That wasn’t how it had worked out, but it’s how I thought it might have. If we’d had time. If he hadn’t been derailed with his injury. If he had liked me more, I guessed.
But that unreasonable part of me that was connected straight to hormones reared its ugly, no-reason-to-be-possessive-but-I-was-going-to-be-a-possessive-psycho-anyway head and made me want to kick the Asshole’s ass all over again for being off living his life, forgetting about me, probably making out with a different woman every week, while I’d been at home, substituting coffee for a hot mushroom drink, missing food I craved out of nowhere that Grandpa wouldn’t let me have either, while my skin stretched and my organs moved with the life I’d been carrying inside of me.
I was a jealous motherfucker, even when I hadn’t had a boyfriend. God knew I had wanted to kill Noah every time I saw him with a different girl while I’d thought I’d been in love with him when I’d been younger. The bitch.
Just thinking about Noah right then made me want to kick his ass too while I was at it, but for a completely different reason.
Keep it together and quit being a psycho.
The fact was, I could be with whomever I wanted to be with. I hadn’t been abstinent because I was pining over the dumbass in the room or because of the one I had thought I liked as a teenager. I’d had more guys flirt with me while pregnant than when I hadn’t been for some reason.
Thinking that eased the tension in my chest a little more. It made the crazy take a step back and see that I’d always had options too. I had done what I wanted to.
But by the time I managed to zone back into the conversation that Jonah and Peter were having, I had missed part of it. I figured I had skulked around long enough while eavesdropping. Fortunately, Peter saw me out of the corner of his eye right as I stepped into his line of view so I didn’t have to speak first.
“Morning,” my second dad greeted me. “General Mo has been keeping me company this morning. We agreed we’d let you sleep in.” He gave the baby a tickle.
“Aren’t you two the best?” I asked as I took a couple steps into the room, finally conscious I was just wearing a long T-shirt in front of Jonah. Whatever.
Mo made a happy squeal and a “Ma!” at the sound of my voice, lighting up my entire life with every little, joyous sound she made. Glancing at Jonah, who was still on his knees, I slid him a blank look before scooping her up for a hug.
“Hi, Jonah.”
At nine in the morning, his eyes were clear and wide awake, everything from his white and black pullover hoodie to his jeans clean and fresh looking, and his bristly facial hair hugged the shape of his annoyingly almost-perfect face. But it was the easygoing, pleasant expression he wore that got on my nerves the most. Like nothing was wrong and it didn’t bother him that I couldn’t stand him. “Good morning, Lenny.”
I wanted to grumble, but I didn’t. Instead, I gave Mo kisses on each cheek and pretended I was going to eat her hand while she babbled before saying, “I thought we were meeting in the afternoon.”
“Yeh.” He flashed me another little smile that was a little too friendly for how crabby I was feeling at him being here unexpectedly, looking all nice and shit. “Couldn’t sleep much last night.” His attention flicked from me to the baby and back before he added quickly, “You said I could see her whenever I wanted. Hope it’s all right.”
It wasn’t, but that was Asshole Lenny speaking. I had said those words, and I’d meant them, but I guess I hadn’t expected him to show up early in the morning the next day, either. He had me there. “It’s all right.” I switched her to one arm as she tried to stick her finger in my nose and focused on Peter, attempting at the same time to will the grumpiness away because I had put myself into this situation. “Did you eat breakfast already?”
“Not yet. It’s Gus’s turn, and he was still cooking when our visitor arrived.”
Our visitor.
Luna would tell me to be a better person, but that wasn’t so easy. Still though, I grabbed what I had to work with—just the tiniest bit of understanding and patience—and dragged my gaze back to the biggest person in the room even though I didn’t really want to.
He was here for Mo, and this was the rest of my life.
“Jonah,” his name in my throat was irritating, but I hoped it would get easier with time “would you like to eat breakfast with us since you’re here? It’s vegetarian.”
Those brown eyes flashed with surprise… and then he nodded.
* * *
Inviting Jonah to breakfast wasn’t the worst idea I’d ever had. It wasn’t even in the top twenty or possibly even fifty things, but it was fucking up there.
Because if I could have taken a picture of Grandpa’s face when I walked into the kitchen following Peter, with the Dickwad trailing behind, I could have found at least fifty people who would have paid for the image. That shit was priceless. Grandpa’s mouth had dropped a quarter open, his eyes had gone pretty squinty, and it was just… something.
But whatever magic Peter had worked on him was carrying over because he pressed his lips together after a heartbeat, flared his nostrils, and gritted out, “Four for breakfast?”
Luckily it was Peter who answered with laughter in his voice because he was probably thinking the same thing about the face my grandpa had made—you know, about it being priceless. “Yes, Gus, four of us today.”
The smile that had come over Grandpa’s face was so brittle I was surprised it didn’t break into pieces. To give him credit, he kept whatever was on his tongue to himself as he turned around and faced the stove again. His shoulders were stiff, and I didn’t need to see him to know he was making faces down at the stove. Knowing him, he was probably whispering to himself in a whiny, high-pitched voice.
Luckily, I hadn’t expected it to get better as we ate, because it didn’t. Not when I was being quiet and grumpy as I fed Mo and myself. Peter was being himself, eating, talking to Mo, nudging Grandpa from time to time, and sending me these looks I wasn’t totally sure what the hell they meant. Meanwhile, Grandpa Gus stabbed at his roasted potatoes like they had tried to kill him.
That was when the questions started.
And I didn’t stop them. Because I had compromised with myself: they were going to happen sooner or later, and unless he got ugly, I wouldn’t step in. But if Jonah was going to be in Mo’s life, he was going to be in the rest of ours too.
“So…,” Grandpa muttered as he started attacking a piece of pineapple with his fork. “Edward—”
I was 100 percent sure he knew damn well that wasn’t his name. Knowing my grandfather, he probably knew everything about him by then. Birthday, height, weight, every team he’d ever played for, the names of every member of his family. Everything his stalker self could find on the internet.
“Where are you from? Australia?”
All right. This was where he was going with this. Being a pain in the ass was what came the most naturally to him. I eyed Jonah as I tried to spoon a little bit of extra mushy oatmeal into Mo’s mouth.
He chewed, eyes on my grandfather. “Auckland. New Zealand, Mr. DeMaio.”
Mr. DeMaio? Somebody was laying it on thick. I made a face at my girl who responded by grinning.
“New Zealand,” my grandfather echoed with an ornery tone that only those who knew him really well would recognize. “Is that where your parents are from?”
“Yes. My great-great-grandparents on my mum’s side immigrated there around the 1870s from Scotland and Norway,” Jonah explained, glancing up and focusing on Mo. He took a breath and exhaled out another smile as his eyes slid to meet mine. “My other granddad is Samoan, and my nan’s got some Māori and Samoan. Some Pakeha too.”
That had all three of us looking over at him blankly.
“European.” He paused. “White.”
I just realized I had never asked him that. Honestly, I had never really thought much about where he got those—stupid—crazy looks from. I had met two of his teammates who were Mā
ori, both of whom had a richer skin tone than he did. And as I looked at his features right then, I realized he didn’t look… one thing or another. He really was a perfect mix of heritages, from his bone structure to his skin color… everything.
He really was a handsome asshole.
But a lame one.
Grandpa huffed a second before he backstabbed me. “Lenny has always liked her… Europeans.”
I didn’t think twice about flinging Mo’s spoon right at my grandfather, and it was his good luck he had reflexes like a retired cat because he lunged out of the way at the last minute, avoiding getting hit in the shoulder.
“It’s your eyeball next time. You don’t really need both,” I warned him, shaking my head at his betrayal. Always liked her Europeans. I didn’t even know how the hell he still managed to surprise me.
Grandpa, though, fucking laughed for the first time.
I slid him a look as I got up and grabbed another baby spoon from the drawer. Fortunately none of us said much the rest of the breakfast besides Peter bringing up comments about a couple of the guys he was training, with me and Grandpa Gus commenting on it. After we all finished, Peter stood up and headed straight toward the coffeemaker. “Jonah, would you like some coffee?”
I was in the middle of trying to spoon the last of Mo’s oatmeal into her mouth when he answered.
“I’d take a cup of tea if you have any.”
I forgot about how much he liked tea, I thought randomly, annoyed I remembered that detail.
“We don’t have any,” I answered, sounding bitchy, even though it was the truth.
“It’s all good,” Jonah responded, not sounding at all put-out.
Peter glanced at me over his shoulder after refilling two mugs. As he and my gramps grudgingly left the kitchen, he mouthed go do something.
Shit.
I guess we could skip lunch and go straight into our talk to avoid spending more time with Salty Britches in the house and on edge.
“Would you like to go for a walk around the neighborhood with Mo and me?” I made myself ask as I licked the rest of what she didn’t eat off the spoon.
His “yeh” was so instant I had to glance at him.
Did he have to sound so excited? Suck-up. I nodded more to myself than anything before I turned around, setting the towel aside. “Okay. If you don’t mind watching her for a second, I’ll go get dressed.”
His eyes widened, but he nodded, his gaze immediately straying to our supreme leader who was sitting in her high chair, chewing on a teething ring.
I forgot that according to what I’d overheard, he hadn’t seemed to have a whole lot of experience with babies.
Well, it wasn’t like I had either. He’d learn. If he wanted to.
If he knew what was good for him.
“She’s not going to try and swan dive off the seat or blow anything up,” I tried to assure him, suddenly remembering how Grandpa had told me the same thing at least twenty times after she had been born. It had been one thing when Luna had shoved her baby at me the first time, like I had known what the fuck I was doing. But it was a totally different thing to have my best friend, who did have experience with babies, standing three feet away making sure I didn’t do anything wrong.
It was a totally different thing when the tiny thing in my arms was my responsibility to keep alive.
My responsibility for the rest of my life. Because with my luck, she would end up the way I’d ended up with Grandpa Gus: a life clinger.
Plus, according to Grandpa Gus, it was really hard to break a baby. At least that’s what he’d said over and over again when he smelled the terror coming off me. I had stared at him for a long time after he said that, wondering what the hell kind of shenanigans he had gotten us into before my memories became solid. It was probably better that I couldn’t remember.
“I’ll be right back. You’ll be fine,” I told him.
What I got was a mostly determined nod in return.
Well, maybe he was nervous, but he wasn’t a total chickenshit. I’d give him that. I’d brought Mo around enough of the guys at the gym, and plenty of them hadn’t even wanted to hold her in the first place. Not even now.
And I had been the same way when someone had tried to get me to hold their baby. No, thank you. So… good for him. I guess.
It didn’t take me long at all to put on real clothes and brush my teeth. It might have only been ten minutes later that I opened the door to the kitchen with my palm and called out, “You ready to go?”
Jonah turned from where he was sitting beside Mo’s chair, that muscular body facing her, and nodded.
I kept my mouth shut as I watched him figure out how to take her out. I didn’t miss how steady his hands were then, the same as when he was running full speed clutching a white ball to his side while dodging men trying to tackle him. Like those times when he was fully concentrated and completely in control.
Instead, in this case, here he was. With calm hands, a determined glint in his eye as he cradled an eight-month-old to his chest like she was a bomb ready to go off.
Holding the door open, they passed into the hallway ahead of me, with Mo babbling in the process, totally fucking fine. The jogging stroller we used to take her out was already right by the door, and it only took a moment to get it all set up. I showed him how to set Mo down and then strapped her in. Wordlessly, we carried the stroller down the steps of the house between the two of us, and I asked, sounding just the tiniest bit grumpy, “Do you want to push it?”
If he said no….
Those honey-colored eyes flicked down to the stroller, his hands going to the front of his jeans to wipe down the material that was almost clinging to his thighs because those things were so big—not that I was paying that much attention.
But he dipped his chin a moment before saying, “I’ll push the pram,” as he got behind the handle and started doing just that.
I couldn’t help but eye him as we passed one house and then another on our walk. In the low seventies, it was a rare warm day at the end of January, thankfully. It had been eighty-four degrees on Christmas Day; two days later, it had dropped into the forties. Texas weather had a mind of its own. The sky was a grayish shade of blue, and luckily, the neighborhood was an old one, with massive trees that lined the streets, the weeping branches giving plenty of shade.
It was just a nice Sunday out on a walk with my girl and… her dad.
I eyed the tall brown-haired man again and wondered if he was being honest about not knowing.
Fucker.
“Your granddad hates me,” Jonah said out of nowhere.
He was sweeping one side of the street to the other with his eyes, his knuckles pale over the handle of the stroller, like he was gripping the hell out of it in case it suddenly decided to run off on its own.
If he was looking at me to lie to him, he was shit out of luck. “Yeah, he does,” I agreed, because it was the truth. Grandpa Gus did hate him.
What surprised the hell out of me was the snort that ripped through Jonah’s nose at my response. It triggered, for one second, memories of him doing the same thing when we’d known each other. What I didn’t let myself remember was how much I’d liked it.
“Can’t say I blame him much,” the fucker accepted, while I made myself stop thinking about his snort.
All I could manage to do was grunt out a “humph.” I got a side-eye in return. A tight expression came over Jonah’s face as we briefly made eye contact.
“Lenny—” he started almost immediately before I cut him off.
I had a feeling I knew where this was going and didn’t want to go there. “I don’t care what happened or what your reasons were, Jonah. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” I had before, and I wanted him to know that. But I didn’t now. Not anymore.
That was a lie, and my heart knew it and my brain did too. A tiny part of me wanted to hear what he had to say. But nothing he said or did changed a thing.
He told me
he would call me.
He got hurt.
He disappeared.
For. Seventeen. Months.
He had reappeared into the world a year after I’d last seen him, and over the next few months, he didn’t make a single effort to contact me.
Motherfucker.
I mean it didn’t matter. It didn’t need to be brought up anymore. It really didn’t, and I had to focus on that. We were here, and we were going to be in this together, some way, somehow, and that was the important part. And if we needed to do this for a long time, then I needed to not get pissed off and become irrational.
I wasn’t spending the rest of my life being bitter toward him. I could passively hate him. That worked.
“All that needs to matter at this point is our relationship with Mo. I don’t want to talk about… then.” I squeezed my hands into fists. It was the truth. It was. “If you’re going to be part of the rest of her life, that is.”
The look he sent me though….
I wasn’t sure what to think of the way his eyebrows knit together or the clench in his cheek. I wasn’t sure what to think of the words that came out of his mouth next either. “I’d like to explain, Lenny,” he said carefully, dousing me with that accent of his that made everything out of his mouth instantly sound prettier than everything out of mine, even though I still wanted to trip him near a flight of stairs. “Need to, really. I’m not going anywhere.”
“It’s easy to say things. It’s not as easy to do them.”
I didn’t mean for my words to come out so bitchy, but it wasn’t like I could take them back after they were out. Maybe he didn’t remember how he had stood in front of me the day before his game—match, whatever—held my face in between those big hands, and said, We should go to the catacombs when I get back from Toulouse, yeh?
We never made it to the catacombs.
I had never made it to the catacombs.
“I deserved that,” he replied, and not for the first time, it hit me that he didn’t fight back, or that he didn’t get mad or try and deflect. Jonah looked down at the ground, that wide jaw working.
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