Page 194 of Buy Back My Love

He wiped at his face and looked at me. “You did it, baby.”

That made me cry even harder.

After we’d had a few minutes with Myles on my chest, the nurse looked over at Van and held up the scissors. “Dad, you wanna cut the cord?”

Van hesitated. “I’m not his daddy.”

“He his goddaddy,” I said, looking at him. “But he can cut it.”

Van looked at me. “You sure?”

“Yes. Go.”

The nurse handed him the scissors, and Mama kept recording while Myles’s goddaddy cut his cord.

A little while later, they took Myles long enough to clean him up, check him over, and do whatever else they needed to do before bringing him right back to me. I had been scared to picture this moment for months, holding my baby after everything was over and knowing he was okay. But Myles was here. He was alive, he was okay, and thank God, he was mine to take home.

Later, when they brought me the paperwork and asked what last name I was giving him, I didn’t hesitate.

“Davis.”

JB knew where I was. He knew the date and the time, and he never came. So Myles got my last name.

As soon as I was healed enough to deal with it, I was getting a lawyer too. I knew being pissed at JB didn’t mean I could just decide I had full custody. That wasn’t how it worked. I wanted everything done right and put on paper. Custody, visitation, child support, all of it.

JB had played with me long enough. He wasn’t getting to play about my son.

By the next morning, my hospital room looked like a baby boutique had exploded in it.

Apparently, Anika had gone home, slept for all of seventeen minutes, then woke up and decided her nephew needed a whole new wardrobe before breakfast. She stood beside his bassinet fixing his little outfit while I watched from the bed.

“He don’t need shoes,” I told her.

Anika didn’t even look at me. “They’re not shoes. They’re booties.”

“They look like shoes.”

“He got pictures today.”

“He twelve hours old. Where the hell he going?”

She finally looked at me. “To take pictures, Lee. That’s why he has on the outfit.”

Mama sat by the window drinking coffee and minding everybody’s business without technically participating.

I looked at her for backup. “Mama.”

She took another sip. “Leave that girl alone.”

I should’ve known better than to ask that traitor for backup.

The newborn photographer came by later, and I had to admit Anika had been right. Not to her face. I wasn’t doing all that.

But Myles looked so damn cute wrapped up in his little blankets that I almost couldn’t stand it. They took pictures of his hands, his feet, his little face, then got some of me holding him.

Of course I cried again. Apparently crying was just part of my personality now.

By that afternoon, everybody had cleared out for a while and it was just me and Myles. Then Van walked through the door carrying a Jersey Mike’s bag in one hand and a Red Bull in the other.