Never Say Never

was to get him to speak. “I’m really excited to meet you, Jaime. I like your pajamas.”
Still nothing, just a withering stare that reminded Emily of his mother.
“Can I see some of your drawings?” she asked, nodding toward the stack of paper on the table behind him. “No? Okay, then.”
He was proving to be a tough nut to crack, but she would have expected nothing less from Camila Evans’s son.
Jaime turned around and crawled over to the chest of toys in the corner. Emily glanced inside and spotted some familiar shapes. The kid had just handed her a lifeline.
“You like dinosaurs, huh?”
Jaime’s hand closed around a T. rex. He turned his head to look at her, letting on that he was interested.
“I like them too. What’s your favorite?”
Silence.
“Mine is the stegosaurus. Do you have one of those?”
Again no answer, so Emily glanced over his shoulder and reached past him into the toy chest. Jaime watched her the whole time.
“This is a stegosaurus,” she told him.
“I know.” The words were so unexpected and came out so haughtily, so undeniably reminiscent of his mother, that Emily broke into a wide smile.
“You know, huh?”
He nodded.
“Do you also know that, even though they were really big, they had really tiny brains?” She watched him struggle—half of him wanted to ignore her and wanted her gone, the other half really wanted to know more dinosaur facts.
“Really?” he asked eventually.
“Uh-huh. You know what they ate?”
“Plants.” He answered quicker this time.
“That’s right, they were herbivores.”
“Herb-vore,” he repeated, and he was so cute that Emily wanted to cry. “So is that one.” He pointed at another dinosaur by Emily’s knee, a diplodocus.
“Yeah, it was. You’re good at this.”
Jaime smiled uncertainly.
“They used their tail as a weapon.” She demonstrated, knocking over a different dinosaur with the diplodocus’s tail, and Jaime giggled. “And their brains were small too.”
Jaime pointed at another dinosaur, then another. Emily felt like this was a test, and she was glad her own childhood obsession had prepared her for this moment. After she’d gone through his entire collection, he watched her thoughtfully before crawling closer to her and holding out the dinosaur he’d been clutching since she first sat down.
Emily took it gently from him as if it were an honor.
“Favorite,” he said, and crawled onto her lap.
“So what else do you like, buddy?” she asked him. She spoke softly, afraid she might startle him, make him run away and not come back. She peered at the stack of books. “Space?”
“Yeah!” It was his most enthusiastic response yet. “I wanna be an astronaut!”
“You do?”
He nodded, completely serious.
“It’s a lot of hard work, you know. I have a friend who’s training to be an astronaut.”
Jaime’s eyes grew wide. “Really?”
“Really,” she confirmed.
He looked at her, amazed. “Can they take me into space?”
“That’s not really how it works.” She laughed, then seeing his disappointment added, “but maybe she could come and talk to you about it one day.”
Jaime beamed at the thought.
“I’m sorry to interrupt.” Emily jumped at the sound of Camila’s voice because she hadn’t heard the other woman approach. “Dinner’s nearly ready, and Jaime”—she turned to her son—“it’s nearly time for bed.”
Jaime thrust out his lower lip in an impressive pout.
“Can Emily read my bedtime story?” he asked, and Camila blinked.
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to overstep,” Emily said, but Camila waved her off.
“Nonsense. This is why you’re here.” Camila leaned down to help Jaime out of Emily’s lap. It was the closest she had been yet to Camila, and Emily reminded herself to keep breathing. “Jaime’s room is this way.” Camila headed toward the hallway with Jaime in tow, and Emily followed. “Let’s brush your teeth while Emily picks out a book for you.”
Jaime’s bedroom was identified with his name on the door in brightly colored letters. Emily stepped hesitantly inside. The room was plastered with his drawings, and his bed was shaped like a rocket. Emily made her way to the bookshelf against one wall, easily identifying Jaime’s favorite books by the worn spines. She chose one at random.
A moment later, Jaime darted past her, Camila close behind. Emily watched Camila tuck her son into bed with a devotion that screamed how much she loved him.
“He’s all yours,” Camila told Emily as she straightened up, nodding at the chair beside the bed. “I’ll go finish up dinner.”
Emily opened the book and began reading. She was barely three pages in before Jaime’s breathing slowed, and she looked up to see him fast asleep.
She smiled and closed the book, leaving it on the chair, and padded silently from the room, butterflies back in full force at the thought of having dinner with Camila without Jaime there as a buffer.
* * *
Camila returned to her kitchen, amazed and unbelieving at how quickly Emily had won over her son.
She had watched the two of them closely as they played and had nearly dropped the pasta on the floor when she saw Jaime crawl onto Emily’s lap.
With Amelia, Jaime had cried for two weeks whenever Camila left the apartment, and yet fifteen minutes with Emily Walker and she was his new favorite person.
What was it about the girl that was different from the ones who came before her? Even Eleanor, Camila’s wonder nanny, had a difficult few days before Jaime had accepted her in his life.
It was like a dream.
She had expected Emily to be good, but not this good, and it was a little disarming. Camila wondered if Emily would continue to surprise her and hoped that she did.
“He’s out for the count.”
Emily reappeared, looking a little nervous now that Jaime wasn’t with her—she was a different person with her son than the woman Camila had met that afternoon.
She finished dishing up the carbonara. “He never did have trouble sleeping.” Even as a baby, Jaime slept through the night more often than not. “Here, sit.” She gestured for Emily to take a seat at the breakfast bar; it would be less formal than sitting at the table. Camila placed a