AllFreeNovel
Share Us
ake care of Asia. Be a father to her. She deserves one of her parents. You’ll be a good Daddy if you try.
“I wish I believed that,” I said out loud.
“What don’t you believe?” Jenny asked me.
I turned on the kitchen chair and there she was holding Asia. Jenny walked across the floor and sat beside me. Then she handed Asia to me. I still felt awkward as I did that night in the hospital holding my daughter.
I looked at the child in my arms, wondering at the thought that I was responsible for her being here. She was mine. My daughter. My heart beat hard in my chest. I loved her though. How could I not?
She was tiny and precious. She was innocent in this mess that Jasmine and I had created, and Asia needed me, her daddy. Damn that sounded strange to me but good at the same time.
“She’s mine,” I whispered.
Jenny chuckled at me.
“She’s the image of you, Benjamin. You can’t deny that. So, what are you going to do about her?” She asked me.
I cleared my throat. I adjusted the tiny baby in my arms holding her closer, just a little bit tighter. “Jen, you know I don’t know a damn thing about babies.”
Jenny chewed on her lower lip like she always did when she was nervous, and I knew Mom had given them strict orders. I was taking my daughter home with me. I looked at Jenny then I looked at Asia. “I’m taking her home, aren’t I?”
Jenny nodded. “You can call us if you need us,” she offered with encouragement.
“In the middle of the night?” I asked.
She laid her hand on my thigh. “Ben even in the middle of the night. Considering your nephew’s sleeping patterns. Me or Elijah one will most likely be awake.”
“How does she sleep?” I asked wondering how I was going to work and care for a baby who got up in the night. Hell, who was going to watch her while I worked?
Jen reached over and touched Asia. The baby stirred in my arms. Then Jenny looked up at me. “She’s an angel, Ben. You’ll do fine.”
So, I left with my daughter in a car seat that I wasn’t sure how to get buckled in. Mom told me she would show me at the trailer. I had the formula and bottles that Jasmine had been using. Blankets and clothes. The crib that Elijah and I loaded into the back of the truck. Now I knew why we took Seth’s truck. I needed to get mine from Ike’s before the end of the day.
Elijah clapped me on the back. “You’ll be fine.”
“You have Jenny,” I argued, glaring at him.
“You have Mom, Jenny and Danni all at the touch of your fingers on speed dial,” he informed me. “Just set them up.”
I nodded. “I’m still terrified.”
“So was I when we brought Jeremiah home.”
“He still hasn’t kept him by himself,” Jenny informed me, not letting my brother get away with letting me think he was doing great with my nephew.
“Nope, I haven’t. Still afraid to,” Elijah admitted to me.
“But you’re sending this helpless child home with me where I live with another idiot who knows nothing about babies.”
My mother climbed behind the wheel of Seth’s truck. She had the keys, so I guess she wasn’t giving me a choice. Rachel started up the truck. “Get in, Ben,” she hollered at me.
I rolled my eyes at my brother then climbed into the truck. I grumbled about knowing nothing about children especially babies. I at least had a few years, experience with Justin but he was over two. He could tell me if something hurt. I had kept him a time or two when Layla was desperate.
If Asia was two I might be able to handle this, but she couldn’t talk and tell me what was wrong.
I slammed the door shut which startled Asia in the back seat causing her to whimper. Mom glanced at me with such a look of disdain that I withered. A grown man, all of twenty-eight cowered beneath his mother’s disgruntled stare like a small boy. Rachel might be tiny, but she was terrifying.
“Sorry,” I apologized.
