She nodded silently and brought it to Shane. Shay stopped crying and Shane helped him get dressed and carried him to bed. After she laid down with him until he fell asleep, she got up to go find Carmen. This whole family thing wasn’t really working out as planned.

She found her girlfriend curled up in bed in a pair of black lacy panties and an oversized white t-shirt. Shane could tell she had been crying.

“Shane, I–”

Shane crawled into bed with her and pulled her into her arms. “Shh it’s okay. You don’t need to apologize. He is just really shaken up right now.”

“I know but I feel so bad. I didn’t mean to scare him. I-I want him to like me, now he is going to hate me!”

Shane couldn’t help but smile at how overdramatic her girlfriend was being.

“Shh hey baby he is going to like you, ok? He just needs some time. Julie told me what happened and I just think it’s going to be awhile until Shay feels comfortable trusting other people, but I promise he will come around.”

Carmen looked up at Shane, “What do you mean ‘what happened’? You mean the reason Shay got taken away?”

“Yeah. Apparently Gabe started doing drugs again like six months ago, it got pretty bad and Carla left. After that it was just Gabe, his needle, and whatever woman he decided to shoot up with that day—and Shay was there to watch it all. The final straw was when the neighbors called the cops because they caught Shay digging through their trash can for food.”

“What? Oh poor baby! Oh I just want to hold him and tell him everything is going to be okay. I won’t let anyone touch him.”

Shane smiled. She never thought she would think this but it was incredibly sexy to see Carmen get so worked up and protective of Shay, she was like a mama tiger.

“Yeah,” Shane replied, “So just try to be gentle around him okay? I know that’s hard for you but he is pretty jumpy right now.”

“Well duh, Shane! I’m not going to go all Latina on him! Damn I wish I knew all of this about an hour ago.”