“That’s good, that’s good,” I muttered, thinking it all over. “But he’s ok?”
Nodding at me, she shot me a comforting smile. “He’s better than he was.”
Shit, that could mean anything.
“Tate, this is Charlotte,” Levi told me, pointing to the nurse. “She’s been looking after you and feeding back information to us all about Lily and her dad.” His tone made it clear I was to say thank you.
Raising the eyebrow that didn’t have a big bandage over it, I gave her a grateful smile. “Nice to meet you, Charlotte. And thank you so much for everything you’ve done for us today.”
Bursting out laughing, she shot me a grin over her shoulder. “You’re very welcome, Tate.”
Inserting himself into the conversation, Levi added, “You’ve done a lot for us, Charlotte. The whole family are very grateful.”
Rolling her eyes at me, I smiled my first real smile in a long time – well, since I’d turned up at The Bar and saw it on fire, that was. This woman didn’t take any shit and I could respect that. I respected it even more that it was Levi she wasn’t taking the shit from.
“Where’s everyone else?” I asked, looking for my family like they were hiding. To be honest, it wouldn’t surprise me if one of them jumped out at me just for shits and giggles.
“They’re with Lily helping her out.”
As I took the first step in, I ate up the sight of Lily sitting upright in bed with a tube under her nose to give her oxygen. Someone had washed her face clean of the remnants of the fire, so she looked much better than she had when we’d first gotten here, regardless of how pale she was. She was also holding a tiny little person in her arms, and even though she still smelled like smoke (and was so pale she’d make milk look tanned), she’d never looked more beautiful to me.
I’m not going to lie, looking at her brought back the horror movie I’d seen when I’d stood up in that operating room, and I’d seen the guts, blood and body parts all over the place, but I forced it down and focused on the now.
Until she said five words that stopped me in my tracks.
“Congratulations, Daddy, it’s a girl!”
Freezing in place, I stood waiting for her to say it was a joke, but instead, my family released the pink balloons and held up the teddy bears they’d been holding behind their backs and yelled, “Surprise!”
With Levi pushing me from behind, I put one foot in front of the other and walked over to the side of the bed, looking down at the most precious and perfect little human being I’d ever seen. She had my hair, my nose, her mama’s lips, and when she opened her eyes and looked at me, I fell head over heels in love with her.
“Seeing as how it’s a girl, I got to pick her name,” Lily told me, smiling down at our daughter.
Our daughter.
Oh shit on me, Lily got to choose her name.
“What…” I whispered, nervously licking my lips. “What did you call her?”
“Can you pass her to her daddy?” she asked Levi, waiting for him to bend down and take her from her.
Seeing such a tiny baby in his big arms, everything inside of me froze.
“Hey, cutie, I’m your Uncle Levi,” he whispered, smiling down at her. “I’m going to look after you and shoot all the boys. If anyone makes you cry, you come tell me and I’ll kick their a…”
“Um, Levi,” Charlotte interrupted nodding in my direction. “I think she needs to meet her daddy.”
Looking like he was he going to argue, he eventually sighed and leaned in to give my daughter a soft kiss on her nose, grinning when she wrinkled her face and squeaked. “She’s perfect.”
When he turned around and started to hold her out to me though, I panicked. “I can’t,” I stammered, taking a step away. “What if I drop her? She’s so tiny and I’ve got big hands, see?” I held them up taking another step away. Each time I did it, the asshole took a step toward me. “Seriously, what if I sneeze and snap her in half by mistake?”
“Tate,” Lily snapped, lying her head back down on the pillow, looking like it had taken all of her energy to do it. “You’re ruining the special moment. Now, hold your daughter.”
Taking a deep breath, I held my hands out, trying to ignore how hard they were shaking. I could do this.
The second she was in my arms, I fell deeper down the hole of eternal and all-consuming love that I had for her and her mother. There was nothing in this world that felt like it or that would ever come close to it.
“What did we call her?” I asked, not taking my eyes off her. The more I held my daughter, the more similarities I found between us. She had my fingers, I was sure of it, and my ears.
“Rebel.”
I was blaming the Mayans and Chinese for this.
* * *
Two hours later…
It had taken everything in me to put Rebel down, but after Lily had fed her for the first time, I’d changed her first diaper, put on her first item of clothing, a bodysuit with Daddy’s #1 Princess on it, and had reluctantly stepped away from her as she slept in the little tank we’d been given for her. Why they put them in those things I didn’t know, it was weird and looked uncomfortable as hell.
Now, I was left reeling as I watched both my girls sleep the day off. I was glad they were here to do it in front of me, but I couldn’t relax enough to close my eyes. If I so much as looked away from them for a second, I’d panic and straighten up so I could check that their chests were still moving.
I also couldn’t switch off because I was worried about who Rob was, and why this had all happened.
Just then, the door opened and Levi stuck his head around the corner.
“Can I come in?”
Looking back at my girls, I nodded and went back to thinking. Proving how alike we were, my brother walked over so that he was standing beside Rebel’s fish tank, and I watched his head move as he looked between her and her mom, doing the same thing I was doing – monitoring their breathing.
When he was satisfied, he leaned down and gently stroked his fingers down Rebel’s face, smiling when she shifted and let out a squeak again.
“She’s perfect,” he murmured, telling me something I already knew. “Is she ok? Are they happy with whatever they need to watch with a baby?”
“Yeah,” I sighed, trying to get the crick out of my neck by stretching it. “Apparently, her oxygen levels are great, especially considering what happened.”
Backing away from her, Levi made his way over to where I was and leaned into me. “We need to talk.” When he straightened up and caught my eyes, I tensed up all over again. “Now.”
Not making a sound, I got up, shooting a last look at my woman and daughter, and followed him out into the corridor. Once the door had shut behind us, I leaned against the wall and watched as Archer came up behind him carrying a holder with three cups of coffee in it, his face looking murderous.
Ever heard the word that means fucking terrific? It’s traif. Mind you, that also meant non-kosher, but in my family we used it for the first meaning, and we said it sarcastically.
Well, this was just traif!
“You told him yet?” he asked, handing me a cup.
Looking down at the murky brown liquid in it suspiciously, I tuned them out as I took a sip. I was dragging ass, my head hurt, I knew my girls were safe in the room behind me, and I felt like shit, so coffee it was. Although, after the first mouthful, I started to question what the hell I was actually drinking. “Is this drugged?”
When neither of them answered, I looked up to see them watching me closely.
“We need to tell you something,” Levi muttered, but I noticed he didn’t take a sip of his own drink.
Wrong time and place to put laxatives in a drink, assholes…
“It was Rob Robertson who set fire to The Bar,” Archer broached, watching for my reaction.
I had none.
Why? Because I’d forgotten about the little rat bastard after the whole incident over Lily. Ho
w fucking stupid could you get?
“I know what you’re thinking,” Levi rumbled, but I cut him off before he could go any further.
“Do you?” I asked sarcastically. “Do you really? Do you know that I forgot about him completely after it all happened? Forgot he existed and the shit he’d said about my woman? My pregnant woman?” I agonized, stressing the word pregnant. “Even tonight, I came in and stayed here, instead of going out to find out who’d tried to kill her and Petey.”
As I made to walk past them, Archer grabbed my arm and stopped me. “Where are you going?”
“To find him and to beat the shit out of him.” It was as simple as that. “And if I kill him…”
Keeping hold of my arm, Archer raised his other fist in the air at the same time as Levi. That’s when I saw the cuts and bruises all over their knuckles and how swollen they were.
“We found him,” he admitted unnecessarily. “Chris told us downstairs, so we went out and hunted him down. Know who he was with?”
I was still trying to process what I was seeing, and the contrasting feelings of relief and frustration that I was feeling over the possibility of not getting to beat the crap out of him myself.
Not waiting for me to answer the question, my other brother filled me in. “He was banging the fuck out of Carly’s mom,” Levi imparted, shuddering at whatever it was they’d come across.
The words registered, but then it all began to add up. “Oh, fuck!”
“Yeah,” Archer hummed, leaning against the wall, looking like he didn’t have a care in the world. If you knew him though, you’d know he was hyperaware of everything going on around him, and that underneath it all he was still furious. “Also found out Chris had nothing to do with the drugs in the tequila that put Bonnie in hospital. That was confirmed by Rob who bragged about it before I punched him. Repeatedly.”
Snorting, Levi shook his head. “No man, he ran into your fist repeatedly,” he chuckled, then looked at me. “You should have seen it, it was hilarious.”
This all just seemed so surreal. In one day, my world had been great, then it had gone to shit, then it had been great, then I’d seen my woman’s insides, then I’d passed out, then I’d found out my son was a girl, then I found out it was a guy I’d forgotten about, then… what in the actual fuck was happening?
“Where’s he now?” I asked both of them, looking behind them just in case. It was a stupid thing to do because I doubted they’d have left him in any state to walk, but at this moment random shit just kept happening so it didn’t hurt to check.
“Prison, along with Carly’s mom,” Levi told me, finally taking a sip of his coffee and grimacing.
“Don’t like the hospital’s idea of java?” The nurse Charlotte asked as she walked up behind Archer and Levi.
With a yelp, Levi jumped and spun around to face her, almost knocking into Archer.
“Uh, it’s…”
Shit? Not coffee? Tastes like elephant dung?
“Great,” he lied, lifting it for another sip, doing his best to not shudder.
Her eyes glinting, she leaned in and looked into the cup. “Ah, you went for a triple shot from the machine, didn’t you? Big mistake.” When she stood up straight, she added, “None of us drink the coffee from there. It either has a laxative effect on you, or it’ll put your heart into an arrhythmia.”
Neither of those sounded good, so I leaned over to put mine down on the table and tried to remember how much I’d actually drank of it. As I lifted up, I saw Archer doing the same thing, both of us looking smugly over at Levi who took another sip and shuddered.
“Anyway, I’ll leave y’all to it. I just wanted to come and see how your girls were doing, Mr. Tate Townsend,” she stressed the name seeing as how there were three Mr. Townsends. “And to check on your head.”
“They’re doing great, and my head’s ok.” Lies, it felt like someone was banging around the inside of it with a medieval weapon.
Not calling me on my shit, she walked up and lifted the dressing to check underneath it, standing on her tiptoes to get to it. “Do you remember what happened yet?”
Did I ever, well some of it. “I remember seeing things,” I gagged at the memory of the caesarean carnage. “But that’s it.”
Moving back again, she put her hands on her hips and looked up at me with her eyes twinkling. Beside her, Levi took a step nearer, getting so close he almost touched her. “When you stood up, you saw the caesarean and the baby being brought out of the opening. That made you faint, and you hit the floor before anyone could try to help you. It was like watching a tree getting cut down.”
I frowned trying to remember that last bit, ignoring my asshole brothers who were laughing. I mean, I knew my head was banged up, and I could feel aching all over my ribs and shoulder on that side, but that was about it. They also didn’t see what I saw, it was like something out of your worst nightmare.
“Anyway, you’ll be just fine, but every so often we’ll pop into the room to check on you too,” she reassured me before looking at her watch. “I’ve got to get back to it. If you need anything, just press the button in Lily’s room, ok? I’m downstairs again now, but you can always ask for me if you want to. Given the circumstances, they’ve okayed me going between floors to help y’all out.”
That sounded nice of them, and I was grateful for the help. I’d be even more grateful if I even knew how a hospital worked – which I didn’t – but I assumed this wasn’t standard practice.
“Hey, can you update us on a couple of patients?” Archer asked before she left.
Looking nervously around us, she made sure we were alone. “I’m not really meant to…”
“The guy who was brought in an hour ago by the sheriff, did he get fully discharged?”
With a nod of her head, she answered it without breaking too many rules. This also told us that Rob was in the only place he deserved to be, snuggled up and hopefully on his way to becoming Bruce’s bitch. The only other place suitable for him was if he was rotting in hell, but prison was a close second to that.
“How is Mr. James doing?” I asked, but it wasn’t nurse Charlotte who answered.
“He’s doing well,” Lily’s mom said behind me. “Still sleeping it all off, but they did what they needed to, his heart’s beating, his vitals are looking good, and now I want to see my grandbaby.”
Spinning around, I swept her up in a hug, relieved at the news about Petey, relieved over the fact Rob was in prison, thanking my lucky stars that my girls were healthy, and thrilled that Rachel was here. I couldn’t wait to see Lily’s face when she saw her mom too. I wasn’t a woman, obviously, but a new mom had to need her own after she went through what Lily had.
“It’s a girl,” I mumbled into her hair, not releasing her.
“That’s awesome,” she whispered, her head still pressed against my chest.
“Yeah,” I gave her a second to take in the news, and then dropped the bombshell. “Lily named her.”
There was a long silence as this sank in. “Shit.” The three watching the exchange behind us burst out laughing at her response, but I thought it was valid. “What did she call her?”
“Rebel.”
Groaning, she pulled away and rubbed her hands over her face. She looked exhausted and there were stress lines around her eyes that I didn’t think I’d seen before. “Can we call her by her middle name?”
Shaking my head, I bit down on my lip while I tried to figure out how to break that one to her too. She’d had a lot to contend with today, what with her family’s bar being burned down while her husband and pregnant daughter were inside it, and what followed after it.
Would this be the final piece that pushed her over the edge?
I didn’t want to be that guy, the one who told her something that resulted in her needing to be sedated or something.
Seeing the emotions flashing across my face, she growled, “Tell me.”
Taking a deep breath, I focused on the spot on
the wall above her head. “Rowser.”
I could hear the laughter coming out of my brothers getting louder, but ignored them. They hadn’t been privy to the conversation where Lily had told me our daughter’s full name, so this was news to them too.
“Rebel Rowser Townsend?” Archer choked.
Glancing at Rachel quickly, I saw shock on her face and her mouth opening and closing as she tried to get her head around her grandbaby being called Rebel Rowser.
Fortunately, my worries about driving her to insanity didn’t come true. Instead, she wiped under her eyes and spluttered, “That poor baby!”
Taking her by the arm, I guided her into the room slowly, hoping if I showed her how perfect her granddaughter was, it would help her get over it.
A man could always dream.
Epilogue
Tate
It’s amazing how fast time flies by. One second, you’re living your life, it’s just you and that’s all you have to look out for. Now, five years later, I was a dad, a husband, and about to welcome baby number three into the world.
Rob, Carly, and her mom were all in prison serving their sentences. It was unlikely they’d be getting out early for good behavior too because they were such dickheads, but once they were, they’d be moving out of the area, far away from us. This was the agreement put to them by our lawyer in exchange for us not pressing for longer sentences, which likely would have been granted given the nature of their various crimes. Oh, not the ones they’d done just to us, but the other crimes that had been discovered after their arrests.
How Archer slept at night when Carly and her mother had both been so obsessed that they’d turned their basement into a room for him to live in, with charming chain and shackle jewelry attached to the wall, I’ll never know.
Rob also had women coming forward who were sadly victims of attempted rapes, stalking and crimes along those lines. They’d been tried and convicted in front of a jury, but we’d allowed the women to take front and center to get justice for what he’d done to them. The arson case had been the cherry on his prison sentence, oops I dropped the soap, cake.
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