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I blinked at my brother and gestured to him and Leo. “Youarethe cops.”
Silence, as I watched Reid and Leo side-eye each other, probably weighing up what to say next.
“I think Reid means therealcops,” Arlo deadpanned.
I couldn’t help my snort of laughter, which made Charlie jump. Reid gave Arlo the finger, which was even funnier, but then, I had to yank myself back to what was happening.
“There’s no cops, nothing to put this on the radar, okay? You read that I have legal guardianship of Charlie Stone?—”
“Is Stone your brother’s last name?” Leo asked.
“I guess,” I began, realizing I’d not even contemplated whether Stone was my real last name. Jaxon Stone sounded wrong in my head when I’d been Jaxon Byrne forever. “Anyway, the papers are in my office if you want to see them. We need to look at this as if I’m babysitting.”
“‘Babysitting’ isn’t some asshole brother dumping a baby on you,” Reid snapped, and even though he wasn’t trying to hurt me, I saw red.
“I knew you’d come in like this, you know; if I’d had my way, I wouldn’t have told any of you.”
The wind left my sails when Reid swallowed and looked as if I’d shoved him into a wall. And when Leo pressed a hand to his chest, I felt shit for saying anything. The Byrnes took family very seriously, and I’d hurt my brothers.
“Sorry,” I slumped to the nearest stool.
Leo elbowed Reid, who frowned, but then nodded at me. “Sorry,” he said. Then, he ruined everything. “But he did abandon?—”
“I get it,” Leo said.
Reid was working up a head of steam, but thankfully, a knock on the door derailed everything. A full-on Byrne sibling row could be the worst kind. Reid up in my face, me shouting back, Leo doing his usual mediation, and all in front of the baby and Arlo.
“I’ll get it,” Arlo offered when no one else moved, and when he came back in, it was with Leo’s best friend Sean in tow.
“Leo said something was wrong?” I heard him say as they walked toward the kitchen. And then, he stopped in the doorway.
“That’s a baby,” Sean said, and pointed at Charlie in my arms.
“You can have my ten points,” Reid murmured.
To me that was hilarious, and I was manic. I snorted another laugh. Everyone stared at me as if I were losing my mind, which I probably was.
“Charlie is my nephew,” I began.
Reid huffed. “Jax’s idiot twin abandoned his freaking baby on Jax’s porch.”
“He did what now?” Sean did a double take at Leo. “His twin? What? You found your twin? You found Zach?”
I had this strong impulse to defend my brother. “He didn’t abandon him?—”
“But what if you weren’t coming home?” Reid pointed out in full-on cop mode. “Think about the consequences if you were away? What if you hadn’t come home—how long would Charlie have been sitting outside?”
“Reid has a point,” Leo said with reluctance.
“Exactly,” Reid continued, buoyed by Leo’s cautious support of the point he was making. “Anything could have happened. He could?—”
“There was a man watching him, okay!” Arlo raised his voice to stop Reid, snap Leo back to being rational, and to get them all to listen. All of which caused Charlie to flex in my hold at the noise.
“Sorry, Charlie,” I apologized in the best baby-whisperer voice I could manage.
“What man?” Reid asked. “It’s child abandonment. I’m sorry, Jax, but whatever it says in the letter, your brother can’t just leave his son to your care, say there’s danger, and then run, without there being concern. What if he’s some kind of criminal?”
“Zach is not a criminal,” I said, loyal to the idea of what my twin should be, if he was anything like me, even though I didn’t know if that was true at all.
