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There’s just no way I can take the baby from him. Not with Charlotte watching us from the bed with a smile on her face like this is the sweetest thing she’s ever seen. Not with Mason looking like a proud new dad who has his life together. Gabriel’s the pretty, charming one of my brothers, I’m the disheveled crime scene, and Mason’s the one who forced himself to look the part until hewasa multibillionaire with a thriving company and a beautiful wife and now ababywho I should never even look at, much lesshold, so—
“How’s the knee?” I blurt out instead of throwing up.
Mason glances across at me. He’s doing a remarkable job of hiding how furious he is. Or maybe it’s that another one of his dreams was to fill my spot in the family with people who were worthy of it, like Nate or his new baby son.
“It’s okay.” The weird, gentle voice does not make me feel any better. He shouldn’t be spending any energy on answering my dumbass questions. Wait, that’s not what he’s doing—he’s just talking that way because there’s a baby in the room.
“He’s bullshitting you,” Gabriel says from somewhere to my left, out of sight. “After the first time he fell over, the nurses had to watch him, too.”
Remy comes to stand by Mason. She pats his shoulder and looks down at the baby. “I thought we said we were all going to forget about that.”
“So much for loyalty,” Mason grumbles, but he doesn’t seem annoyed.
“You fell over?” I ask him. “Did they at least do an X-ray?”
“I didn’t break anything, for fuck’s sake,” he answers, in that same soft tone. “It just gave out at a bad time.”
“It’s a good thing I was here,” Gabriel sings. “Who else would’ve held you up so you could properly support your wife?”
“Excuse me,” Remy laughs. “I was also here. So was Elise. She went to get lunch,” my sister tells me. “Nate and Lydia are with her.”
They wereallhere, then. Everyone but me.
That’s—
That’s for the best. It only hurts because everything hurts.
“Shut up, all of you.” Mason shifts on the ottoman until our knees are touching. “Hold your arms out. You have to support his neck.”
“It’s really not—” Mason ignores me completely and leans forward. I have no choice but to make a circle with my arms and accept the blankets. Thebaby. “Jesus. Okay.”
Mason’s hands arrange the tiniest human being I have ever seen in my arms. I’ve never held a baby before, but it’s like some ancient knowledge snaps into place. There’s a certain spot that his head should go in the crook of my elbow, with one arm sort of under his body and the other one wrapped around him. The only right thing to do is hold him close to my body. I can’t have him dangling out in the middle of nowhere.
He’s warm. I didn’t expect him to be warm, for some reason. I also didn’t expect him to stretch out his tiny body against the blankets he’s wrapped in. My nephew makes a tiny rasping noise. I have no idea what that means. Is he about to lose his shit?
I hold my breath and lean back a little bit, in case—
I don’t know. I’m all ready for Mason to take him back and sayfuck, that was a close call, you almost ruined his life!and for all of my siblings to have a good laugh about how relieved they are and for Charlotte to saywell, that was all very funny, you can head out now, Jameson.
A few beats go by.
None of that stuff happens.
The baby settles, his face turned toward my bicep. He opens his eyes partway and makes another soft, rasping sound.
“No, this is it.” The words come out of my mouth like somebody else put them there. “This is the place you were looking for.”
He closes his eyes with a tiny baby sigh.
It’s silent in the room. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. It doesn’t matter, I guess, because I end up staring down at my brother’s baby, just…looking.
He has wispy dark hair and round cheeks and a chin I recognize. It’s a new, perfect face with nothing but possibility out ahead of him. I know what kinds of terrible things can happen to a person. I know what kind of person those things made me into. But for right now, in this sunny, luxurious hospital room, I could almost believe that none of it will happen to him.
“He looks like you, but I can see Sunshine in there, too.” I glance up at Mason to see if this is the appropriate thing to say. At his side, Remy’s got her phone out. She must’ve been taking pictures. I don’t know if I like that, but it’s hard to be mad when I’m holding a baby. It’s even harder to be mad when the light catches Mason’s eyes. They’re filled with tears. “Did you want him to look like somebody else?”
Mason laughs. “No. Are you ready to know what his name is?”
My heart speeds again. “Yeah? I think it’d be awkward to call himbabyfor the rest of his life.”
