Trusting You

by Ketley Allison

  If I’d been as successful, so focused on the game and knee-deep—no pun intended—in pigskin and women the pro-baller life brings to all of us like gods, would I have wanted her? This baby girl that’s uplifted my mind and spirit in more ways than I ever thought I deserved?

  I don’t want to think about it too hard. What the Lachlan Hayes of the past would’ve done.

  Breathing out hard, I turn Lily home, with plans for a bottle of milk, some food, and a nap, much in line with my girl.

  The trip to the high school was more taxing than anticipated but well worth it. I find myself excited to tell Carter about my impromptu interview for the part-time coaching slot, see that lively face light up even more, and it would be directed straight at me.

  She’s the reason for this, I know. Carter’s the reason for a lot of things happening in my life right now. The closer we get to her departure, the more I want to ask her to stay, but she’s a vault. I have no idea what she’s thinking or what she wants out of this. It’s clear it’s going to destroy her to leave Lily, but what’ll it do to her to leave me? Will she even consider it?

  I grip the stroller’s handles tighter. I don’t like this…uncertainty…I’m dealing with. It’s never been a factor in my choices. This weird tide swelling in my gut, the quickening of my breaths, it feels more like a heart attack than indecision.

  I rub at my chest, feeling a weird pain in that spot where my heart is, but I dismiss it in passing. I haven’t walked this far in a while. By no means is it heartache. I can’t even come up with the definition of that word.

  After another few minutes where I’m really beginning to feel it in my knee, I see the door to our apartment approaching. I quicken the pace, much to Lily’s glee, and this time, when I shoulder the front door open, I’m going to leave the stroller in the foyer. I’m too stiff, in too much growing, threatening pain, to attempt both the baby and this contraption up a flight of stairs.

  I spin the stroller. Lily claps her hands together upon seeing me, and I swear, fatherhood should always feel this good.

  “C’mere, darlin’,” I say, and lift her up, buckling a tiny amount when I can’t help but lift her over my head for a second and hear that delighted squeal. “Ready for some lunch?”

  “Ayuh!”

  “Say it again, sweetie,” I say, turning to the stairs. “Say that word that gets me all mushed up inside.”

  “Adah.”

  “Close.” I take the first couple of steps, taking my time.

  “Dada!”

  “Yeah!” I lift my hand, and instead of high-fiving, she finds my middle finger and shoves it into her mouth. I laugh, then laugh harder when I feel the sharp stub of a tooth.

  “A tooth!” I say with a comical, wide-eyed expression she loves. “You have a toof coming in!”

  I take another step up, weirdly out of breath. “Wait until Carter hears about this, huh? She’s gonna go nuts. Nuts, I say. I…”

  Oh, shit.

  My vision scrambles for a minute, and I grab the bannister. Lily’s clapping her hands near my chest, her body small and warm in my arms.

  “Hang on, honey, I gotta…” I shake off the dizziness, and my knee screams when I lift it. But I have two more stairs left to go. I gotta make it, then put Lily down, and maybe call Carter because I feel…

  I don’t feel…

  I’m gonna…

  I’m…

  29

  Carter

  “You nailed it, Princess. You sold your first piece.”

  Pierce is grinning at me on the other side of the cafe’s counter. I’m casually leaning my forearms on the pastry display, pretending that a stranger displaying my art in his living room isn’t giving me all the feels in the fucking world.

  “The power of the QR code, am I right?” I say to him.

  Pierce laughs. “Don’t you be turning my advice into a snippy bitchy. Yes, you sold via the old ways of yore, a lone ranger coming into this joint, laying his eyes on perfection and then booming, give me that painting! A rare gift in these technological times.”

  “One I’ll be sure to frame.” The check’s laying on the glass countertop between my hands.

  “Stop smudging my pastry display.”

  “Sorry.” I bounce up, clutching the check. “I can’t believe someone paid two hundred dollars. I can’t believe this is mine.”

  Pierce gives me the side-eye. “A steal, in my opinion. You should charge more for the amount of effort you put in.”

  I glance around at the remaining pieces framing his cafe walls. “These are something like five years of work. I haven’t lifted a paintbrush in…gosh…too long. This”—I raise the check—“this makes me want to find a set of paintbrushes immediately and begin again.”

  “Ah, this city. So many of us begin again in the very spot you’re standing. So why not you, huh?”

  I smile at him as he slides a mug over to me that Cameron has quietly crafted beside him. It’s a rare gesture, I’ve learned, from Pierce’s husband. He doesn’t say much, but his affection is obvious in his actions. Such as this one, where the foam is crafted into smiling lips with teeth.

  “Thank you, Cam,” I say.

  He doesn’t lift his head from the espresso machine, because with the ambulance driving by, he didn’t hear what I said.

  “And also a place where so many of us do stupid things,” Pierce says, clucking his tongue as he stares out front. “Another one bites the dust.”

  I lift the mug to go sit down but check my phone first. Locke should’ve been here by now. He said he was running late about an hour ago, but it’s hard to tell what he’s up to because he’s one of those guys who views texting as the exact amount of space one needs to get the point across. Most of his responses consist of k, bye, no prob, and yep.

  “Excuse me for a sec,” I say to Pierce and Cameron.

  Pierce nods and throws a dish towel over one shoulder, readying to assist a few people who drift into the coffee shop. Cameron, as expected, doesn’t stray from his foam art.

  I take a seat at a two-top near the wall, under a painting Locke would probably like. It’s a building, an old, Parisian one I found online, and I sketched a masculine face within the concrete. A lot like an athlete’s expression, young and determined, racing to the finish line, lips peeled for one last breath before tasting success.

  Maybe I’ll give it to Locke. My cheeks warm at the thought. It’s so personal, giving him a piece of my art. And he might not even like it, or worse, think it’s cute and stupid. Like I’m a tiny, besotted puppy dropping a dug-up bone at his feet.

  My phone buzzes and I look over the rim of my coffee, Locke’s contact flashing.

  Weird.

  Locke never calls.

  “Hey,” I say when I put the phone to my ear, setting down my mug.

  “Is this…Carter Jameson?”

  My back goes straight. I don’t recognize the male tone. “Yes. Who’s this? Why do you have Locke’s phone?”

  “Your number was the top listed in his recents. Are you related to him? Or to the baby that’s with him?”

  “Wha…” I choke on nothing. My rib cage calcifies, and I don’t have a reason yet. But the dread…some kind of dread is beginning to choke me. “I’m-I’m Lily’s, the baby’s—”

  “Mother?”

  “Yes,” I say without hesitation. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but there’s been an accident.”

  I jump up, the chair toppling to the ground behind me. “What kind of accident?”

  “Carter, you okay, honey?” Pierce is rushing out from behind the counter, but I barely see him through the watery film in my eyes.

  “Your husband took a fall while carrying the baby. A downstairs neighbor called 9-1-1. You need to meet us at Brooklyn Hospital Emergency.”

  My breathing changes. Going in and out, but harsher. And with a squeaking, quaking afterbite.

  “Can you do that, Mrs. Jameson?”

&nb
sp; “Y-Yes,” I manage to breathe out shakily. “Yes.”

  “Okay. What’s the name of your husband? We can’t find his ID.”

  “Is he okay?” I say. “Locke—I mean, Lachlan Hayes. Is my baby—Lily Tobias—okay?”

  “You need to meet us at the hospital.”

  “I—”

  Pierce’s arm comes around me, and he’s murmuring something, but the phone drops from my ear as I stare outside.

  Fuck this.

  The downstairs neighbor called 9-1-1. The accident happened at home.

  I can run to the fucking ambulance.

  Peeling out of Pierce’s embrace, I nearly topple over tables with my departure. The check flutters from my hands.

  All I can think of, all I can get to, is my tiny, wonderful family, and what could have happened to break them.

  I missed the fucking ambulance.

  When I reach the block, I see it’s flashing lights departing, siren blaring.

  “Wait!” I scream, my voice going raw on the single syllable. “Wait!”

  But they don’t. And it’s probably a good thing, because why should they wait for me when something could be dangerously wrong with the people inside?

  “Oh, my g…” I can’t finish the sentence. I’m gulping as I pull my phone back out, tap into a car service. I need to get to the hospital.

  If something’s happened—if they’re hurt, or worse—oh, my God, what happened? What could’ve occurred in the three hours I’ve been gone?

  “I saw them,” I said to the app. “I just saw them, and they were fine. Totally okay. Nothing was…nothing was…” I lift my gaze from the phone, vision dancing with tears. I sniffle, my nose feeling hot, my mouth feeling swollen, with growing hysteria.

  “Carter?”

  Whirling to the voice, the not-so-logical part of me hears Locke. But it’s not him. It’s his friend, the band guy, named after a compass direction.

  Why can’t I remember his name?

  “I…” I say as greeting.

  He rushes over, in the leather jacket I remember, his hair blowing loose across his face. “Hey, you okay? What’s happened?”

  “An-an accident.”

  His gaze strikes alert. “Is Locke hurt? The baby?”

  “I don’t know. I’m waiting for a car to take me to the hospital. The ambulance left without me.”

  Because the ambulance was meant to wait for me. I need to see, I have to make sure.

  “Come on.”

  He grabs my arm, not gently but not too hard, and pulls me to a motorcycle parked around the corner from Locke’s apartment.

  “You ever ride one of these before?” He asks as he throws one leg over and offers me a helmet.

  “No, and I don’t care.” I shimmy behind him, strapping on a helmet that resembles the ones worn during WWII.

  “All right,” he says. “Hang onto my waist. Don’t let go. And watch your leg on the exhaust. It’ll burn your skin right off.”

  “Fine,” I say as if I care what happens to my exposed thigh. “Go. Ride.”

  His answer is to twist the throttle, a vibrating roar coursing through both our bodies. We fly out of the parking spot and onto the road, and we can’t get to Locke and Lily fast enough.

  Locke.

  Lily.

  I’m coming.

  30

  Carter

  Easton and I burst through the hospital doors—I finally remembered his name, his dodging and speeding through cars helped me with that, because I have to thank him, later—and directly to the nurse’s station ahead.

  “Lachlan Hayes,” I burst out as I slam my palms on the counter to stop my momentum. “He and a baby, Lily Tobias, were just brought in an ambulance.”

  If the lady is startled by my appearance, she doesn’t show it. She merely grazes her attention from me to the computer screen and begins typing.

  “The baby was brought to Pediatrics Emergency Care and the male directly to Critical Care,” she says.

  I part my lips, unsure what to say. Locke has gone into intensive care? And Lily…?

  “The floors?” Easton asks behind me.

  “Five and here. Critical Care is on this floor.”

  “All right.” Easton spins me to face him. “You go check on Lily. I’ll go see about Locke.”

  I nod. It sounds as good a plan as any.

  “If either is stable, we’ll go find the other. Got it?” Easton continues.

  “Yes.” I swallow. Lily.

  Pressure lifts from my shoulders as Easton loosens his hold. “Let’s go.”

  We follow the signs to the elevator, and when the doors slide open, Easton’s parting words to me are, “It’s going to be okay. I’m gonna call Astor and the guys. All you have to do is focus on the baby. All right?”

  “Yes.”

  That’s the only word I’m capable of responding with. Easton doesn’t mind. He gives me a brief hug, my nose filling with the scent of leather and another woody smell I can’t identify.

  “Stay strong, baby girl,” he says, and then he’s gone.

  The trip to the fifth floor is silent and—thankfully—alone. When the doors slide open, I rush to the nurses’ station, the proximity to Lily gifting me with the words I need.

  The nurse, after asking if I was a family relation—I’ll be her mother, goddammit, if it means I can see her—directs me to an examination room, where I’m told to wait outside until the doctor is finished.

  I can’t sit. The plastic scoop chairs aren’t inviting in the least, anyway, and neither is the coffee machine, or the people in scrubs and doctor’s jackets wandering by with smiles or their attention buried in clipboards. Nothing makes me comfortable, not the white walls or the crackling intercom or the squeak of sneakers against bleached floors.

  It’s all too familiar.

  I can’t be still; I won’t stay here. I’m going to burst through this fucking door and hold that child if I’m tackled by security or shot where I stand, I don’t fucking care.

  Lily’s wail pierces the air.

  My palms hit the wall and skid down. My knees won’t hold my weight because, dear God, thank God, Lily’s alive and pissed off. “Lily!”

  I slide to the door on shaking legs and push on the lever. “Lily!”

  A group of doctors turns from the gurney where they’re standing. “Miss, you can’t be—”

  But they’ve left space between them, a wide enough gap where Lily, seated on the mattress, turns and sees me.

  Her face crumples, and it’s the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen.

  “Maaaaaaaaah!” she cries.

  “Lil!” I cry in return, and I’m ready to throw elbows to get to her.

  But, the two nurses part and give me enough room to get to Lily and hug her while she sits. Adrenaline courses through me, utter relief at seeing Lily’s tear-soaked, reddening face.

  “Is she okay?” I ask the closest person in a white jacket.

  “Our examination is preliminary, but it looks to be a minor concussion,” the doctor says.

  I drop my forehead to Lily’s. She’s screaming for me to lift her up, clamoring against my arms. “You’re okay, sweetie. You’re all right.”

  “You can hold her,” the nurse next to me says kindly. “She needs her mama right now.”

  I’m crying along with Lily, my throat so closed over it hurts to swallow.

  I lift this little girl in my arms, bury my face in the scent of her, and call her my own.

  “There you go,” the same nurse says, and rubs my back. “Everybody’s fine. Give her all kinds of love.”

  “Th-thank you,” I garble out, raising my head.

  “Have a seat, honey,” another nurse says softly. “Right behind you. You can sit with her for as long as you like.”

  I nod, sobbing, and the nurses gently guide me down.

  “We’ll need to keep her overnight.” The doctor, unobtrusively, steps out in front. His glasses shine in the overhead lights. “
But otherwise, I’m not worried.”

  “And th-the man that came with her—he-her father. Do you know anything about how he is?”

  The doctor—Dr. Garvis is written on his name tag—shakes his head. “Sadly, no. But I can have a nurse assigned to him come in here and give you some details. And the doctor, too, once he’s finished taking care of your husband.”

  I nod, but can’t stop myself from keeping Lily’s head cupped against my shoulder. “I’d appreciate that. Thank you.”

  “You’re very welcome. Once you’ve had some time together, I’ll come back, give you a more detailed progress report. She’s a healthy girl.”

  He and the other nurses depart, and I barely notice. I’m rocking Lily, back and forth, singing soothing words. Her cries quell to whimpers, and soon I even elicit a smile from her.

  “You’re okay,” I whisper to her with a thick voice. “You’re going to be just fine.”

  I can’t bring myself to think of Locke. Not yet.

  Because whatever happened, whatever made him fall, was bad enough to make him let go of his daughter.

  And that thought alone has the dread returning in sharp, black spades.

  What seems like hours pass by in a daze. Nurses come into Lily’s room constantly, checking her inside and out, waking her at certain intervals to ensure there’s no brain swelling. Each time, I have to let her go, lay her down, and I hate every second of lightness against my arms. I don’t feel whole again until I’m given the go-ahead to lift her up, put her heart next to mine.

  Night’s fallen by the time another doctor comes in. He introduces himself as Dr. Hurwitz, and he’s small and thin with a dark beard, bushy brows, and cropped hair.

  He’s here about Locke.

  I’m holding Lily, swaying her around the small room, but I have to sit down for this.