Cameron's POV:

"Wah, Wah, Wah."

The cries cut through the baby monitor and woke me up out of a dead sleep. When I looked at the little screen, Easton was screaming so hard that his whole little body was shaking.

"Just one more hour." I pleaded with him and rolled over.

"Cami. Easton is crying." Jessa mumbled in her sleep.

"Don't worry. I'll get him, Jess." I whispered and leaned over to kiss her cheek.

I climbed out of bed and stretched. I was beyond exhausted in every way possible, but Jessa was struggling a lot more right now than I was. I told her I would take baby duty tonight so she could get some much-needed rest. Her reintroduction to her medication was messing with her body and I felt terrible knowing she was going through it while trying to balance taking care of an infant.

I opened the door to Easton's room to find the little man wailing away. Who knew something so small could make that much noise? He was louder than the siren on my cruiser.

I bent down over the crib to pick the angry little bundle up and cradled him to my bare chest. I began bouncing him up and down gently against me. He squirmed restlessly as I alternated between patting his little back and rubbing it, trying to get him to calm down. I was still a little uncomfortable holding him; I wasn't a natural at it like Jessa. She was a lot softer than I was up top and held him with confidence like she had been doing it her whole life.

I was afraid I would break him. He was so small and fragile.

"Shhh. Hey, Daddy has you, little guy." I said in a hushed voice. If he kept going, Jessa was sure to wake up and come attempt to take over. She went to bed angry at me, so there was no telling which version of her I was going to get tonight when she woke up.

Easton kept fussing against me and I knew what he wanted right away. He wanted her. Just like his Dad, he already needed to have her close to him to sleep.

I walked around the room with the tiny little boy on my chest to quiet him a bit before going leaving his room to make a bottle in the kitchen. He was hungry and searching for her with his mouth. I laughed, I definitely couldn't give him what he wanted and unfortunately, she couldn't do it any longer either. We had just switched over to store-bought formula earlier in the week and it was messing with the little guy's stomach a bit.

Jessa tried so hard to stay off her meds so she could breastfeed, but in the end, she was falling apart more and more every single day that passed. It killed me last week when I told her that she had to give it up to start taking them again. She hadn't talked to me much since because she was so angry with me about it. Once the meds kicked in, she became a zombie and barely even acknowledged either one of us existed unless Easton was crying. Then she would start crying too about how she was a terrible mother and that I should go find a new mom for him who was better than her.

It was heartbreaking to hear her talk that way. I know she didn't really want that or mean it. She just got so lost in her head sometimes.

She had taken a severe swing down and the depression had fully set in. I felt bad for her; it wasn't her fault she was suffering so much and she sure as hell didn't deserve to have to go through it.

I changed Easton and sat down in the rocking chair in the living room to feed him. He looked up at me with his little expectant eyes, just like Jessa did. He had her big light blue eyes and full pouty pink mouth. I was a bit relieved to see he got my coloring, though. He looked a lot like me but with her eyes. Our little boy was going to blond just like his father. I wanted to believe Jessa when she said she and Nathan were only together at the motel, but part of me was secretly nervous that they were together around the same time she got pregnant. It scared her too, but we decided we would never let anyone know if it turned out he wasn't mine.

The day he was born, I decided I didn't even need a paternity test. That little boy belonged to me.

Even Ezra said he looked just like me.

Ezra was still pissed that I got Jessa pregnant and I had the pleasure of rubbing it in his face every time I saw him. That cantankerous bastard had always kept his eyes on me. He must have recognized I wasn't exactly who I pretended to be around her or he saw something in me that reminded him of himself. It didn't make a difference what it was about; he always ran hot and cold with me.

In the end, he knew I would protect his daughter at any cost, which is how I won in the end. I wonder what kind of man he would think I was if he ever found out the things that I had done to keep her safe.

It was a good thing he was never going to find out.

Easton began whimpering again. He had taken about half his bottle and no doubt had one hell of a gas bubble filling his little belly. He was stiff and squirming as he whimpered. I raised him up and started patting his back to work the air bubble out of the poor guy. When he let out a good one, I laid him back down and stuck the bottle nipple back to his mouth.

Jessa always sang to him when she rocked him. Her sweet voice always soothed him. One time he was crying so hard that I put on her album and it was like an instant pacifier. He quieted down immediately and looked like he was in a trance. She always had that effect on me too.

When I looked down, Easton kept staring at me like he wanted something.

"East, little buddy, I can't sing worth a damn and your Momma is having an extremely rough night. Can you I tell you a story instead?" I whispered to the little boy latched onto his bottle.

I sat back and rocked him, thinking about the past and how we got here. I was going to tell him this story just this one time. It would stay a secret between him and me.

Jessa would never know.

I closed my eyes and began.