by E M Lindsey
“Dude, you still with me?” Sage asked.
Niko blinked. “Sorry. Zoned. It’s been a long week and I think my brain is leaking out of my ears. Anyway, I do not want to open a gym because I like going here, not working here. I don’t want this shit to feel like it’s my job. Uh, and besides, I might have another idea.”
There was a little restaurant going out of business not far from the town’s only florist. It was a little American Diner that no one ever went into anymore because that shit was way too passé for the hipsters in this city. He was wondering if maybe he could do some sort of nouveau-Greek style food, because he could easily get his old family recipes from his mom and make something modern out of them. Home comfort with a modern twist to make all the pretentious yuppies want to eat there every night.
He loved working as an accountant—numbers just made sense—but lately he’d been craving something else. He wanted something that felt like his. Something stable, planting roots. He had the money for it—hell, he had more than, though he didn’t think anyone in Fairfield knew he was an actual millionaire—and there was no reason not to try. He made a decent salary, and if it all went tit’s up and he lost everything, he’d be no worse off than he was right then.
“Are you going to share with the class?” Cale asked after silence that lasted way too long to be polite.
Niko set his weights down, reaching for his towel to rub the back of his neck. His leg was starting to twinge, and he’d need to ice it later, but the workout felt good. “Maybe. I’m not sure yet.” He laid back on the bench, resting his hands on his stomach, and sighed. “I need to get laid.”
“You’re not my type,” Cale told him.
Niko kicked him gently. “You’re not mine, either. Neither of you fuck-faces are—though Sage is pretty enough.”
“Interesting you should say that,” Sage told him, leaning a little close. “You know I have an identical twin.”
Niko’s eyebrows flew up and he propped himself up on his elbows. “I said pretty enough, but if I’m not into you, I don’t know why you’d think I’d be interested in your clone.”
“Twin, not clone,” Sage told him with a wry grin. “And trust me, our faces and some of our ink are exactly where the similarities end. He’s a fuckin’ nerd like you, and his bitch-ass argues with me about tomatoes too.”
“Oh, hell no, I’m not sitting through that again,” Cale said. He hopped up and walked off, leaving Niko snickering into his water bottle.
“Seriously, you’d probably like him,” Sage said after a beat. He picked up his own towel and swiped some of the chalk from his hands. “He’s an artist. I mean, we both work at the shop, but he’s a canvas and paint kind of artist. His work is amazing. There’s no way I could ever replicate that shit. And he’s a good guy. Better than me, anyway.”
“You’re not so bad yourself,” Niko told him with a genuine smile, because he might not have been attracted to Sage’s personality, but he did like the guy. “Seriously though, if you two look like that,” he waved his hand in Sage’s general direction, “how the fuck are you two single?”
“I’m a widower,” Sage said after a moment, his voice quiet and a little hesitant. “Or well, close enough. We were meant to be getting married that month, but he got sick and uh… yeah. So, I haven’t really felt ready to move on. Derek’s…hell, he’s got a lot going on. We had a rough go of things as kids and he took it hard, but he’s worth the effort, you know? With someone who might be willing to work hard with him.”
Niko considered his words for a long time, trying to figure out exactly what Sage meant by that. He knew what rough childhoods could be like—his father suffered one, and he’d had friends over the years who dealt with that kind of shit. They tended to have attachment issues, trust issues, nothing he couldn’t handle. But he wasn’t entirely sure it was a good idea.
“Look,” Sage went on, interrupting his thoughts, “I’m not sure Derek even wants to date right now, but if I can get him to say yes, would you think about it? Just drinks or something?”
“He looks like you,” Niko asked, eyebrows raised, “only without dipshit opinions on fruit and veg?”
Sage flipped him off, but he was grinning. “He also likes that hipster crap you listen to. Like old school shit. Enya,” he clarified.
Niko felt his smile widen, and though he’d never told anyone, Enya had been on his pregame playlist when he was stretching before suiting up. “I could live with that.”
“So, yes?” Sage pressed.
Niko shrugged. “I could do a lot worse than a guy who looks like you but knows where the fuck tomatoes go on the food pyramid.” He reached down and grabbed his phone. “Give me your number and I’ll send you mine. You can text me if he’s interested.”
He didn’t have a lot of hope. His dating over the years had been pathetic at best, but maybe it was a start. At the very least, he’d come a lot further than he ever planned to in life, and that was saying something.
Chapter Three
“You know I’m sorry about this, Sam. This wasn’t what I wanted to happen.” Beth’s voice was simpering, asking for forgiveness because she damn-well knew what would happen when she turned her home-inspection report over to her boss. The same damn thing that had been happening since he started the adoption process. “It really shouldn’t take long.
He gave her a flat look as she sat on his sofa, her hands folded primly in her lap. He reached up, tugging his fingers through his freshly washed hair, then let his hands drift to the wheels of his chair. “Whatever.”
“Don’t start being defeatist now. That’s not going to help the situation.”
“You and I both know where this ends,” he told her, his voice a little rough, but he felt flayed raw on the inside. He was heading down the path where a judge would ultimately rip his little girl from his arms and place her with strangers, and that would be the end of it. He hadn’t even wanted a fucking kid. When they took the newborn from his strung-out cousin—when she left the hospital and never bothered to look back—he hadn’t known about it. Hell, he hadn’t known the baby existed to begin with. The phone call was a last-ditch effort to reach someone biological before putting the baby up for adoption.
Sam had almost laughed the caseworker off the phone that first day, but he’d been polite and said he’d make some calls and see what he could do. He knew he wasn’t cut out for fatherhood. Hell, he was barely put together himself, and the fact that he was paralyzed had zero to do with it. It was the fact that his hours weren’t exactly compatible with raising a kid, and he worked in a tattoo shop for fuck’s sake. It’s not like they had in-studio day care. And hell, he’d never even held a kid before, let alone been responsible for keeping one alive.
Yet, the idea of her being punted around home to home, the idea that anyone—fucking anyone—could just snatch her up and call her theirs without having to prove they were worthy of it? It got under his skin and wouldn’t leave him alone.
Somehow, he found himself driving nine hundred miles north to a little suburb with a three-bedroom house holding six foster kids, one harried stay at home mom, and a dad who preferred his after-work beer to helping do a dish or two at night. The mom was sweet but overworked, and Sam knew Maisy wouldn’t be staying there.
The girl had been desperate for love, touch-starved because it was easier to throw her in a rickety old crib and let her cry it out than give her what she needed. She clung to him like it was the first time she’d ever been held, and that was it. His heart had been ripped out and placed in her chubby little hands.
The paperwork took just short of forever, and he lost tons of cash renting a crap apartment for the four months it took for him to get certified to take her. If it hadn’t been for the guys at the shop banding together to send him enough money to get by, he would have been screwed. But eventually it was done, and he found himself driving home with her strapped in the back of his car. She was disturbingly good on the drive there, an angel in ea
ch motel room.
It only made sense that she’d raise hell the moment he got her through his front door. She cried for two weeks straight, and he slept collectively maybe nine hours. But they found their way in the end, and one morning he woke up with her next to him, her little hand on his cheek. She gave him a gummy smile with four teeth in the front, and a pat, and said, “Dadadada.” He knew then he would fight to his literal death because she was his.
“I’m not giving up,” he finally told Beth, and pushed his chair toward the kitchen to grab his keys and wallet. “I told you when I first brought her home that you’d take her over my dead body, and I meant it. I’m just getting really tired of this fight. Whatever your prejudices against me because my skin has ink and my legs don’t work, you and I both know I’m the best thing for her.”
Beth, who had walked up behind him, looked at him with a stony expression. “It’s not about what I think.”
He laughed. “I know. Except that the way you think is exactly what they think, and if I can’t change your mind, I’m gonna lose. But I’m not giving up, either.”
She stared another minute, then sighed and he thought maybe—just maybe—he saw a little twinge of guilt in her eyes. “Do you need a ride?”
“Oh, I can drive myself, thank you. I’m sure I won’t see you there.” He showed her to the door after, then moved back to the living room to call Derek.
He was grateful Derek didn’t try to keep him long or give him some sort of pep-talk, because at this point, it was useless. He’d done this song and dance so many times he knew it by heart. He was going to sit before a small panel—at a round table as some way of making him feel equal. They’d ask him invasive questions about how he managed to take a shit or a shower by himself, and what would happen to Maisy if he fell, and how often he’d dropped her as a baby. They’d ask him about his job stability and if he had a back-up plan if the tattoo thing didn’t work out—because apparently just shy of twenty years of working in one place wasn’t good enough to be considered job stability if it wasn’t a ‘respectable career choice’ in their eyes.
After that, they’d pull some ancient walker with a broken wheel, from some busted-ass closet, and ask him to use it to walk across the room. And he would. Without his braces, he’d drag his paralyzed, atrophied legs across the thin, worn-down carpet like a dancing monkey on the boardwalk. Then he’d see half pity and half disgust on their faces, because when he did that, he looked like their version of disabled.
They never wanted to see videos of the fitness classes he ran, or the marathons he’d won with his modified bike he paid thousands for. They didn’t want to see him function at home better than people with two working legs as he managed dinner, bath time, and an unruly toddler. They didn’t care that he could manage a three-year-old melt down over no ice pops after dinner because she hadn’t eaten her greens.
No. They cared about the one single ER visit where she’d fallen down a concrete step at the playground and needed three stitches in her chin. They cared about the nine months of therapy he’d gone through at sixteen for suicidal ideation when he heard his parents talking about how he was going to spend the rest of his life as a drain on society. They cared about the fact that he couldn’t just hop up and do the goddamn Charleston on their command.
He pushed all that down into an ugly, bitter ball of rage that would probably become an ulcer one day, and he pasted on his smile as he grabbed his keys and headed out. It was going to be the longest fucking day, but he didn’t care. He hadn’t lied when he told Beth that he knew where this was going, but they’d have to kill him in order for them to take her. He wasn’t losing her. She was his life, and that was that.
“Okay, Mr. Braga, head to this address and check in at the front desk. We’ll have someone call you as soon as we can set up the class time.”
His fingers clenched around the card, trying not to crush it in his palm with the pure, unadulterated rage he felt. He plastered on a smile as he looked at her banal expression. “And it’s six weeks, you said?”
The woman with too-white hair pinned at the nape of her neck gave him a patronizing smile. “Six weeks, yes. Then we’ll reassess.”
“So, I’m taking a rehab class on how to function day-today with paralysis, for six weeks—none of which is about child-rearing—and that’s not a guarantee that this will close my case and let me adopt my daughter?” His throat was thick with frustration, and he could see the hesitation in her eyes.
“Look, Mr. Braga, it’s just protocol that we…”
He held up his hand, stopping her words. “When I was in my car accident, I was fifteen. I’ve been paralyzed for over twenty years, which means I’ve been using a wheelchair longer than I could walk. Don’t you think I’m well aware how to live my life on a daily basis with my disability?”
“Sir, I…”
“And I’ve had my daughter for damn near three years. Which means that I managed to pace the floor while she screamed for three hours straight when she had colic. I’ve been through croup and the flu and every fucking cold and ear infection she’s ever had. I kept her clean and safe and fed and housed without so much as a blip on my record. And you’re telling me it’s protocol that I take this class—something I took twenty years ago, that still won’t guarantee that this investigation will stop and just let her stay with the only man she’s ever known as a parent?” His breathing was rapid, and he could feel his chest going tight, which wasn’t a good sign. If his legs started to spasm, it would only fuel her belief that he wasn’t capable. He willed himself to calm down, even as she stared at his paperwork instead of looking him in the eyes.
“I’m not sure what you want me to say, Mr. Braga. I’m only following protocol.”
“Fine,” you fucking robot, he finished to himself. He shoved the card into his front shirt pocket, then grabbed the wheels of his chair and shoved them backward. His back was aching, and he was torn between wanting to find a bar somewhere and drown himself in a bottle of whiskey, and going home to hold Maisy and never let go.
He made it out and into his car before he started to shake, and he leaned back in his seat, head pressed to his window as the bones in his legs tried to vibrate themselves straight out of his skin. The spasms always took his breath away, so he waited until he’d calmed before pulling his phone out to dial up Kat, who picked up on the third ring.
“Hey, babe. You wanna talk to the munchkin?”
Sam grit his teeth and let out a breath through his nose.
“I…in a sec. I just…I just got done and uh…”
“What did they say?” she asked, her voice low and almost dangerous.
“Nothing. It’s…I have to take some fucking class for six weeks, and then they’re going to reassess my case,” he confessed. He swallowed thickly. “And they said they’re going to try to track down her biological father to see if there’s anyone on that side of the family who wants to petition for custody.”
“Jesus,” she breathed out. “Sam…”
“Look, it’s—it is what it is. I’m just going to put my head down and keep going. That’s all I can do at this point.”
After a moment of silence, Kat said, “Let me keep her for the night. She’s playing with Jazzy and we’re going out for pizza in a bit. You can get home and let your body relax, and I’ll bring her over in the morning, okay? And I’m telling Tony to shuffle your shit around tomorrow.”
“No,” he started.
“Don’t argue,” Kat snapped. “You know you need this.”
He hated that she was right, and he dropped his head to the steering wheel. “Yeah. Fine.”
“Just call me when you get in, let me know it’s alright. And maybe call Derek to come hang with you and take your mind off things, okay? It’s going to be fine.”
He wanted to snap at her, tell her she had no right saying that because right now, he had no real reason to believe this was going to work out for him. Maybe if he’d been a different person—less ink
, a better reputation, had some sort of glorious, heroic past he could call upon, he could go viral and shame the state for their bullshit. But he was just some nobody. Some nobody with parents who couldn’t stand thinking about him, who never did much with his life apart from nestle into some small town and carve out a home there.
But he had this, at least. His family, his shop, and for now —his baby girl. “I’ll call you later,” he told her, then hung up before she could say anything more. He just wanted to be home, and this little bit Kat was offering, well, it had to be enough.
Chapter Four
“What do you think?”
Niko startled, spinning around to find two smirking faces in the doorway. He let out a puff of air, dragging a hand down his face, and his shoulders dropped. “I need to put a goddamn bell on you both.”
The two in the doorway gave an identical laugh, and not for the first time, seemed like they were sharing one thought. Jane, the redhead, had married Max, Niko’s former roommate when he first moved to Fairfield. The blonde, Holland, had come with the package, and was rarely seen without the other. Both of them now ran a fairly successful real estate company, providing him with all the listings, and they did it in secret which was the only reason he’d agreed to start looking at property in the first place.
At that point, he’d been forced to disclose his fortune, and though he’d braced himself for their attempt to screw him a little when it came to cost and favors, he’d been proven wrong. It was yet another reason why he felt like this place could be home.
Holland winked at him as she pushed past Jane, running
her hand over a granite countertop which had a thin layer of dust building along the edge. “It wouldn’t need a lot of renovating.”
“I’d probably want to,” he said, then bit his lower lip and did a half turn around the room. “I want it to feel new. Different, you know?”