Titus: Book Two of the Cantrell Brothers Series

Chapter Thirty

Anna awoke to the sound of crying coming from downstairs. She covered her ears and rolled over, searching for the comforting warmth that was Titus but finding only cold sheets that were devoid of the man. Entire body aching and feeling chilled, she got out of bed and walked downstairs, still in her pajamas.

“I mi-iss Uncle Taw-Tawson so m-m-much!” She heard a little girl who was most definitely Callie cry, her voice slightly muffled and very watery.

Anna found Trace, Titus, and Thrane in the kitchen, all huddled around the little girl as her father held her small frame to his t-shirt covered chest. To the left of the stoic father was a dazed looking Thrane who appeared as if he himself was about to cry, the black cast on his arm matching his sweatpants.

Just wearing his long pair of shorts like he always did for bed, Titus beckoned her over, wrapping an arm around and pressing her against his hard chest as soon as she was within the appropriate distance. She leaned into his warmth, closing her tired eyes to inhale his scent and absorb everything he was offering to her.

“What do we do?” he whispered. “It's just gotten worse.”

“We just have to distract her,” she answered in a quiet voice, trying to tell Callie with her eyes that everything was going to be okay.

She looked over at Thrane then, too, just to make sure that the dazed man was all there. He wasn't. Pupils dilated and watery eyes zoning out to somewhere in the living room, Thrane must have taken his opiates not too long ago. She was worried about the tears that were beginning to form in his eyes, not wanting the sight of big old Uncle Thrane to cause Callie anymore anxiety.

She scanned the kitchen for anything that she could distract Callie with, sighing with relief as she saw a pack of markers and a closed Dora the Explorer coloring book on the table. Pulling Titus with her towards the elongated table, she pushed him down into a chair right next to hers and took out a few crayons.

“You get 'wild strawberry'.” She handed him the crayon.

“Stupid name for a color,” he muttered but opened up the coloring book all the same and helped her fill in all the white spaces, neither of them going outside the lines. “What if I wanted my strawberries to be tamed?”

Anna looked at her crayon. “I know, right? What if I wanted my tangerine to be un-atomic? Stupid Crayola, forcing me to use 'atomic tangerine' and 'beaver'.”

“They seriously have 'beaver'?”

“Oh, yeah.” She gave him the crayon that was clearly just a plain shade of brown. “But it looks more like a 'musky beaver', doesn't it?”

“'Musky beaver in mating season'.”

“What are you two even doing?” Trace asked over Callie's crying, glasses that he usually never wore reflecting in the warm kitchen lights.

Anna shrugged and tried to focus on Trace's words more than his daughter's crying. “This usually works with some of my students sometimes. You do some normal activity – like coloring – and they want to color, too, and then they stop crying. I thought it might work.”

Trace's face lit up at that, and he turned Callie around so her blue eyes could see them. “Look at how much fun they're having, Callie? Don't you wanna color, too?”

The little girl gulped and wiped at the tears that were streaking down her tiny face. “Y-yeah.”

Anna watched as Callie wiggled out of her father's gentle arms before crawling onto her lap and then Titus's, snuggling against her uncle as she took the crayon from his hands with tiny fingers and scribbling onto the picture of Boots beating Swiper down in an integrity battle.