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Jesus.
I bent at the waist and braced my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath.
I had a kid. We had a kid. A two-year-old kid. What the fuck did you even do with a two-year-old kid? My experience with them was pretty fucking limited. We always had kids of all ages around the club, but beyond chasing them with a squirt gun and making sure they didn’t run with anything sharp, I barely had anything to do with them. He wasn’t even old enough to play with a squirt gun, was he? I tried to remember when Myla was two, but it was all kind of a blur. I’d been too focused on chasing Emilia to spend much time with my baby sister.
How the fuck was I supposed to be someone’s father? And where the hell had they come from? I didn’t even know where they fucking lived.
I walked toward Emilia’s car and looked inside. It was packed from floorboard to roof with stuff. Did they live in her car? Is that why she’d come back? Was she homeless?
“You alright?” my dad asked, coming out onto the front porch.
“I’m fine.”
Dad chuckled. “No you’re not.”
I turned to face him. “What the fuck is even going on right now?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he replied, pulling a joint out of his shirt pocket. “Looks like you have a son.”
“Nice to know, right?” I asked, shaking my head.
“He’s pretty cute. Looks like you.”
“Don’t think I’ll be needing a DNA test,” I said sarcastically. The kid was a mini version of me. The only similarities I saw to Emilia were his hands and his smile. She had a great fucking smile, and now he did too.
“She tell you why she’s here?” he asked curiously as he sat down on the steps. “Why now?”
“Nope,” I said, sitting down next to him. “Just that they werefinallyhere.”
“Finally, huh?”
“That’s what she said.”
Dad made a noise in his throat. “You may want to take a minute, bud,” he said after a few moments. “Because that girl in there is afraid. She’s hidin’ it well, but she’s definitely scared outta her mind.”
“And?”
“She came to you,” he said, looking over at me. “Knowin’ that you were gonna be pissed. Knowin’ that we were gonna be pissed, she still came here.”
“I have a two-year-old son I just met,” I snapped. “No wonder she’s fuckin’ scared.”
“Hear her out,” he said, taking a puff of his joint. “That’s all I’m sayin’.”
“I will.” I sighed.
I’d woken up late that morning, and the only thing I’d thought I was going to have to deal with was my dad bitching at me. Instead, I was hiding out on my parents’ porch while the entire earth shifted around me.
“She named himRhett,” I muttered, scrubbing my hands over my face.
Dad’s laughter filled the front yard.
Chapter 3
Emilia
The day wentby so quickly that I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. It was amazing watching Rhett surrounded by a big loud family for the first time. His experience up until that point had just been my parents and me. We loved him, but it just wasn’t the same. Everyone in Michael’s family wanted his attention, and he soaked it up like a sponge. Even Otto seemed to have warmed up a little, if not toward me, then definitely toward his nephew.
By the time he’d woken up from his nap, he’d been the sunny bright kid that I knew, his owies practically forgotten. I watched as my son hopped around, flitting from person to person with a lump in my throat. The house was loud and fun, and he was on cloud nine. After the year we’d had, it made me want to weep.
