I felt so calm I wondered if my blood pressure was dropping to a near death area. Her hands keep fisting then opening, little fingers spread and curled. She would pull away from the nipple of the bottle then nuzzle it before snatching it back. I laughed. “You aren’t kidding around, huh?”
Her eyes blinked slowly.
The last of the milk went and I set the bottle on the coffee table. Chance is a neat freak tyrant about the bottles but I left it there and walked her to the bedroom again, “Your Aunt thinks you should stay with us. You don’t want that, do you?”
She sucked her fist.
“You don’t want to live with two guys. Guys suck, let me tell you. I know; I’ve had plenty of experience.”
I sat on the bed and moved my guitar over.
“However, if you go I have a feeling it will destroy my lover’s heart,” I confessed to her. “The streets took most of it, Lamar the rest. I think I gave him back a fair bit, but…” I studied her. She has a way of making me stare. She started to cry and I rocked but nothing worked. She wasn’t wet and she just ate. I tried burping but she was stubborn.
In a last ditch effort, I made a curve in the duvet and laid her in it so she was snug and couldn’t roll. I fluffed it so she was propped up just a little then looked down at her. “You really have strong lungs, girly.” I slung my guitar over my lap, the one from Chance. “Kids like music right?” I started thrumming on the strings until a random beat started to form.
Her attention snagged on the sound and her eyes jumped all over my guitar. Her screaming started to dissipate and I smiled, “So you’re a groupie chick? Alright.” I started trying to come up with stupid lyrics.
You don’t need to cry.
You’re sweet as pie.
“Oh, that sucks,” I told her. “This isn’t how I got semi-famous. This is your Aunt’s job-.” When I stopped she fussed. “Okay, okay,” I started up again and she stopped.
Go back to sleep.
Dreams may you keep.
So let yourself fall to a dream full of stars.
Sunshine on water and rainbows in jars.
She went back to sucking the side of her fist but her eyes were dry.
You really are cute, it’s almost too much.
Wish you had a name, like Mary and such.
Hmm, let me think, you look good in pink.
Maybe Sue, Jane, Sally or Bow?
No.
None of those names fit but she really loves the sound of this guitar and these dumb lyrics.
So I’ll just keep singing till we land a name.
This has got to be, the lamest game.
I think you could say, I hit rock bottom…
Maybe your name should just be…
Fuck, what rhymes with ‘bottom’…
Autumn.
“Oh!” I raised my brows and looked her over. She was asleep. “Autumn,” I tried the name out loud. Her auburn hair reminded me of fall leaves and her birthday is in fall.
“Hey, Baby Autumn,” I said in a whisper.
The front door opened and closed and I leaned back to see Chance come in. He came over and kissed me on the mouth but it was less than usual. What I said a while back made the air between us strained.
He knelt by my side and checked her over like she might be different somehow.
“How did she do?” He asked in a whisper.
“I kept her alive, if that’s what you mean.”
He brushed her cheek with his fingers, “I need to pack her for tomorrow.” He stood up and went to work on it.
I followed him with my eyes while he laid out her sleepers and onsies on the bed. “I gave her a name,” I stated.
He looked surprised, “Why?”
“Well, she’s almost four weeks old.”
“She’s not ours to name.” He slammed a drawer he was using for her clothes.
I took off my glasses and pinched the bridge of my nose.
He kept working but I could feel his disappointment.
“Autumn,” I said. “Because of her birthday and her hair.”
He paused and laid eyes on her. “Yeah… I see it.”
I looked between them.
I’m starting to see a lot of things too.
Chapter Thirty-One
ADAM
My mother didn’t know who to attack first. The baby or Chance. She doted over the infant but as soon as the baby was asleep before the meal she was sitting with Chance while she rocked Autumn. Trixie sat with my Dad, the guys watched the game and Bianca worked with Jolee, in the kitchen.
Jolee still hasn’t even looked at the baby. She avoids her at all costs.
“How long is she going to be with you?” Mom asked us.
I was sitting on Chance’s other side with my arm along the back of his seat so I couldn’t see his face.
“Not sure,” was all he said.
Mom looked equally depressed, “Is Jolee putting her in the system?”
Chance stiffened. He knows what the system will mean for Autumn better than I do.
“Nobody knows yet, Mom.” I said.
We joined at the table again like last year for my mom’s feast. Her Thanksgiving meal seemed bigger than before. We all laughed and talked freely. Autumn bounced between sleeping in Chance’s arms or mine.
At the end of the night Chance and I retired to my old bedroom with the baby.
He sat with her in bed with his back to the headboard but she fell asleep so he sank lower until she was flat across his chest. With her tummy to his chest, she slumbered, lips parted. Her breath is sweet smelling all the time. I’m lying close to him so I can be at eye level with her.
In her sleep, she smiles. It’s like an impulse but it grabs at my heart and Chance’s. I like to think it’s also being content that brings it about. She maybe knows that she’s safe.
“She’s growing…” I said out loud, “her face has even more personality now.”
Chance ran his fingers through the silky feel of her hair, “She was only six pounds when she was born, I still think she’s pretty small.”
“I wonder what she’ll look like as she gets older. She resembles Trix to me.”
He hardened to my comment, “We won’t know, so why consider it?”
I sat up to see him better, “Trixie said she would make sure it was an open adoption. She wants to be able to see her niece. It’s killing her enough to know Jolee will do this. If Trixie is allowed to visit the baby we might be able to as well.”
His jaw tightened. “Whatever makes life easy, right?” He slung it like a weapon. Good. I need to see for sure that this is what he wants. That he wants this so badly that it could jeopardize us. I can’t make sound decisions if I don’t test the waters.
“We could have our own one day. Go through a surrogate. I’ve even heard stories about guy couples both giving sperm so they don’t know whose child it is. It’s just ‘their’ child.” I saw him get colder and colder the more I spoke, “What about health wise? Jolee wasn’t a good mother during maternity, Autumn could develop troubles-.”
He sneered, “And you think that would make a difference to me? I was born from all the same mistakes.”
I finally took the leap in asking the one thing we hadn’t talked about. The one possible game changer. While I bucked up to ask I watched him keep her body warm with the wide spread of his hands. Tatted knuckles that most would find dangerous or threatening were safeguarding an infant.
“What if she’s Jax’s?” I let it fly from my mouth. “The man who ruined your life? We don’t know but if we found that out would that change anything?”
His hands went still on her then continued their caress. “If she was his then he didn’t ruin my life. He redeemed it and it would make every ounce of misery he caused me worth it all.”
Wow. I hadn’t expected that. I gazed at Autumn and smiled more to myself. If only my partner knew how already taken I was by her. I fooled myself for four weeks but even now I can’t imagine o
ur apartment before there were baby things everywhere.
It would seem cold.
Empty.
Chance, would seem cold and empty.
Jolee and Jax have done nothing but complicate our lives but if Autumn was the price then wasn’t it all what he said? Wasn’t she worth it?
What if the only reason I dated Trix for ten years was because her twin was carrying around my future daughter?
Now, while I’m looking at the man I love and the little girl that’s completed us, I’m trying to figure out if we could survive the heartbreak of losing her. I almost feel suffocated and anxiety ridden.
“I’ll be back.” I kissed him but his heart wasn’t in it.
I went out the door and crept down the familiar halls of my old home. I knocked on the guest room where the twins were staying and entered to find Trixie sleeping in bed. No Jolee.
I closed the door and shuffled in a haze down the steps and into the kitchen where she sat at the table we all feasted at hours ago. She was drinking tea and looked about to fall asleep sitting up.
When she saw me she made herself look awake and gave a little wave, “Hi.”
I waved back before going to get a glass of water. My hands started shaking while it filled up. I took a deep steady breath and went to tap the back of a chair near hers. “Do you mind if I sit?” I asked.
She shook her head and straightened a little.
We sat there staring at nothing in the middle of the table for a good ten minutes. The house is dead silent except for a distant sound of my Dad snoring one level up.
With no warning at all Jolee started to cry. It wasn’t like the other times. When I knew inside they were fake tears or selfish meltdowns. There was a raw honesty in these tears that I felt in every bone. It started with a shaky breath and then a held back sound.
She held her head in one hand so her hair acted as a curtain to keep me out. Her shoulders shook and I fought emotion in my own throat.
My eyes filled enough that I had to blink to see.
Then I let the pride go, to reach over and hold her other hand.
She curled her fingers around mine and I stroked her knuckles with my thumb.
“It’s okay,” I tugged her a little but she leaned away, “It’s okay,” I repeated.
She slowly gave in and turned into me. I fit her in my side and closed my arm around her while she cried. I want so badly to judge her. I don’t understand her and I don’t think she’s a good person but I also don’t know her. I didn’t walk her road in life. She’s made bad decisions and done things I would never agree with but so has Chance. So did Liam.
“When I was in high school,” I began, “these guys…they beat me up for expressing how I felt about this boy I took to prom. I told myself for years that they were responsible for me being robotic. That it was their fault I couldn’t express myself. The truth is I’m terrified of being who I am. Not about being gay just about being myself period. Those boys might have been wrong but I don’t know what was going on in their life. They could’ve had homophobic parents, they could have been gay themselves… maybe they were hurting me because someone was hurting them?”
I rubbed her shoulder, “In the end, they were braver than I was- even they did a better job expressing themselves.” I meant it as a joke. She just clung tighter to my abdomen, “Listen, Jolee. I know we don’t stand on steady ground most days…” I forced my tongue to work, “But you need to know something.” All my other fears till now seem irrational. This is more frightening than anything I’ve ever done. “I need to be your daughter’s father.”
I couldn’t swallow fast enough to keep talking but I did, “She’s…I want her. I know you don’t want her but I do. I know it’s still a little new; two men raising a baby but she’s ours already. I don’t know what else I can say to-. Chance will never be the same if you take her and neither will I. Please, just…tell me if this can happen. Because I’m not telling him I want this if it means it’s not a reality. I can’t. So just…” A tear fell from my eye and with it, the last of robotic Adam. The heavy metal I keep myself wrapped up in evaporated and the weight of it wasn’t missed.
She pulled away from me and I readied myself.
Her eyes looked clear for the first time since I’d known her.
“Adam,” she whispered. “How much safer could Autumn ever be, than with the two men that protected her mother countless times?”
I needed time to process that this wasn’t a disappointment. I only imagined her saying no, as finding this as a way to hurt me back. She’s never even said the baby’s name.
She held my hand and said, “You loved, cared for and protected my sister for years. What’s there to prove, Adam? Why do you think I’m down here? Crying? Why do you think I won’t look at her? I’m afraid. I don’t know what to do that’s best for her. I know I’m not best but that’s all I know.”
Jolee took her hand back to hold herself. “The only reason I didn’t abort her is because some tiny part of me thought maybe I could do it. When she was born, I saw her for a split second and realized she deserved to live but not with me.”
Chance told me about her reaction in the OR but I don’t know if I imagined it like now.
“Chance has a past…” I warned.
“She’s your daughter… whether or not a judge lets us put it on paper.” She assured me.
She smiled at me and I took her hand back. I could sit and judge her for not being a mother yet, in the end, it was our child so it was never her role to play.
Chapter Thirty-Two
**CHANCE**
I’ve lost many things in life. My father, my mother in some ways, my first love and as for possessions… I’ve been below rock bottom. I’ve seen things and people ripped away in body or mind and where some might come out aimless I came out with a lust for success. Driven.
If I have something good landed in my path, I don’t let it go. The club, friends, money…
When I met Adam in the alley, I knew then in that very moment what he would be to me. I never told him that but by the time I walked him home I knew he was going to be mine and I wasn’t giving up or letting go.
Now it’s the same for Autumn. She’s mine. I feel her in my veins. I know she’s about to cry before a tear shines her eye. I feel her discomfort and her happiness. I’m her father and no government is telling me otherwise.
My fear is losing Adam. If he can’t understand this bond, I could stand to gain one-half of my heart to break off another.
While Adam was downstairs I set Autumn in her travel bed and watched her sleep. I want to protect her from all the harshness of this world. From men like myself and pain from the streets.
I want all her days, her memories, her dreams. I want to be the one she comes to for everything and I want that with Adam.
But I also know he’s fearful and any milestone we crossed has been due to diligence and time. This is asking a lot.
The door opened behind me and I sighed. I’m not really finding facing him easy these days.
“I’m going down for coffee,” I whispered so not to wake her. “Anyone up?”
He didn’t answer me and I dragged my eyes from Autumn to check over my shoulder. He was nowhere, until my eyes dropped.
I felt a drumming in my chest that threatened to kill me. I keep telling my brain not to jump to conclusions but it is.
I turned around fully to take in the sight of Adam on his knees. His eyes were heavy with words and I heard him swallow hard in his throat before I noticed the two bands he held between his long fingers.
Both rings are made of black Zirconium with a stripe offset of Rose Gold. I don’t think anything could fit the two of us more. I didn’t say anything because I’m not sure what he’s promising but it’s taking most my control to not touch him some way.
“I don’t…” he was struggling with emotion and words. “I didn’t plan this like I usually do, like everything else.” He admitted. “Waiting just feels wron
g. I want…” He’d been looking in my eyes but now it was too much and he focused on my lips, “I need you. That won’t change. It doesn’t matter if I do this now or in ten years, it’s real and it’s not going away.”
I took a minute to find my own words, “Then why now?”
His eyes burned with purpose, “Because doing this now, would be better for her.”
I might have always known it would be Adam but I fell deeper because of that word...her.
He licked his lips, “Because when we start this, it should be together, as a unit. A family. Because you both deserve the commitment that comes with these rings. We need each other and she needs us.” His mouth curved into a smile as a tear slipped down his cheek, “And because I love you more than life itself. I’m not afraid of this Chance, I’m afraid of you saying no. I’m afraid of losing my Chance…”
I rubbed my face and by time I could see again he was up and we were in one another’s arms. I kissed him with every ounce of love that could be collected in my body.
“I feel those things too,” I managed.
“Then fucking say yes,” he laughed.
I pulled him closer to me, “Yes,” I accepted one of the rings and glided it onto his finger. He did the same to me and we kissed again.
And again.
And again.
Until sun up.
TRIXIE
Adam and Chance got married in April, the week of Adam’s birthday. The ceremony was small, on the roof of Chance’s apartment and the club. They said it was because it was where they first really saw one another.
Bianca stood with Chance and I stood with Adam.
Autumn, my sweet niece was a plump six-month-old that was held by her new grandma, Adam’s mom. Jolee and the guys have another couple weeks of finalizing to do and by summer, Autumn will be, Autumn Ryder Urban.
Gabe Gilmore came with his whole family. His wife and son and his daughter and her mother. Jenzy and Chris came from California with their son and Moses and Chloe flew in with them.
The Significant Other (The Relationship Quo Series Book 4) Page 33