“Are we really doing this?” He moves toward me, steady and daunting, igniting a quick swirl in my belly too rowdy to ignore.
“Doing what?” I bat my lashes. Playing dumb has never been my strong suit.
“Pretending like everything’s back to normal between us.” He’s before me now, running his hand along the side of my face before taking a strand of hair between his fingers. He lets it fall over my shoulder, his head cocked sideways.
I swallow the hardness in my throat. “We both know nothing about us was normal. We left normal back at the bar, before I sucked down a lemon drop martini and three tequila shots and came home with you.”
“You can blame the alcohol all you want, but you knew damn well you picked the only man there who could give you what you needed,” he growls. “Pretty sure I proved on Friday that I’ve still got what you need, Odessa…”
He’s right. I can’t deny any of it. But I have what he needs too. “Don’t pretend for a second you didn’t come storming into my office like some virile–”
“Odessa,” he interrupts. “I have no issue admitting that fucking you last Friday was one of the highlights of my week. All things considered.”
I can’t shake the mutual feeling. I tried all weekend.
“That why you told me I shouldn’t have let you fuck me?” For the better part of three days, I tried to simultaneously decode his comment and not let it bother me.
I failed miserably at both.
Beckham’s mouth twitches, his right dimple flashing. “Because I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep my hands off you in Vermont. Several days together, just us? Hotel. Private jet. Could get reckless, don’t you think?”
My shoulders tense as I glance up at him. My eyes snap from his sharp gaze to the window behind him.
“Jeremiah’s back.” My confession dissolves the charge in the air.
Beckham steps away, his hands rising to protest. He swallows, his lips straightening. “Well then.”
“We’re not…back together.” The overwhelming urge to clarify that fact consumes me for reasons unknown. “Not engaged. Not…”
“You don’t need to explain, Odessa.” He cuts me off, raking his palm along his five o’clock shadow. I’ve yet to see him with one, and I’m shocked it took me this long to notice it. Can’t blame him after the past few days.
“Jeremiah and me.” I continue anyway. “We have issues. There are a lot of cracks in our relationship. Hairline fractures really.”
I neglect to tell him the “hairline fractures” have taken shape in the form of recently-unveiled doubts. My doubts. And not because of Beckham. God, I’m not in love with him just because he fucked me tirelessly on a Friday afternoon.
It’s just that I forgot I could feel that way; so electric. So all-consumed. So alive.
Beckham says nothing.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.” My cheeks burn.
He returns to his desk, taking his seat. The distance between us grows. I feel it. “Because like it or not, we’re friends now.”
I force a smile that doesn’t want to be there and ignore the shattering sound my resolve makes as it falls apart. “Yeah. I guess we kind of are.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
BECKHAM
An unfamiliar number calls my cell after lunch on Tuesday. Something feels off today, and going two days without a peep from Eva was too good to be true.
I answer just before it goes to voicemail. “Beckham King.”
“Hi, Beckham, it’s Elizabeth from Smyth Nanny Brokerage.” She speaks with the sweet natured patience of a preschool teacher though I hardly hear her over the cackling and shrieking of a woman in the background and the shrill cries of a newborn.
My heart pounds against my chest. “What’s going on?”
“I was given strict instructions to contact you first, in the case of any non-life threatening emergencies.” An apology resides in her tone, but I wish she’d cut the niceties and get on with it. “Anyway, I think you need to come to Ms. Delgado’s apartment. Immediately if possible.”
“Eva put you up to this?”
“No, no,” she says. I can hear Eva yelling in the background, something in Spanish. “Ms. Delgado hasn’t slept in days. She’s ransacked her cupboards and torn the house upside down. She keeps asking for her pills – the blue ones. And she talks so fast I can hardly understand her. There’s this sort of feverish look in her eyes. She’s shaky. This morning I caught her having a conversation with someone who wasn’t there. She kept saying ‘baby’ over and over, but she wasn’t talking about the baby.”
I knew Eva had issues with anxiety and dependencies on men, but I’ve never known her to have clinically psychotic episodes.
“I’m not a mental health professional, Mr. King,” she says, “but I’ve seen this once before with a past client. I think it may be postpartum psychosis. It happens. It’s rare, but this is what it looks like.”
My face pinches. I hate that I have to ask this question. “And you’re positive she’s not faking any of this?”
“I’m positive.” Elizabeth’s voice is louder now and so are the baby’s cries. I can imagine her scooping the baby into her arms, protecting her from a psychotic Eva. I should be there. I should be the one protecting her, even if she’s not mine. “She won’t hold the baby either, sir. She won’t nurse and she refuses to pump. If she’s not pacing in front of the window, she’s checking the peephole over and over. It’s like she’s paranoid or she’s waiting for someone.”
“I’m on my way.” I end the call and dash downstairs, hailing the first cab and booking it to Clinton Street.
***
I hear the baby’s cries the second I reach Eva’s floor. Taking long strides toward the end of the hall, I pound on her door. Five stiff strikes.
The door flies open. An older woman with gray hair swept back into a bun bounces the crying baby in her arms.
“Beckham?”
“Yes.” I show myself in. The place is a mess. Pillows are strewn about the living room. Scattered laundry covers the floor. The kitchen is spotless save for a few washed-and-dried baby bottles. I doubt Eva’s eaten much of anything since coming home. “Where is she?”
Elizabeth points toward Eva’s room. I take a deep breath and head back, where I find her face down in her bed, her hair knotted and tangled.
“Eva.” My presence springs her to life. She rolls to her back, her eyes adjusting as she watches me in her doorway. Her lips curl up at the corners.
She scrambles out of bed as best she can, a painful wince smeared across her face. She’s unable to get to me fast enough.
“Slow down,” I say. “You need to take it easy. You’re supposed to be resting, lying down. You had surgery, Eva. Remember?”
She smells of unwashed hair and stale clothes, and her hands frantically grasp for every inch of my body.
Eva’s lips press into my neck over and over. Between kisses she mumbles, “Mi amor, mi amor…”
I glance behind, sensing Elizabeth. Sure enough, she’s watching everything from a careful distance, the baby securely in her arms.
Eva is gone. Mentally. Her lips are moving, nonsensical gibberish filling the room. She speaks a mix of Spanish and English, none of it coherent and all of it flavored in frenzied desperation.
“Elizabeth.” I keep my voice low and calm. “I need you to look up the number for Dr. Evan Brentwood. Call his office. Tell them it’s an emergency. Give them her name. Can you do that?”
She nods, dashing down the hall with the baby in her arm and her phone in her hand.
“Eva, you need help.” I take her by the wrists and carefully lead her to the foot of her bed. She stares up at me, her dark eyes fading. I’m not sure she even sees me anymore. Her spindly body swims in her oversized clothes, preventing her from looking like someone who gave birth days ago.
For a brief moment, my heart sinks when I look at her. I wish she had a better life raft than me.
Even if I wanted to be her rock, it would only set her back. She needs help, and she needs to learn to stand on her own without resorting to desperate and illegal manipulative practices.
I stare at the woman who was once dynamite in bed; the one who made me reconsider my non-fuck buddy policy and make a one-time exception.
And then I hear the baby crying again, the wails slightly muffled by the hushed sound of Elizabeth speaking into her phone. The crying stops, and the apartment is quiet for a second. Eva is still as a statue, staring ahead at her dresser and all the half-pulled drawers with clothes dripping over them.
“He’s on his way,” Elizabeth says from the doorway. There’s a tiny bottle in the baby’s mouth, and she’s sucking vigorously, crying out every so often. The nanny offers a timid shrug. “She doesn’t like the formula. She’ll get used to it though.”
“What did she name the baby?” I ask.
Elizabeth shrugs. “She refuses to tell me.”
“She refuses to tell you?”
“She claims her name is just…Baby.”
I push a burst of air through my lips. Knowing Eva, she wrote Baby on the birth certificate as a final act of defiance when the nurses told her I wouldn’t be coming back to sign anything.
Sitting with Eva until Dr. Brentwood arrives feels like an eternity, but I won’t leave her side. I don’t want her hurting herself or anyone else. She’s rocking, and I slip my arm around her to keep her from falling off the bed. I’m the only thing she has right now, or at least until I get a chance to call her friend from Baltimore again.
Thirty minutes later, her doctor shows up. I brace myself for a chiding that never comes. He rushes to her side immediately, asking questions of Elizabeth and finally myself.
“We have to commit her,” he says. “An emergency commitment requires no judicial hearings. I can call the mobile crisis team and have them here within the next hour. She’ll go back to New York General, and we can do a full evaluation there.”
Eva turns to me slowly, her eyes pleading as if she’s grasping what’s going on. She shakes her head, softly at first and then forcefully.
“I don’t want to be away from you. I can’t be away from you, mi amor. They’re going to take me away. Stay with me. I need you. I can’t live without you…” Eva grabs my shirt collar and cries into my chest, her body shuddering with each sob. “Don’t let them take me.”
Elizabeth and Dr. Brentwood exchange looks, but my concern falls with the baby. It’s as if Eva has forgotten all about her. My gut tells me all along, Baby was some kind of gimmick or tool or prop, something Eva could use to get what she wanted, which was ultimately me.
I rise, leaving Eva’s side, and take the baby from Elizabeth, tucking her in my arm like a swaddled football. There’s not a fatherly bone in my body, but out of the four of us here, I’m the best chance she’s got.
Baby is warm, and she nuzzles her face against my chest as if my arms are the most comfortable place in her new little world.
“Where’s she going to go?” I ask Dr. Brentwood. “If Eva is committed, who takes the baby?”
He draws in a sip of a breath, his hands resting calmly in his lap. “Well, Beckham, Child Services will take her into custody if there’s no other legal guardian. Did you sign the birth certificate?”
“Of course not.”
“So she’ll be temporarily placed in a foster home until Eva is able to care for her.”
“How long will that be?”
“We have no way to know that.” He pushes his glasses up, his shoulders falling slightly. He’s annoyed with me for being involved, but I don’t give a fuck.
“Where will she be? Are there foster homes in the city?”
“You won’t know where she’s placed,” he says. “Unless you’re a legal guardian. And even then, you’d have to get special permission to visit.”
I glance down at the tiny little girl sleeping peacefully in my arms. For a second, I see a part of me in her. My heart squeezes. The idea of handing her over physically pains me.
“I’ll take her.” I clear my throat, standing tall. “She can live with me. Eva listed me on the birth certificate. I’m the assumed father.”
“Beckham.” Dr. Brentwood tilts his head, placing his hand in the air to protest.
“I know you’re going to say it’s a bad idea,” I speak before he has a chance. “But I can’t ship her off like some puppy nobody wanted.”
There’s a knock at the door. Elizabeth jumps and scurries down the hall.
“You’ll need to contact a family law attorney,” Dr. Brentwood says. “They’ll have to arrange an emergency custody hearing, and you’ll have to explain to the judge why she’s better off in your care than in foster care.”
“Fine. I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever I have to do.”
Elizabeth returns with a small team of Crisis Team workers wearing matching white polo shirts with blue hospital logos on them.
“Eva, my name is Monique.” One of the workers takes the spot next to Eva where I sat earlier. “You’re going to come with us, and we’re going to help you get better so you can take care of that little one, all right?”
Monique smiles. Eva’s mouth twists into a panicked frown. She scans the room for me, and the second she stands, Monique and Dr. Brentwood take her by the arms and lead her out the door.
The incessant wailing that ensues wakes sleeping Baby and Elizabeth rushes to my side to assist.
“It’s okay.” I bounce her gently, shushing to try and drown out her mother’s shrieks. “I’ve got you now.”
Baby quiets after a few minutes, and Eva’s screaming has disappeared. I’d look out the window, but I don’t need the image of her being strapped into a stretcher burned into my memory.
“Mr. King?” A woman in a khaki trench coat with bags under her sleepless eyes steps into the room. She wears the grayed look of a woman with a thankless job. “I’m with Child and Family Services.”
The way I see it, I have two options.
Dive headfirst.
Or run.
Chapter Twenty-Four
ODESSA
One last pair of flats goes into my suitcase before I yank the zipper tight. It’s almost nine o’clock, and the flight leaves in fourteen hours from LaGuardia. I texted Beckham earlier to let him know I’d meet him there around nine, but I never heard back.
He stormed out of the office after lunch today, and I never heard from him after that.
Washing up for bed and slipping into pajama pants and a tank, I climb under my cool sheets and pull my tablet from my nightstand for some late night reading. I read until my eyelids grow heavy and the e-ink words jumble together on the dimly lit screen.
The buzzing on my nightstand interrupts my gentle lull and pulls me back into the moment – into my cold, dark room. Eyes squinting, I grab the phone and answer immediately when I see who’s calling.
“Beckham,” I say, voice groggy. “What’s up?”
“What are you doing?” His voice is dialed down, low. Almost seductive.
“Sleeping. Which is what you should be doing too. We fly out tomorrow morning.”
“I need you to come over.”
My lips twist, peeling into a wide smile I can only hope to conceal in my tone. “You’re shameless. And no. The answer is no. I’m in bed. I’m staying here. I’ll see you tomorrow. Goodnight.”
“Odessa.” My name in his mouth is heavier this time, causing my heart to hammer. “I mean it. Come over. Now.”
“The desperation isn’t doing you any favors. Goodnight, okay?”
A weird noise comes from his end. It sounds like a squawking bird, high pitched and shrill at first until it grows louder and closer. And then I realize it’s a baby.
***
The penthouse elevator doors part, and there stands Beckham, a wailing newborn cradled in his arms. I’d forgotten how small babies are when they’re brand new. I haven’t held a newborn since my oldest sister had her last
, and it’s been years.
“I can’t get her to take a bottle.” Beckham’s hair is combed every which way, his eyes squinty and his posture exhausted. A small bottle rests in the palm of his hand. Navy sweats are cinched low around his hips, and a white t-shirt reveals a hint of the ‘v’ that leads to familiar territory. I’ve seen him dressed up. I’ve seen him naked. But seeing him so casual with a baby in his arm almost feels like an illusion.
“May I?” I scoop the crying baby from his arms. He hands me the bottle which is tepid at best. “This is cold, Beckham. Let’s get her a fresh one. Do you have any frozen breast milk?
“She’s on formula.”
“Where’s Eva?” I ask.
“Obviously not here.”
I carry the unsettled baby into the kitchen, Beckham following. An open canister of Similac rests next to a diaper bag. Pulling out a fresh bottle, I heat some sterile water and mix two ounces with a scoop of powder.
Testing it on my inner wrist, I run the nipple across her mouth until she opens up. She latches on immediately, as if she was starving.
“Why will she let you give her a bottle and not me?” He watches like I’m performing some kind of magic.
“Babies are fickle,” I say. “She’s still figuring out the world around her. Sometimes they like to be held a certain way or they want their milk a certain temperature. You’ll get to know her eventually. Crying is the only way they can communicate right now.”
I carry her into the living room, lowering us into a cushy leather chair. I prop my legs on a nearby ottoman and settle in with the dark haired beauty.
“She looks like you.” I gently pull the bottle from her lips and hoist her over my shoulder, patting her back until she gives me the tiniest burp.
Beckham takes the seat across from me, not looking away for one second. Either he’s amazed by this interaction or he’s overprotective of his daughter.
“You’re good with her,” he says.
She sucks down the final ounce, and I place her over my shoulder once more. “I have six nieces and nephews. Lots of practice.”
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