible with.

That was the best I could do.

With that first step taken, I found a streaming movie that I'd started watching a few times, and tried watching it again. It was a romantic comedy about two pseudo celebrities who hated each other but were forced to make nice for the public and ended up falling in love.

Obviously, it was a fairytale.

In real life, love didn't work out that way. You either made bad decisions and destroyed a good thing when you had it, or fate stepped in and took good things away from you.

At least, that had been my experience.

Besides Stacy, there was only one other person who'd really made me feel things I could describe as anything other than love—even stronger than what I'd ever felt for Stacy—but he was a guy. And I wasn't into guys. At least, back in high school I wasn't. Not that I could admit, anyway. Between my fundamentalist family and my fucked-up buddies, I was too afraid to be honest with him or myself.

I cared about him a lot but hurt him because of my own insecurities, and I'd never forgive myself for that. I was a stupid kid who made stupid choices. And then after college, I met Stacy. She was my best friend, and eventually, that friendship turned into love. It was never that fire in my belly, can't-breathe-without-her kind of love. But it was love.

For both of us.

We'd been married for two years and had a happy life for most of that time. I wouldn't change a thing about it because then I might not have Bella. She was the one who showed me what true and unconditional love really was.

When we found out Bella was coming, that seemed to be my signal from the universe that I'd made the right choice by settling down with Stacy. Just because my love for her was more like a friendship than a spouse, that didn't mean I wouldn't be content for the rest of my life.

And then, on a dark and stormy night, fate put Stacy in the path of a falling tree that changed our family forever. The coroner promised her death was quick and she didn't suffer, but Bella and I certainly did.

I'd lost my best friend, the person who I watched TV with, someone who could sit for hours sharing gossip about the neighbors, and my sweet baby girl lost her mother.

I already felt like I was failing as a parent because I wasn't able to provide her with a perfectly safe and consistent world. But adding in the risk of not being able to properly feed her was almost too much to bear.

Because of that stress, I wasn't eating well either and my sleep was fitful, leaving me in a constant state of exhaustion.

Although, that seemed to be part of the deal with having a newborn, so I couldn't blame it all on my depression.