by Shay Violet
The water was still warm, at least, so it couldn’t have been too long. Even with my insanely good water heater, it wouldn’t keep the hot water coming forever. Eventually it got tepid.
I was a little groggy as I stepped out of the shower into the steamy bathroom, but by the time I was dried off, I felt like a new man. She was right about how much better the shower made me feel. And she was right about what Addie needed. I could use someone like Kendra in my life to handle things that left me clueless and stumped.
I got dressed in sweats and a t-shirt before heading back out to the living room, which was no longer a disaster area of toys and baby accoutrement. Kendra had cleaned up the whole place, and she was sitting on my couch with Addie in a pop-up playpen and some plastic toys that I thought might be for teething. Was she already teething? I really needed to learn some stuff about babies if I was going to be raising one.
I still couldn’t believe I was going to be raising one.
After all the effort I put in to insure this would never happen, I still managed to screw myself over and ruin my life. Goodbye yacht parties and Instagram models, late nights at the clubs and impromptu trips around the world. It had been nice while it lasted.
“Feel better?” Kendra asked when she spotted me, doing the once-over thing again, only this time I didn’t feel like such a bum. It felt like she might actually be appreciating what she saw.
“Much. Thank you again. You didn’t have to clean up, I--”
“I got food too, figured you could use it. I didn’t see any dishes or take-out boxes.”
“I’ve been eating a lot of pureed peas and bananas,” I admitted, a little ashamed.
“Hey, I get it. I think there was a whole month I lived off of Keona’s rejects and dry cheerios. Sometimes it’s easier to just sneak a bite while you’re feeding them than to actually feed yourself.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” I muttered, eying the take-out bags, trying to ignore my stomach’s rumbling.
“Didn’t know what you’d want, so I ordered a little of everything. I thought it would be a pain for the delivery guy to get through your security, but the doorman brought everything up.”
“Yeah, George is a good guy,” I answered, sitting down on the opposite end of the couch.
“Sorry if I was in the shower for a while, I…”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, waving her hand. “It’s been a while for me, but trust me, I remember how it is. Those precious moments alone are sacred.”
“How much do I owe you for all this?” I asked, wondering where the hell my wallet was. I hadn’t needed it recently, and my memory was so foggy from the lack of sleep. I was sure it would turn up once I looked for it, but it’d probably be easier to just PayEaz her the money.
“Don’t you dare try to pay me back,” she said, some sass taking over for the gentle tones she’d been using with me. “Just enjoy your damn food,” she added with a smile.
“Thanks, Kendra. You really are an angel.”
“Keke,” she said. “My friends call me Keke.”
I smiled, ripping into a styrofoam container of beef and broccoli. Why did I like the thought of being considered her friend so much?
“Honestly, it probably seems silly to you, but I miss this,” she said wistfully, looking over at Addie. “Keona’s nearly eight. It’s been so long since she was this little and lovey. I wouldn’t trade it for the world, but part of me misses having a baby around sometimes. They’re a lot of work, but so rewarding.”
“I’ll have to take your word for it,” I say through a mouthful of fried rice.
“You’ll get there, don’t worry. Most of us have nine months to prepare and you just had your baby dropped on your doorstep. It’s gonna take some adjustment.”
“‘Some’ is an understatement.”
“Maybe,” she nodded, looking around. “This place is going to need some serious baby-proofing before she’s crawling around. I could give you the number of the person I used, but I have no idea if they’re still in business after all these years.”
“Where is your kid?” I asked, surprised I even cared. Kids weren’t my thing. Women with kids, even less so. But I looked at Keke in her simple purple shirt and jeans, her sweet smile when she looked at Addie, and how much she’d already helped me, and something inside me wanted her. It was a crazy thought. She was beautiful, sure, but there were too many other factors I was just dismissing outright. I had to be more sleep-deprived than I realized to be fantasizing about hooking up with a single mother.
No, hooking up wasn’t even what I was thinking about, if I was honest. I was thinking about how good she looked with a baby on her hip, how content she was. I was thinking about future take-out meals and moving down the couch to put my arm around her.
“With her dad for Spring Break,” she said, her voice changing some. I couldn’t tell if it was sadness or bitterness, but I already didn’t like the guy who made her mood switch like that.
What the hell was wrong with me?
“Divorced?”
She nodded. “Four years ago. Luckily Keona was too little to remember how ugly it got, but I’m sure once she’s got some unsupervised Google time, she’s going to find some old headlines about her dear old dad that raise some questions.”
“Headlines?” I asked, wondering if I should know who she was. I knew Hudson’s school catered to the kids of the rich and famous, so it was very possible Kendra herself was one of those famous people.
“Well, tabloid headlines… My ex is Marcus Trattero.”
My eyes bulged. “The center for the Heat?”
“Yeah,” she sighed, like she was sick of people being impressed by it.
I bit back my comment about his insane stats, the number of rebounds he got last season or his insane assists. I didn’t think it was the time to fanboy over her ex-husband.
Especially because somewhere in the back of my head, I remembered some of those tabloids. I remembered reading about his weekends away with dozens of hookers and thinking ‘my man,’ now I just felt sick at the thought, unable to look Keke in the eyes.
“Aren’t you going to have some?” I asked, offering her one of the other boxes.
She made a face. “I shouldn’t… My personal trainer will make me do a million mountain climbers if I go over my carb limit…”
I tried to stop myself, but my brain was too slow to catch up with my eyes. I didn’t have time to prevent them from roving down her form, obviously drinking it all in.
“You look incredible and anyone who tells you otherwise is a damn fool.”
Her mouth quirked up on one side and she shook her head, letting out a dramatic sigh as she reached for a different box.
“If I’m gonna do it, might as well do it right. Orange chicken, come to momma.”
“Do you want a drink? Beer, wine, anything?” I asked after another minute of us chowing down together. Addie was starting to get restless, but she still wasn’t crying. Keke got up to pull her out of the playpen and shook her head.
“No thanks. I’ve got my hands full with this one without adding alcohol to the mix.”
She dipped her finger in the sauce and put a little drop of it on Addie’s lip. When she licked it off, her whole face puckered up.
“Don’t like that one?” Keke chuckled, but Addie was already looking like she wanted more.
I had to admit, the kid was kind of cute. She had a mop of curly brown hair and big blue eyes above round puffy cheeks. When her face wasn’t contorted into ear-shattering screams, she was all right.
“I really appreciate you coming over to help. I’ve been really having a hard time with all this parenting stuff… But I’m sure you have other things to do.”
Keke scoffed. “Not really. My kid’s with her dad for the week, remember? I’m more than happy to be here and take care of this precious baby.” The end of that sentence was said with a cartoony baby voice as she lifted Addie and bounced her, making her giggle.
> I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard her giggle. It made me warm all the way through, smiling so big my face hurt.
“But you should get some sleep while you can,” Keke advised. “I can stick around for a few hours. Your daughter’s in good hands, I promise.”
My daughter.
That was still a weird thought. I wasn’t sure I’d ever adjust to it.
She was my responsibility though, and leaving her in the hands of a near-stranger while I napped seemed a little reckless. Then again, this was one of Ryan’s friends. Surely she was trustworthy and not just looking to kidnap my baby to sell on the black market.
“Are you sure?” I asked, frowning. I wanted to jump at the chance for real sleep, but I didn’t want to ask so much of her that I got an earful from Ryan when he got back to town.
“Positive. Go. I’ll clean everything up.”
I sighed, a huge weight lifting off me.
“Thanks, Keke. You really are an angel.”
“Hardly,” she laughed, waving her arms at me. “Now shoo. Get some sleep.”
I had the sudden urge to kiss her before I went off to bed, but I chalked that up to already being half-asleep. “Yes, ma’am.”
4
Kendra
Matt trudged up the stairs to his bedroom -- which didn’t have a door, I might add -- and I watched him out of the corner of my eye as he disappeared deeper into the loft space until I couldn’t see him anymore.
“Your daddy’s a mess,” I whispered to Addie, just in case he could still hear me, but I doubted it. This place was huge. I figured it would be from the outside, but I never expected him to have most of two floors of this huge building all to himself. How could one man need all this space?
For his instahos, probably, I reminded myself. He was adorably helpless now, but that didn’t change who he really was deep down. Just another player like Marcus.
“He’ll figure it out though,” I told Addie. “I think you’ve already got him wrapped around your finger.
“Aaaah,” Addie agrees, grabbing a piece of my hair.
“Oh, honey, no, no, that’s too expensive for you to be playing with,” I told her, carefully extracting my hair from her pudgy grip, giving her my finger instead. She gripped it tight and cooed about nothing as I bounced her on my knee.
“How about we make you a bottle, hmm?” I asked, taking her into the kitchen with me. The guy really didn’t have much in his pantry, even though the kitchen was enormous, fit for a Michelin-star chef. I couldn’t tell if he’d ever even used his stove.
It wasn’t hard to find the formula, but making the bottle one-handed was a little trickier. I was out of practice with this kind of thing.
After I fed, burped, and changed her, Addie was ready for sleep too, so then it was just me alone in Matt’s place. It was hours before he woke up, and when he came down the stairs, I was dozing off on the couch, barely able to keep my eyes open while I watched Addie sleep peacefully.
“Hey… I’m sorry I slept so long,” he said as I sat up, smoothing my hair down, sure I looked like a disheveled mess.
“Don’t be. Feel better?”
“Yeah. So much. Thanks again.”
“Don’t mention it, really,” I answered, hiding a yawn behind my hand.
“You probably want to get out of here, huh?”
I shrugged, looking out toward the purple-gray pre-dawn sky. “Sleep sounds pretty good,” I admitted.
“I’ll be all right,” he assured me. “I think I can manage from here.”
“You think so, huh?” I teased, standing with a stretch. For a super rich guy, he had one of the most uncomfortable couches I’d ever been on.
“Okay, not really,” he admitted. “This isn’t something I ever planned for. It’s kind of the exact opposite of what I hoped to accomplish in life.”
I arched a brow, unable to stop myself. “Worried she’ll interfere with your orgies?”
He actually managed to look a little embarrassed by the comment, which surprised me. These guys normally didn’t have a scrap of shame in them.
“When you put it like that, it sounds pretty shallow.”
I shrugged. “Your brother’s told me some stories about you. I’m surprised this is the only baby you’ve made.”
He frowned. “I was always careful. Until the one time I wasn’t… Guess that’s all it takes.”
“Sure is,” I agreed, finding it hard to have sympathy for him now.
“I don’t think I’m cut out to be a dad,” he said, the sudden vulnerability catching me off-guard.
“Everyone feels that way when they have their first kid. And you haven’t had time to prepare for it. You’ll be fine. They’re resilient.”
He shook his head, looking down at Addie, anguish etched into his expression. “But what if I screw up? She deserves someone who knows what they’re doing. I’m hopeless. I met with a pediatrician right after I got her, and he was throwing so much at me I couldn’t keep it all straight. I know I’m going to forget something. I’m going to fail her somehow…”
I sighed, my judgemental mood starting to slip away. “The fact that you care so much about getting it right is all the evidence I need that you’ll do okay. No one expects you to have all the answers, just admit when you don’t and there’s plenty of help out there.”
“Like you?” he asked hopefully, eyes bright. If I got closer to him, I might be able to tell if they were so bright because of tears, but I didn’t want to get closer to him. Something about Matthew Williams made me drop my guard, and it had been years since I’d been foolish enough to do that with another man after the way my ex treated me. I wasn’t about to go repeating my mistakes now. No way.
“Sure, I’m here to help,” I said. “And once they’re back in town, I know your brother and dad are on board too.”
“Yeah…” he said, trailing off.
“It takes a village, right?”
“I guess so,” he muttered.
This was getting too serious, too close to sharing deep-down secrets and feelings that would bring us closer together. I needed to keep this casual, keep him at arms’ length.
“Well, I’m going to go home and get some sleep. Call me if she turns inconsolable again, but I think you’ll be okay. Just give her some snuggles. Talk to her even if she can’t talk back. At this age, her brain is like a sponge, she’s going to be soaking in everything she can and learning from it.”
“Great, more chances to screw her up,” he grumbled.
I laughed at him. I wasn’t going to feed into his self-pity or wallowing. He could be pessimistic if he wanted to, but that didn’t mean I was going to go down that road with him.
“Have a good day, Matt,” I said, moving over to where Addie slept in the pack-n-play.
“And you too sweet girl,” I added, brushing my fingers through her unruly curls. “Try not to give your daddy too much trouble, yeah?”
She was still asleep, but when I turned to look at Matt again, he was pale as a ghost.
“I still can’t believe that I’m someone’s dad,” he said, shaking his head.
“Well, you better get used to it. It’s a lifelong title,” I told him, patting his shoulder on my way to his front door.
Damn, he was rock-solid. I only touched him for a minute, but that was all it took to know his muscles were made of steel.
Quit it, a voice in my head warned. I’d already ruined my life for one granite-muscled player, I didn’t need to start entertaining ideas about another one. My life was good the way it was, just me and Keona, no men mucking it up for us. I didn’t need a relationship to feel complete, and I had a whole treasure chest of toys to keep me sexually satisfied. I didn’t need a man for that either.
After I left Matt’s place, I half expected him to call me back later the same day. He seemed so lost and helpless, so eager to rely on other people to help him through this. But he didn’t. It was the next day that he called. Addie had tried to pull herself up to stand
ing using a piece of furniture and broken all kinds of stuff. She was fine, but he was overwhelmed by the sudden realization that his house was full of hazards.
“I told you baby-proofing would be a chore,” I told him while he worked on securing bookshelves and moving breakable things to places far out of reach. “You really need a gate for those stairs too. And make sure you never leave that balcony door open, or even unlocked. Babies universally have a death wish.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face, looking as tired as he did the first time I came over.
“How do I not know anything, though, really?” he said, frustrated with himself. “When you say stuff like that, it seems obvious, but it never occurs to me. I know more about advanced calculus than I do babies, and that has never come up in my life. What the hell is school even for?”
“Teaching kids the art of sitting at their desk and doing pointless bullshit work for eight hours a day so they’re prepared for the workforce?” I offered.
He snorted, then busted into a full-belly laugh that kept going until he was braced against the wall, trying to breathe, swiping tears out of his eyes. It wasn’t that funny, but I figured he must’ve been on the brink of hysteria and that little release was sorely needed.
“Okay, that’s fair. It definitely taught me that, but then I never needed it.”
“I did for a few years,” I answered. “Overrated.”
Addie was on the floor in front of me, working on pushing up to her arms, doing a wobbly rocking back and forth motion before flopping back on her belly.
“You’re almost there, Addie. You can do it,” I told her.
She gazed back at me with those big blue eyes, recognizing her name, answering with, “Aaaah.”
“You can say that again,” Matt muttered, testing the bookshelf he’d just screwed into studs. He grabbed the top and pulled, then hauled himself up, doing a chin-up on the damn thing, the outline of all those sexy arm and shoulder muscles showing up through his plain t-shirt.
My mouth went dry looking at him, my insides quivering. Internally, I cursed myself. He was a whole bundle of complications I didn’t need.