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I held it for her and let her enter first. “I guess it could also be a horror film. Maybe I’m a crazy stalker and I take over the role of your fiancé after I’ve killed your real fiancé.”
She gave me a look over her shoulder. “That’s not disturbing at all.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not really the stalker type.”
“I know. Your brother told me you don’t like to settle down.”
Now that annoyed me. “That wasn’t his place to tell you something like that.”
“I think he was feeling protective of me. Like you might destroy my ego or somethin
g.” Isla paused on the stairs. “God, I hate stairs. I can’t breathe.”
“I think your ego is fine.” I reached out and cupped her ass and gave her a gentle push. “Your fitness could use some work though.”
“Gee, thanks.”
That had been misinterpreted. “No! I meant your lung capacity. Trust me, your body is amazing. Absolutely amazing.” It was. I wanted to repeatedly lick every single inch of it. “And now all I can think about is stripping you naked and tasting your pussy.”
Right at that moment, Savannah opened the door. She clearly heard my words because her jaw dropped. Then she grinned and tried to hide her smile behind her hand.
Isla shot me a dirty look. “Seriously?”
I shrugged. “It’s true.”
“Well. Hello, you two!” Savannah said. “Should I be worried that instead of watching my baby, you’ll be making a baby?”
Awkward. “No, of course not. I was talking about later, Savannah. I swear to you we’ll watch your son appropriately. I enjoy hanging out with kids.”
“Just ignore him,” Isla said, as we entered the apartment. “He’s obsessed with me.”
Damn, she was good at turning things around on me. We could go back and forth, teasing and sparring, and she absolutely got my sense of humor. Isla always challenged me and that was so hot. “It’s true. Totally obsessed. I’m plotting her amnesia now so I can pretend to be her boyfriend.”
Savannah looked confused. “Okay,” she said, a little uncertainly.
“He’s kidding. He knows amnesia is the only way he could get me to marry him.”
It was a joke, of course. But her words were a little too serious for my liking. No, I didn’t want to marry her. But was the idea of marrying me really so damn horrible that she had to put it like that?
Maybe.
We entered the small apartment and Maddox, who I had met briefly at the baby shower dinner, was holding a little boy. “Hey, man, what’s up?” he said, holding his hand out for me. “Thanks for helping out Isla tonight. Sully shouldn’t be too much trouble. He’ll be asleep in half an hour to an hour.”
I shook his hand, trying to gauge how old this guy was. He looked easily ten years younger than me. “No problem. I was just telling Savannah I like kids.” I held my hands out. “How does he feel about strangers?”
The baby reached right out for me in total trust.
“He’s obviously pretty good about meeting new people,” Maddox said with a smile, running his hand over the baby’s hair. “He has a couple of babysitters and all of Savannah’s friends. He’s chill.”
I could hear the pride and love in Maddox’s voice.
My brother was going to be experiencing this in just a few months. It was crazy, in the best way possible. Months ago I had been talking to Michael about having kids and I had joked that eventually I was going to need to use a surrogate if I wanted a family. I had always wanted and assumed I would have children, but it felt so far in the future.
Seeing Maddox with Sully, seeing my brother on the flipside of that, in his forties starting a family, made me think a little harder about what I wanted and when. I didn’t want to blink and be having a baby for the first time at sixty-years-old.
I held Sully in my arms and made faces at him. He didn’t grin or cry. He just stared at me, solemnly, like a baby owl. His fingers wrapped around the fabric of my jacket and squeezed reflexively, close and open. “You’re definitely a chill dude,” I told him.
“He gets that from me,” Savannah said.
