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Finally, I grabbed her hard and pulled her into a deep, longing, needing kiss before a realization hit me.
“Shit,” I said, looking at my watch. “It’s six-thirty.”
“What’s six-thirty?” she asked.
“I may have left Leann home watching the kids. She charged me a hundred dollars for it too.”
Haley’s eyes got wide and she grabbed my hand. “Did you want to still have a home when you got back? And three children?”
The prospect was daunting but I laughed anyway, feeling so much relief that I felt like I could’ve flown all the way home.
“You don’t trust Leann?” I asked.
“No way,” she said, as we jumped on the next lift to go down the mountain. “She is way too smart for her own good.”
“She knows, you know. About us. I confirmed it anyway, but she definitely knew.”
Haley sighed and shook her head as we jogged towards the car. “The faster we get back the better.”
When we arrived back at the penthouse, the kids all rushed Haley with excitement, happy to see their mother figure back. Leann had kept everyone alive, though there was a significant amount of Cheeto dust covering the sofa now.
“I was worried you turned into a fart,” Ben said.
Haley looked at me in confusion.
“I’ll tell you later,” I whispered, laughing.
The kids continued to chatter away and Haley responded to every question about the last three days that they threw at her. She was a natural, and I could only hope that she would want to raise the baby with me.
There was almost nothing I wanted more. Especially now that I got my girl back.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Haley
“Ijust don’t know what to do,” I said to Anna as she swept up cobwebs in a corner of what would soon be her boutique. “He says he’s in it for real, but I can’t just ignore the way he talked to me and the things he said, can I? If we’re going to raise a baby together, I need to know that the person I’m doing this with really wants it, and I just don’t know for sure.”
She shook her head and raised the broom to take down some dust overhead. “You definitely shouldn’t discount his reaction. It matters in a decision this big. But…”
“But?” I asked as I put some duct tape on a mannequin that had lost one of its arms, trying to put the poor woman back together with next to nothing to hold things in place.
What a fucking metaphor.
“But… well, sometimes people say things they don’t mean when they’re scared.” Anna grabbed the dustpan and scooped the gray pile she’d accumulated into the blue piece of plastic before dumping it into a garbage bag.
“Maybe I shouldn’t be having a baby with him then, if he’s so scared,” I said, accidentally pulling off the arm that I was supposed to be fixing. “Damn it.”
“That’s your call,” Anna said as she went over to the dust-covered till and blew on it, sending a cloud of ashen particles into the air. She looked at it appraisingly, checking the buttons, which didn’t seem to work. “That needs to be replaced. And don’t worry about that mannequin. I can get a new one of those too.”
“No,” I said stubbornly. “I can do it.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Yes,” I said defiantly. “I do.”
“Okay…” she said slowly, as though she didn’t want to argue anymore, which I was glad about. “Anyway. What are you going to do about the baby, then?”
“Hell if I know,” I said as I finally got the duct tape to lay flat around the edge of the arm, which was now held in place, but it was at an unnatural angle, and I tore the arm off again and crumpled up the tape, throwing it into a pile. “I could keep the baby, and we could raise it together with the other kids. And as much as I’m hurt by the things he said, he really is a good father.”
