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“Just a second,” she says.
When she comes out, the sight of her red-rimmed eyes and rosy nose breaks my heart. “Sofia—”
“I’m all right, Bren. That was a lot to take in. As sure as I was about this, I still sometimes wondered, and it’s good to know.”
“It is?” I ask, hopeful.
“Yeah. Oh my goodness! You have banana all over your shirt. Here, give her over. I’ll clean her up, and you go change.”
Sofia needs a bit of space to lick her wounds, and I do my best to give her what she needs. After I change, I go downstairs to tell Fritz the good news. The oaf just blinks at me like I’m not telling him something he didn’t already know. “Yeah? Duh.”
THIRTY-FIVE
Sofia
I’ve come to understand that Roger, the band’s manager, and their public relations team work fast. Within three days of getting the paternity test results, Karl and Adrian settle in their new temporary homes and the press release follows. Then we all have to hide out like hermits.
The first week is chaos. Even from the penthouse, I can see the mass of reporters and paparazzi casing the entrance. It isn’t until the second week, when every news outlet and blog delivered the same sensational story, that their numbers dwindle, and thank god, because Addy and I are going insane only staying inside. “We’re like princesses in a tower,” I joke to my daughter.
There is a change in Bren those few weeks too. The way he looks at me, with big wondrous eyes, or when I catch him daydreaming as he watches Addy play and giggle.
He’s been hell-bent on getting her to walk, and while she can stand and giggles when we applaud and encourage her, she has yet to take a step. If either of us tries to guide her forward, she throws her weight back to the floor until her diaper-clad rump lands with a soft thump.
But Bren keeps trying.
I chew on my piece of bacon as I stare at him in his sweats, slung low on his hips, as he runs around picking up after our daughter or redirecting her from crawling away to another room. He is shirtless, his expansive chest and rippling abdominals displaying playful wisps of black hair. I lick my lips and keep stuffing bacon and eggs into my mouth. I’ve gained four pounds since coming over to Bren’s, and I blame him.
We’ve been here over three weeks total, sleeping in the same bed, with no sex—not even after the paternity results came back.
And yet, somehow, we’re more intimate than we’ve ever been. He holds me all night, every night, as he asks me questions about Addy and me before he came back into the picture. He wants to know everything about her birth, her personality, what our life was like, and we talk for hours every night, mostly him asking questions and me answering them.
Then we just sleep, unless Addy keeps us up, which is rare anymore.
And sure, before he came back, I didn’t exactly have an active sex life—or one at all—but that night we were here in this apartment before he knew about his daughter, he’d opened up an insatiable beast that I’d forced into hibernation for nearly two years when he’d had his way with my body.
And the beast is famished now.
I need to get a babysitter but getting Bren to agree to let Audrey out of our sight would surely prove difficult, especially after I showed him those emails from his so-called fans.
“Are you okay?” Bren asks, looking up at me.
“What?” I ask through a mouth full of food.
“You’re forgetting to chew,Schatzi,” he says, and I blink at him. I can’t remember the last time he called me by his weird little endearment for me.
Then I try chewing and realize the last three bites I took are building in my cheek. I chew vigorously and gulp it down.
“Everything okay?” Bren asks.
“Yep. Watch her?” I don’t give him a chance to reply before I shoot up to run to the bathroom. I turn on the shower to cold and jump in, welcoming the shock to my skin and my system.
* * *
“Where’s Addy?”I ask when Bren finds me getting dressed in our room.
“Napping.”
As I towel my hair, Bren approaches me until his naked chest is flush against my back, and he can wrap his arms around my waist. “What’s wrong,Schatz?”
