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Scooping the seven-month-old up in my arms, she started babbling and blowing bubbles. Every single time I looked at her I saw my sister-in-law.
“Hawy! Hawy!”
“Ready to give your sister kisses?” I asked.
I bent the sleepy little girl down toward Liam, and he pressed a kiss right against her cheek. The sight melted my heart ten times over, and I knew the question that was coming.
“Sleep with Hawy?” Liam asked.
“No, no. Hadley needs her own bed to sleep in. But in the morning after breakfast, we’ll all pile in front of the fireplace. How does that sound?” I asked.
“Fire! Yeah!” Liam exclaimed. “Alphabet song?”
“Let me put Hadley to sleep—”
“Alphabet song!”
Tears were rising in Liam’s eyes, and the last thing I wanted to do was rile him up. Hadley was nestling into my chest and yawning against my shirt. I knew I needed to get her down to bed before she got too tired, or I’d really be in for a ride. Hadley was a wonderful little baby until she became overtired, and then she was hell on wheels.
She was just like her father in that sense. And just like that, the thought of my brother threw me back to that night. The police came knocking down my damn door with their pitiful glances and urgent messages, and I’d been too high on painkillers to even register what the fuck they were saying.
“Alphabet! Alphabet! Alphabet!”
“Okay. But just once,” I said.
“A, B, C, D, E, F, G… H, I, J, K—”
“‘Elenemo pee’!”
“Q, R, S, T, U, V—”
“‘Double doo lex, I, and bees’!”
“Now I know my ABC’s, next time won’t you sing with me?”
Liam clapped his hands while I cradled Hadley close to my chest. I pressed a kiss to his forehead as he hunkered down underneath his blanket, then I started out of his room and down the hallway.
The night my brother and sister-in-law died in that damn car accident had changed my world forever. It not only dropped two kids in my lap, but it also shined a light onto the sad reality of my addiction. In high school, I injured my back playing football. My fucking tackles didn’t know what the hell they were doing, and I got sacked.
But when the guy from the other team hit me, he twisted my torso a little too much.
I came down on the side of my back and hit a damn rock, because the school apparently didn’t check for shit like that. I cracked ribs and ripped muscle to the point that it took three damn surgeries before I was even remotely back to normal.
Back then, though, I was resilient. Back then, I prided myself on not having to take painkillers. The girls in my high school fucking ate up my story, and I slayed more pussy than I eve
r had up to that point. And they were all on top so they wouldn’t ‘hurt me.’ It was the life.
“Okay, Hadley. It’s time for bed.”
I slipped the tiny girl into her crib before I placed a kiss on her forehead. She was sleeping soundly, with her eyes closed and her lips slightly parted. While she was awake, she looked just like my sister-in-law, but asleep, she was a spitting image of my brother. A stab of pain hit me square in the chest, and for a second, it hurt to breathe.
“Uncle Evan?”
Whipping my head up, I looked over at the doorframe of Hadley’s room. The little boy I’d just bedded down was rubbing his eyes and dragging a blanket behind him. I tucked Hadley in before I left the room, then I shut the door behind me before I turned my sights back to him.
“Liam, what are you doing up?”
“Water?” he asked.
