Beat Down (UnBroken: The Series Book 3), page 8
I have to laugh or I’m going to cry, and if I do that, I’ll never get off the phone and never get the cat off the countertop.
Though, if I were that cat, I’d be tempted by the puddle of melted ice cream too.
“I have some things to take care of here, and I’m going to need both hands. I love you, but I need to go.” I eye the new addition to this three-ring shit show as it continues to lap up the mess.
“Yes. You, um… Oh boy. Is it bad?” she asks, and I can practically hear the grimace in her voice.
“You don’t really want me to answer that. I’ll talk to you soon. Smooches.” I kiss into the phone and end the call before she claims that she does, in fact, want to know.
Aside from the melted ice cream, there’s a trail of chocolate sauce kitty footprints along the counter leading away from the scene of the crime.
I don’t have a cat.
I don’t pay the extra rent for a cat.
I don’t actually like cats.
The barn cats out at my brother’s farm serve a purpose and they are damn good at it. I appreciate that. But I always have been and always will be a dog person.
Like them or not, this little dude—girl?—does not belong here in my apartment. So I scoop up the little fluff ball and take it down the hall to Tyffani’s room. Stealing myself, I open the door to her bedroom and tuck the cat inside, quickly pulling the door shut behind it.
Hot holy fuck, I thought the common areas of our apartment were bad.
If I were her, I wouldn’t want to spend any time in that disaster area. Trash, laundry, piles of crap so high, it looks like an episode of Hoarders in there.
Of course, if I were her, that mess wouldn’t exist, because I’m not an inconsiderate fuckwit who lives like a pig and takes advantage of her roommate.
But I digress.
This has got to stop.
Tomorrow cannot get here soon enough. I’m working the early shift only for a nice change of pace. I’ll text Ian, see if he wants to hang out. I can swing by Lyla’s patisserie and grab a bagful of pastries, see if Ian wants to make me a cup of his fussy, bougie coffee and help me look for something affordable in the city. A place just for me.
If Nate didn’t live way the fuck out in Brooklyn, I’d ask him, no, beg him for a shot at house-sitting. His brownstone is huge, and the kitchen?—chef’s kiss.
If I could turn my give a fuck off, I’d breeze straight past the mess in the kitchen and lock myself in my room. But I can’t. So, I don’t.
I pull the garbage can out and sweep the trash into it. Wipe down the counters, following the chocolaty footprints across the floor and into the living room. By the grace of God, my couch is safe. For now.
When my apartment is once again clean, I retreat to my room, shower, and get ready for bed. And I fall asleep watching Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr in An Affair to Remember.
Tomorrow is a new day and with it comes new possibilities and new beginnings. And if Ian is on board, a new dalliance between us.
CHAPTER 12
AFTER THE FALL
IAN
This is the last phone call I ever thought I’d be making. I haven’t been back in the city for more than a couple hours and my world is on fire. Well, going up in flames.
“Dude, I hate to do this, but… fuck… I need your help.” I run my hand down my face. The rasp of my stubble against my palm reverberates through the speaker of my phone.
I hate what I’m asking of one of my best friends.
I hate that I have to ask.
I hate that I didn’t ask for help months ago.
“The fuck… Now?”
I understand the frustration in Nate’s voice, I do. But I don’t know what else to do—who else to call.
“I know. I know,” I tell him as my gaze bounces around the lobby of my apartment building. A squeak and a tiny sigh pull my focus to where my doorman peers over his desk with the most ridiculous look on his face. Frank might look like an out-of-place, old-school gangster, but with the shit he’s babbling… he is nothing but a completely gooey marshmallow.
Nate blows out a lungful of air and, though I can’t see him, I know he’s fucking with his ball cap. Pulling it low over his eyes. Gathering his thoughts. Figuring out the nicest way to tell me to fuck right off.
“I just got to my place, man. I’m beat. I’ll swing over later tonight—maybe tomorrow or later this week.”
The squeak turns into a grunt and Frank pins me with a look that I’m not sure I like.
I push my beanie back and forth on my head before settling it back in place. Goddammit, this is too fucking much for me to handle. All I wanted was a good cup of coffee, and to scrape off the crazy stalker girl. That’s it. That’s all I had planned for this afternoon.
“I get it, I hear you, but Nate, this is, uh—” I turn my back on Frank and stalk to one of the windows framing the front door. I suck in a huge breath, bracing myself for the fallout. Because as much as Frank’s stink-eye scares the shit out of me, saying what I have to, out loud, might just be too much.
“It’s what?”
My hand rocks against my thigh, my fingers slapping and tapping the beat of my executioner’s song.
“Ian, what the fuck—”
“Someone dropped a baby off with Frank today.” That wasn’t nearly as hard to spit out as I thought it would be.
“What does that have to do with—” Nate stops, the brakes his brain is throwing down on his mouth squealing across the city. “Oh fuck.”
“Yeah.”
“Fuck.”
“Yep. I know,” I say, barely above a whisper. “I don’t know what to do.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can. Traffic, and shit, it could be a minute,” he says, ending the call.
He can’t hear me, certainly can’t see me, but I nod anyway.
I tap at my messaging app and scroll through the crazy shit River has sent me since we hooked up. The thread goes on and on. Months of messages in reverse. It’s trippy as fuck to see the changes.
Greek mythology. Shit on Norse gods. Random ramblings that make no fucking sense whatsoever. Selfies and spank bank material. Booty calls going back to the very first hey after we hooked up.
Nothing in there hints at her being pregnant. Hell, I didn’t even bother responding to most of her messages. She was just a groupie, that’s it.
She followed us home like a stray, showing up at the last five or six shows of our tour. Cute. Sexy. And a little bit crazy but show me a groupie who isn’t.
She was a repeat performance. An encore that should have stayed a one and done, but I swear on my grave I wrapped my shit tight. No spillage. No leaking. No fucking overflow.
Frank’s guttural tone slaps me out of my head, my rambling thoughts shooting away like jizz down the shower drain. That would’ve been a spectacular thing for me to do. Rub one out in the shower instead of fucking the fucking flaky groupie.
Fuck me running.
“Mr. Scott, your presence is requested over here.” Frank’s bushy gray eyebrows are so high on his forehead, he looks like a cartoon.
“I’m good right here, thanks,” I call, my voice echoing across the green marble floor.
Squeak. Grunt. Whimper, whimper, grunt.
“Mr. Scott, this is outside my assigned and agreed to perform duties,” Frank states in his thick New York accent. He continues slowly, enunciating each word like I’m an idiot. Which, obviously I am, because I should not have fucked the groupie. “There is a matter that requires immediate attention here, and the note on this thing has your name on it. If I could be frank with you for a minute?”
I want to laugh, just a little bit to relieve some of the tension pulling at me.
The play on words? Can Frank be frank?
The stupid, ridiculous, idiotic situation I’m sitting in? I should not have fucked the groupie.
Hell, all of it.
“Please, Frank, I appreciate your frankness.”
He throws me a side-eye before his wrinkled face softens—but only a little. “I’m guessing this is a bit of a surprise here. Am I right?”
I nod.
“Well, I understand that this may not be what you were planning, or expecting…”
I shake my head, afraid to open my mouth.
“But you got to take this up outa my lobby. I hold doors and I accept packages; that’s my job.” He waves his gnarled hand toward his desk, pauses and flashes a big toothy grin and babbles unintelligibly for a hot minute at the squirming baby in the bucket carrier thing before his gangster mask slides back into place. “But this party can’t stay here all day. You’re gonna have to take the bambina up on outa here and let me get back to my regularly scheduled duties. You hearing me?”
My doorman is scolding me. I literally pay his salary—his position was created when I moved into the building, and I’m the one who pays his wages—and he’s putting me in my place. He’s ready for me to pack this shit up and clear out of his space.
I’d be delighted to do exactly that.
I just don’t know what to do with the baby.
The squeaking and grunting and all of that starts in again and I hold my breath, waiting for it to stop again.
It doesn’t.
Instead, the blanket shifts and the bucket seat this kid is in rocks and a fist—an impossibly small fist—thrusts up in the air like the good little head banger this kid apparently is.
And then all hell breaks loose.
Face red, mouth wide, the kid wails. Kicking and punching. Rocking and rolling.
Shear panic washes over me. What is it? Fight or flight?
I inch toward the door.
Flight. I choose flight because I don’t know what else to do.
I don’t have the first clue about how to deal with this shit show.
Sadly, I don’t get far, because the minute I’m out the door, Nate has his palm planted in my chest, slamming me back through it. And the only coherent thought sifting through my mush of a brain right now is that he got here really fucking fast.
“What happened? Is it gone? Did she come back and take—”
Wailing from the desk—serious, heart-wrenching, life-killing noise—drowns out the rest of whatever spills from Nate’s mouth.
It’s awful.
It’s earsplitting.
It’s absolutely pitiful.
I have to make it stop. But in the time it takes me to cross the lobby, Frank has the tiny terror out of its holder and is bouncing and shushing it. Not that it does a whole lot of good. The kid is committed to crying, but at least the volume has come down a few notches.
Frank nudges a bag toward me while he bounces. “Here. Look for a bottle in there or a nipple or something.”
He’s got to be kidding me, right?
“That’s… that’s, uh… that’s just wrong, man. I don’t know what you think I’m gonna find in there, but if it’s some chick’s nipple that fell the fuck off—”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Ian, a pacifier. Oh my God, move.” Nate pushes past me and riffles through the plastic bag that came with the kid. He pulls a blue silicone squishy thing from the depths, plucks off some lint from the end and hands it to me.
I turn it over in my hand, trying to figure out what the fuck it is. I hold it out in front of me to ask what the hell it is and Frank snatches it from my hand, blows on it and wiggles it in the kid’s mouth.
Time stands still as silence sweeps through the lobby and I swear on all that is good and holy, it’s the best sound ever. Nothing. Nothing but little sucky noises and a couple of snorts. Like a dog when he’s licking his balls. That’s exactly what it sounds like.
I open my mouth and bark out a laugh, because that’s some funny shit right there.
Both men turn to face me, and the smile stretched across my face fades at their expressions.
“That sound—the snuffle and slurp thing—sounds like—”
“A cry for help,” Nate says over the kid crying again.
Frank stalks around his desk, coming straight at me. The kid kicks it up a notch, but Frank just holds it out to me.
“No, man. I can’t.” I’ve only held a kid once before, and I swear that one was a whole lot bigger. Sturdier. This one is too little, too floppy for me. And way too fucking pissed off.
“Take her. You’re gonna have to sometime,” he mutters, depositing the squirming red-faced baby in my hands. “Make sure to support her head. I’ll look for… yep, there it is.”
He pulls a bottle from the bag, shakes it with a flick of his wrist and then pops the top off, revealing another silicone thingy that looks just like the one he shoved in her face before.
I grab it from his hand and flip it around, splattering milky shit across Nate’s cheek, and then shove it in the noisemaker’s mouth.
“Fuck, yeah.” I nod at the kid sucking and slurping and snorting. “Sweet fucking silence.”
The three of us watch, holding our collective breaths as her desperation chills a bit with the bottle stuck in her face. Little by little, everyone starts to relax. Frank steps back behind his desk, Nate blows out a big old breath, and the kid turns into a sack of potatoes in my arms.
My gaze is fixated on her—Frank said her before, right? Her eyelids are at half-mast. Her fist, with the tiniest fingers I’ve ever seen, is balled up, bopping a beat against the bottle. Nice. And her mouth is working that silicone like an eager little…
“Holy fucking shit,” Nate mumbles, shaking his head at me. “Why would you hide this from me? All those times I asked what the fuck was going on with you? Why you were so distracted? And you never once thought you should share this?”
“You gotta burp her,” Frank says, eyeing the bottle.
“I didn’t know,” I tell Nate, ignoring Frank because I don’t know what he’s going on about.
I slide the bottle from between her lips and a stream of milk and drool dribbles down her chin. She’s out cold, head thrown back. Mouth gaping. I wiggle the end of it in her mouth and get her sucking again.
“You gotta get rid of the air. Burp her,” Frank insists, waving his arms around like he’s directing an orchestra or something.
“You had no idea?” Nate asks. “All those texts, the nonstop messages, the phone calls. All those times you were sulking around the studio and you’re going to tell me you knew nothing about this.”
“I didn’t, I swear. I thought she was just a crazy groupie looking for another ride.” I cringe as the baby startles at my raised voice. But she goes back to slurping on the bottle, spilling milk out of her face.
“Jesus. I’m telling you, you gotta burp the kid or she’s gonna explode.”
I turn my gaze to meet Frank’s frustration and shove a little of my own back at him. “I don’t know what that means. There’s still milk, she’s not done yet and she’s obviously going to town on this.” Of course she makes me look like a liar when she lets the bottle slip from her mouth. “Well, now she’s done. And she’s asleep, so I’m doing something right,” I grumble, setting the bottle on the counter.
Frank shakes his head and flicks his hand in the air like an old Italian woman. “Yeah, don’t listen to me. What the hell do I know. Got four kids and fifteen grandkids, but I don’t know nothin’.”
I turn to Nate for support and all he gives me is a shrug and a chin lift. Like that’s going to help.
“Fine. How do I make her burp?” For fuck’s sake, if I need to burp after eating, I just do it. The longer and louder, the better. I don’t need anyone to get me to do it. Most of the time, I have Sasha glaring at me, telling me to quit it.
“Shoulda done it once when that bottle was still half full and then again, now. Prolly too late but put her up against your shoulder—for God’s sake, watch her head,” Frank directs as I shift the kid so her belly rests against me. “Now pat her back nice and gentle. Rub some circles—there you go.”
I rub and pat and try to hold the kid, her head flopping around and sliding in the crook of my neck. I need another set of hands for this shit. “Nothing’s happening.”
“Give it a minute. Maybe bounce a little while you pat. Yeah, just like that.”
I’m bouncing. I’m patting. I look like a fucking moron in the middle of the lobby. But finally—fucking finally—the kid lets loose with a burp. And then a second one.
“Ha.” I laugh, triumphant.
“Not so hard,” Frank warns, but I’m on a roll.
I bounce some more and give her a pat-pat-a-pat-pat. Then I feel the mother of all burps bubbling up, rumbling against my shoulder.
It explodes from her.
My high of success is doused with warm, slimy, sour-smelling milk sliding down my back, drenching my shirt.
“Shoulda listened to me.”
Yeah, Frank. I should have done a lot of things differently.
CHAPTER 13
DROWNING (FACE DOWN)
IAN
“That was rude,” I mumble under my breath as the elevator takes its fucking time getting up to my floor. Normally not a big deal. With slimy baby puke rolling down my back and seeping past the waistband of my jeans, it’s torture.
I should have taken the extra fifteen seconds to put underwear on this morning.
Add that to my list of should haves:
Stick with one and done.
Wrap that shit tight.
My hand is my new best friend.
Underwear.
Fucking hate underwear. There’s no reason for it. It’s tight, and smashes my junk, and rides up my thighs. It’s nothing but extra laundry to deal with and who needs that?
Nate lifts his face from the screen of his phone. “What was? The baby spitting up? Frank kicking you out of the lobby? Him being right? Or the fact that you knocked up some chick and ignored her for months upon months and in an obvious act of desperation, she left this poor innocent child in your hands? Yours. Tell me, Ian, which part of that is the rude part?”
I don’t really like his attitude right now, but he’s not wrong.
“All of it. But I swear to Zildjian, I did not know she was pregnant.” Hell, I avoided her like the freaking plague.
Though, if I were that cat, I’d be tempted by the puddle of melted ice cream too.
“I have some things to take care of here, and I’m going to need both hands. I love you, but I need to go.” I eye the new addition to this three-ring shit show as it continues to lap up the mess.
“Yes. You, um… Oh boy. Is it bad?” she asks, and I can practically hear the grimace in her voice.
“You don’t really want me to answer that. I’ll talk to you soon. Smooches.” I kiss into the phone and end the call before she claims that she does, in fact, want to know.
Aside from the melted ice cream, there’s a trail of chocolate sauce kitty footprints along the counter leading away from the scene of the crime.
I don’t have a cat.
I don’t pay the extra rent for a cat.
I don’t actually like cats.
The barn cats out at my brother’s farm serve a purpose and they are damn good at it. I appreciate that. But I always have been and always will be a dog person.
Like them or not, this little dude—girl?—does not belong here in my apartment. So I scoop up the little fluff ball and take it down the hall to Tyffani’s room. Stealing myself, I open the door to her bedroom and tuck the cat inside, quickly pulling the door shut behind it.
Hot holy fuck, I thought the common areas of our apartment were bad.
If I were her, I wouldn’t want to spend any time in that disaster area. Trash, laundry, piles of crap so high, it looks like an episode of Hoarders in there.
Of course, if I were her, that mess wouldn’t exist, because I’m not an inconsiderate fuckwit who lives like a pig and takes advantage of her roommate.
But I digress.
This has got to stop.
Tomorrow cannot get here soon enough. I’m working the early shift only for a nice change of pace. I’ll text Ian, see if he wants to hang out. I can swing by Lyla’s patisserie and grab a bagful of pastries, see if Ian wants to make me a cup of his fussy, bougie coffee and help me look for something affordable in the city. A place just for me.
If Nate didn’t live way the fuck out in Brooklyn, I’d ask him, no, beg him for a shot at house-sitting. His brownstone is huge, and the kitchen?—chef’s kiss.
If I could turn my give a fuck off, I’d breeze straight past the mess in the kitchen and lock myself in my room. But I can’t. So, I don’t.
I pull the garbage can out and sweep the trash into it. Wipe down the counters, following the chocolaty footprints across the floor and into the living room. By the grace of God, my couch is safe. For now.
When my apartment is once again clean, I retreat to my room, shower, and get ready for bed. And I fall asleep watching Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr in An Affair to Remember.
Tomorrow is a new day and with it comes new possibilities and new beginnings. And if Ian is on board, a new dalliance between us.
CHAPTER 12
AFTER THE FALL
IAN
This is the last phone call I ever thought I’d be making. I haven’t been back in the city for more than a couple hours and my world is on fire. Well, going up in flames.
“Dude, I hate to do this, but… fuck… I need your help.” I run my hand down my face. The rasp of my stubble against my palm reverberates through the speaker of my phone.
I hate what I’m asking of one of my best friends.
I hate that I have to ask.
I hate that I didn’t ask for help months ago.
“The fuck… Now?”
I understand the frustration in Nate’s voice, I do. But I don’t know what else to do—who else to call.
“I know. I know,” I tell him as my gaze bounces around the lobby of my apartment building. A squeak and a tiny sigh pull my focus to where my doorman peers over his desk with the most ridiculous look on his face. Frank might look like an out-of-place, old-school gangster, but with the shit he’s babbling… he is nothing but a completely gooey marshmallow.
Nate blows out a lungful of air and, though I can’t see him, I know he’s fucking with his ball cap. Pulling it low over his eyes. Gathering his thoughts. Figuring out the nicest way to tell me to fuck right off.
“I just got to my place, man. I’m beat. I’ll swing over later tonight—maybe tomorrow or later this week.”
The squeak turns into a grunt and Frank pins me with a look that I’m not sure I like.
I push my beanie back and forth on my head before settling it back in place. Goddammit, this is too fucking much for me to handle. All I wanted was a good cup of coffee, and to scrape off the crazy stalker girl. That’s it. That’s all I had planned for this afternoon.
“I get it, I hear you, but Nate, this is, uh—” I turn my back on Frank and stalk to one of the windows framing the front door. I suck in a huge breath, bracing myself for the fallout. Because as much as Frank’s stink-eye scares the shit out of me, saying what I have to, out loud, might just be too much.
“It’s what?”
My hand rocks against my thigh, my fingers slapping and tapping the beat of my executioner’s song.
“Ian, what the fuck—”
“Someone dropped a baby off with Frank today.” That wasn’t nearly as hard to spit out as I thought it would be.
“What does that have to do with—” Nate stops, the brakes his brain is throwing down on his mouth squealing across the city. “Oh fuck.”
“Yeah.”
“Fuck.”
“Yep. I know,” I say, barely above a whisper. “I don’t know what to do.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can. Traffic, and shit, it could be a minute,” he says, ending the call.
He can’t hear me, certainly can’t see me, but I nod anyway.
I tap at my messaging app and scroll through the crazy shit River has sent me since we hooked up. The thread goes on and on. Months of messages in reverse. It’s trippy as fuck to see the changes.
Greek mythology. Shit on Norse gods. Random ramblings that make no fucking sense whatsoever. Selfies and spank bank material. Booty calls going back to the very first hey after we hooked up.
Nothing in there hints at her being pregnant. Hell, I didn’t even bother responding to most of her messages. She was just a groupie, that’s it.
She followed us home like a stray, showing up at the last five or six shows of our tour. Cute. Sexy. And a little bit crazy but show me a groupie who isn’t.
She was a repeat performance. An encore that should have stayed a one and done, but I swear on my grave I wrapped my shit tight. No spillage. No leaking. No fucking overflow.
Frank’s guttural tone slaps me out of my head, my rambling thoughts shooting away like jizz down the shower drain. That would’ve been a spectacular thing for me to do. Rub one out in the shower instead of fucking the fucking flaky groupie.
Fuck me running.
“Mr. Scott, your presence is requested over here.” Frank’s bushy gray eyebrows are so high on his forehead, he looks like a cartoon.
“I’m good right here, thanks,” I call, my voice echoing across the green marble floor.
Squeak. Grunt. Whimper, whimper, grunt.
“Mr. Scott, this is outside my assigned and agreed to perform duties,” Frank states in his thick New York accent. He continues slowly, enunciating each word like I’m an idiot. Which, obviously I am, because I should not have fucked the groupie. “There is a matter that requires immediate attention here, and the note on this thing has your name on it. If I could be frank with you for a minute?”
I want to laugh, just a little bit to relieve some of the tension pulling at me.
The play on words? Can Frank be frank?
The stupid, ridiculous, idiotic situation I’m sitting in? I should not have fucked the groupie.
Hell, all of it.
“Please, Frank, I appreciate your frankness.”
He throws me a side-eye before his wrinkled face softens—but only a little. “I’m guessing this is a bit of a surprise here. Am I right?”
I nod.
“Well, I understand that this may not be what you were planning, or expecting…”
I shake my head, afraid to open my mouth.
“But you got to take this up outa my lobby. I hold doors and I accept packages; that’s my job.” He waves his gnarled hand toward his desk, pauses and flashes a big toothy grin and babbles unintelligibly for a hot minute at the squirming baby in the bucket carrier thing before his gangster mask slides back into place. “But this party can’t stay here all day. You’re gonna have to take the bambina up on outa here and let me get back to my regularly scheduled duties. You hearing me?”
My doorman is scolding me. I literally pay his salary—his position was created when I moved into the building, and I’m the one who pays his wages—and he’s putting me in my place. He’s ready for me to pack this shit up and clear out of his space.
I’d be delighted to do exactly that.
I just don’t know what to do with the baby.
The squeaking and grunting and all of that starts in again and I hold my breath, waiting for it to stop again.
It doesn’t.
Instead, the blanket shifts and the bucket seat this kid is in rocks and a fist—an impossibly small fist—thrusts up in the air like the good little head banger this kid apparently is.
And then all hell breaks loose.
Face red, mouth wide, the kid wails. Kicking and punching. Rocking and rolling.
Shear panic washes over me. What is it? Fight or flight?
I inch toward the door.
Flight. I choose flight because I don’t know what else to do.
I don’t have the first clue about how to deal with this shit show.
Sadly, I don’t get far, because the minute I’m out the door, Nate has his palm planted in my chest, slamming me back through it. And the only coherent thought sifting through my mush of a brain right now is that he got here really fucking fast.
“What happened? Is it gone? Did she come back and take—”
Wailing from the desk—serious, heart-wrenching, life-killing noise—drowns out the rest of whatever spills from Nate’s mouth.
It’s awful.
It’s earsplitting.
It’s absolutely pitiful.
I have to make it stop. But in the time it takes me to cross the lobby, Frank has the tiny terror out of its holder and is bouncing and shushing it. Not that it does a whole lot of good. The kid is committed to crying, but at least the volume has come down a few notches.
Frank nudges a bag toward me while he bounces. “Here. Look for a bottle in there or a nipple or something.”
He’s got to be kidding me, right?
“That’s… that’s, uh… that’s just wrong, man. I don’t know what you think I’m gonna find in there, but if it’s some chick’s nipple that fell the fuck off—”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Ian, a pacifier. Oh my God, move.” Nate pushes past me and riffles through the plastic bag that came with the kid. He pulls a blue silicone squishy thing from the depths, plucks off some lint from the end and hands it to me.
I turn it over in my hand, trying to figure out what the fuck it is. I hold it out in front of me to ask what the hell it is and Frank snatches it from my hand, blows on it and wiggles it in the kid’s mouth.
Time stands still as silence sweeps through the lobby and I swear on all that is good and holy, it’s the best sound ever. Nothing. Nothing but little sucky noises and a couple of snorts. Like a dog when he’s licking his balls. That’s exactly what it sounds like.
I open my mouth and bark out a laugh, because that’s some funny shit right there.
Both men turn to face me, and the smile stretched across my face fades at their expressions.
“That sound—the snuffle and slurp thing—sounds like—”
“A cry for help,” Nate says over the kid crying again.
Frank stalks around his desk, coming straight at me. The kid kicks it up a notch, but Frank just holds it out to me.
“No, man. I can’t.” I’ve only held a kid once before, and I swear that one was a whole lot bigger. Sturdier. This one is too little, too floppy for me. And way too fucking pissed off.
“Take her. You’re gonna have to sometime,” he mutters, depositing the squirming red-faced baby in my hands. “Make sure to support her head. I’ll look for… yep, there it is.”
He pulls a bottle from the bag, shakes it with a flick of his wrist and then pops the top off, revealing another silicone thingy that looks just like the one he shoved in her face before.
I grab it from his hand and flip it around, splattering milky shit across Nate’s cheek, and then shove it in the noisemaker’s mouth.
“Fuck, yeah.” I nod at the kid sucking and slurping and snorting. “Sweet fucking silence.”
The three of us watch, holding our collective breaths as her desperation chills a bit with the bottle stuck in her face. Little by little, everyone starts to relax. Frank steps back behind his desk, Nate blows out a big old breath, and the kid turns into a sack of potatoes in my arms.
My gaze is fixated on her—Frank said her before, right? Her eyelids are at half-mast. Her fist, with the tiniest fingers I’ve ever seen, is balled up, bopping a beat against the bottle. Nice. And her mouth is working that silicone like an eager little…
“Holy fucking shit,” Nate mumbles, shaking his head at me. “Why would you hide this from me? All those times I asked what the fuck was going on with you? Why you were so distracted? And you never once thought you should share this?”
“You gotta burp her,” Frank says, eyeing the bottle.
“I didn’t know,” I tell Nate, ignoring Frank because I don’t know what he’s going on about.
I slide the bottle from between her lips and a stream of milk and drool dribbles down her chin. She’s out cold, head thrown back. Mouth gaping. I wiggle the end of it in her mouth and get her sucking again.
“You gotta get rid of the air. Burp her,” Frank insists, waving his arms around like he’s directing an orchestra or something.
“You had no idea?” Nate asks. “All those texts, the nonstop messages, the phone calls. All those times you were sulking around the studio and you’re going to tell me you knew nothing about this.”
“I didn’t, I swear. I thought she was just a crazy groupie looking for another ride.” I cringe as the baby startles at my raised voice. But she goes back to slurping on the bottle, spilling milk out of her face.
“Jesus. I’m telling you, you gotta burp the kid or she’s gonna explode.”
I turn my gaze to meet Frank’s frustration and shove a little of my own back at him. “I don’t know what that means. There’s still milk, she’s not done yet and she’s obviously going to town on this.” Of course she makes me look like a liar when she lets the bottle slip from her mouth. “Well, now she’s done. And she’s asleep, so I’m doing something right,” I grumble, setting the bottle on the counter.
Frank shakes his head and flicks his hand in the air like an old Italian woman. “Yeah, don’t listen to me. What the hell do I know. Got four kids and fifteen grandkids, but I don’t know nothin’.”
I turn to Nate for support and all he gives me is a shrug and a chin lift. Like that’s going to help.
“Fine. How do I make her burp?” For fuck’s sake, if I need to burp after eating, I just do it. The longer and louder, the better. I don’t need anyone to get me to do it. Most of the time, I have Sasha glaring at me, telling me to quit it.
“Shoulda done it once when that bottle was still half full and then again, now. Prolly too late but put her up against your shoulder—for God’s sake, watch her head,” Frank directs as I shift the kid so her belly rests against me. “Now pat her back nice and gentle. Rub some circles—there you go.”
I rub and pat and try to hold the kid, her head flopping around and sliding in the crook of my neck. I need another set of hands for this shit. “Nothing’s happening.”
“Give it a minute. Maybe bounce a little while you pat. Yeah, just like that.”
I’m bouncing. I’m patting. I look like a fucking moron in the middle of the lobby. But finally—fucking finally—the kid lets loose with a burp. And then a second one.
“Ha.” I laugh, triumphant.
“Not so hard,” Frank warns, but I’m on a roll.
I bounce some more and give her a pat-pat-a-pat-pat. Then I feel the mother of all burps bubbling up, rumbling against my shoulder.
It explodes from her.
My high of success is doused with warm, slimy, sour-smelling milk sliding down my back, drenching my shirt.
“Shoulda listened to me.”
Yeah, Frank. I should have done a lot of things differently.
CHAPTER 13
DROWNING (FACE DOWN)
IAN
“That was rude,” I mumble under my breath as the elevator takes its fucking time getting up to my floor. Normally not a big deal. With slimy baby puke rolling down my back and seeping past the waistband of my jeans, it’s torture.
I should have taken the extra fifteen seconds to put underwear on this morning.
Add that to my list of should haves:
Stick with one and done.
Wrap that shit tight.
My hand is my new best friend.
Underwear.
Fucking hate underwear. There’s no reason for it. It’s tight, and smashes my junk, and rides up my thighs. It’s nothing but extra laundry to deal with and who needs that?
Nate lifts his face from the screen of his phone. “What was? The baby spitting up? Frank kicking you out of the lobby? Him being right? Or the fact that you knocked up some chick and ignored her for months upon months and in an obvious act of desperation, she left this poor innocent child in your hands? Yours. Tell me, Ian, which part of that is the rude part?”
I don’t really like his attitude right now, but he’s not wrong.
“All of it. But I swear to Zildjian, I did not know she was pregnant.” Hell, I avoided her like the freaking plague.
