Paige is crying—even Karen looks teary—and everyone is hugging him, asking questions, slapping his back.
“Daisy’s perfect,” he tells Mr. Harris, shaking his hand. “Amazing. I can’t believe her.”
“And the baby?” our dad asks.
Daltrey just shakes his head, apparently too awed to speak.
“Come on,” he says, waving everyone to the door. “Daisy wants to introduce you.”
“All of us?” Karen asks, looking around at the crowd in the waiting room, ten of us in total. “Doesn’t she want to rest for a while first?”
Daltrey rolls his eyes. “She said, and I quote, ‘Get the family in here to meet this gorgeous child.’”
So we all follow him back to Daisy’s room, laughing, all of the awkwardness of earlier long gone. How could anyone be angry right now? There’s a new member of our family.
Daisy is sitting up in bed, her hair gathered on top of her head. She looks exhausted and pale and completely ecstatic, and she’s holding a baby. Everyone immediately hushes as we enter the room, staring at her.
“Come in,” she says, grinning. “Come meet Rose.”
“Rose!” Paige squeaks. “What a beautiful name!”
Daltrey grabs Reed’s shoulder and steers him over to the bed to see his kid. Our oldest brother stares down at her for a minute before putting his arm around Daltrey’s shoulder, laughing through watery eyes. “This is unbelievable,” he says. “Aren’t you still that little?”
Cash joins them, kissing Daisy on the head before peering down at Rose. “Thank God she got your looks,” he tells her.
“Shut up, Cash,” she says, laughing. “She has Daltrey’s hair and eyes.”
“Then she’ll be beautiful,” Paige says, hugging him before turning her attention to the baby. “She is beautiful!” She bursts into noisy tears as Reed laughs, pulling her into a hug.
“Glad to see you’re keeping tradition alive with the name,” Cash says, nodding at Daltrey in approval. “Axl Rose is a worthy rock star to name your kid after.”
“We did not name her after Axl Rose,” Daisy scoffs. “We gave her a flower name to match mine.”
“Sure we did, honey,” Daltrey says, meeting Cash’s gaze over her head and giving a quick shake of his head. “Totally Axl,” he mouths.
Mr. Harris steps forward to meet his first grandchild, kissing her forehead before turning his attention to Daisy. He hugs her for a long time, whispering something in her ear, and when he straightens, her eyes are wet.
“Dad,” Daltrey says, turning to our father, who’s hovering near the door. “Come and see.”
The others step back, Reed tensing only a little, as Dad takes the spot by the bed. He shakes his head, looking down at the baby. “She’s beautiful,” he agrees, nodding his head several times before slapping Daltrey on the back. I think he might be close to tears, but he just keeps nodding, staring at the baby. Emotional maturity is harder than it looks.
Daisy introduces Rose to Levi, Karen, and Sam. I stand by the foot of the bed, content to watch from the perimeter for a while, just like I usually do. Until Daisy looks up and meets my eyes. “Come here.”
I cross to her side, and she grins up at me. “Want to hold her?”
Before I can say anything, she hands Rose to me. I’ve never held a baby before, and for a second I panic, but Daisy is calm. “Put your hand under her head,” she says. “Perfect. Support her back. That’s it. Easier than it looks.”
“This is weird,” I say, staring at the baby, and Daltrey snorts.
“Thanks, man.”
“No, I just…” I look down at Daisy. “You have a baby.”
She laughs. “I know.”
I shake my head, overwhelmed, and return my attention to the baby in my arms. She’s tiny, her nose barely as big as my pinky fingernail. Under the little knit cap that all babies seem to wear, I can see a few tufts of white-blond hair. Daltrey’s hair.
We’re going to do better for you, I think. All of us. And then she yawns, and her little eyes flutter open. I know that brand new babies probably can’t focus yet, but I swear she looks right up at me, her eyes wide and blue. And just like that I’m in love. “Hey,” I whisper. “I’m your Uncle Lennon.”
I feel a hand on my shoulder and see Cash from the corner of my eye. He stands next to me, looking at her, and then Reed joins on the other side. “I’m your other uncle,” Cash says. “You’ll be able to tell it’s me because I’m the best looking one.”
“Also the biggest bullshitter,” Reed says.
“Hey!” Paige cries. “You can’t swear in front of babies!”
“Uh oh,” I say to Rose. “Your uncles are going to be in big trouble now.”
“Really big trouble,” Reed says. “Because you’re going to have all of us wrapped around this tiny little finger, aren’t you?”
I look up to wink at Daisy and see Daltrey has joined her on the bed, leaning on her pillow as he kisses her hair. He smiles at me, shaking his head. He doesn’t say a word, but he doesn’t have to. There’s nothing but love, pure and simple, on his face as he watches his brothers meeting his baby girl.
***
Daltrey basically has to force us out of the room an hour later so Daisy can get some rest. I think we all would have been content to look at the baby for the rest of the day. The Ransome brothers have all fallen in love. Embarrassingly, sickeningly in love with a newborn baby. Cash has a surprisingly good talking-to-the-baby voice down already, which Daltrey tells him is lame even though it’s pretty much identical to his own talking-to-the-baby voice.
“We should go buy her something,” Cash says, his arm around Sam as we head down the hallway toward the waiting room.
“Like what?” she asks, smiling at him indulgently.
He scrunches up his nose. “Do they make baby leather jackets?”
“I’m getting her a toy drum,” Reed announces.
“I’m sure Daisy will love you for it when Rose is big enough to bang on the thing,” Karen mutters.
“No way,” Cash argues. “She’s not playing something lame like drums. She’s going to play a real instrument.”
“A bass?” I ask.
He makes a scathing noise. “Are you kidding me? The kid is going to play guitar. Who the hell wants to play bass?”
“Bass is reserved for people with a little more intelligence,” I say. “So obviously Rose qualifies.”
“You guys realize she’s approximately two hours old, right?” Sam asks.
“Stop ruining our fun, woman,” Cash says. “Besides, she’s obviously very advanced for her age.”
“Obviously,” Reed agrees.
“They’ve all lost their minds,” Karen mutters.
When we reach the waiting room, I stop dead in my tracks, making Cash and Sam run into me. “The hell?” Cash says, but I barely hear him.
“Haylee!” Paige cries. “I’m so glad you made it!”
“Hi,” she says softly, her eyes on mine. “I hope it’s okay…”
I’m having trouble processing that she’s actually here. The entire day feels surreal, from flying up to New York to the hurried trip back, all the emotion of meeting the baby… and now she’s here. Am I dreaming?
“We’ll just give you a minute,” Reed says, a smile in his voice. He slaps my back as he passes, but I still can’t tear my eyes from Haylee.
“A baby girl, huh?” she asks once the others have gone.
“How’d you know?”
“Paige texted me. That’s how I knew what hospital you were at.”
Her words barely register. All I can think is how beautiful she looks. How happy I am to see her right now, on this day, when I met my niece for the first time and felt like my family might just become whole again after all. For her to be here…
“I probably should have called you,” she says, fidgeting. She’s nervous. “But I figured you were busy and—”
“You’re here.”
She
meets my gaze. “I should have come with you from the start. I never should have let you go.”
“Haylee.”
“I started thinking, after you left. You know, I was so worried about us being too messed up to make this work. But then I realized something.”
“What?”
“Do you know what the first thing I thought about you was, that day in LA? I thought, he looks broken. He looks just like me.”
I frown, not quite sure I like that as her first impression of me, but she continues. “And I think that’s why I trusted you. Why I let myself get close to you. Because I knew you understood.”
“I thought that about you too.”
She smiles. “So all this shit that makes us feel so messed up—it’s good for something, isn’t it? Because we probably wouldn’t have happened if we were both shiny, happy, normal people.”
I let out a snort of laughter. “I guess that’s one way of looking at it.”
She takes a step closer and then another, and my laughter dies. Her eyes are locked on mine, her expression determined. “You said I made your life better,” she whispers. “And that made me realize that my life is so much better than it was back in LA. And that’s only after a few weeks. Think about how much better things might get if we had years.”
I don’t know if she planned to say anything else. I don’t really care. I’ve heard enough. I close the distance between us and lift her into my arms, my lips finding hers, relishing the little sigh that escapes her as she kisses me back.
“I love you, Haylee,” I whisper against her mouth.
“I love you too.”
At that party before the tour started, Daisy asked me to imagine a world with her baby in it. I couldn’t. Back then I couldn’t see life beyond the next day, the next task. But then I’d taken one look at Haylee and everything changed. For the first time in years she made me feel hopeful. She made me believe in somedays. And now I can imagine it all, years and years spreading in front of us. My family finding their way, figuring out how to be whole again. Rose growing up in a world where everyone loves her.
And me and Haylee. Making things better for each other. A little bit at a time, every day, for as long as I can imagine.
THE END
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Don’t miss the sixth book in the Ransom series, The Ransome Brothers, coming soon!
Escape Series
Escape in You
Escape with You
Ransom Series
Ransom
Release
Redeem
Relent
On the Road (A digital short story)
Three Girls Series
Three Girls and a Baby
Three Girls and a Wedding
Three Girls and a Leading Man
Three Girls the Complete Trilogy
The Truth About Ever After
Three Girls and a New Beginning
Snow Kissed (A digital short story)
Love Story Series
In Search of a Love Story
An Unexpected Love Story
An Almost Perfect Love Story
Lovestruck Series
Lovestruck in London
Lovestruck in Los Angeles
Lovestruck Forever
Sofie and the Movie Star (A digital short story)
Lovestruck at Christmas (A digital novella)
Starstruck
Stand Alone
Persuaded
Rescue (Ransom Book 5) Page 27