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Abbie nodded, but her expression was sympathetic. “Afraid so.”
I set the empty bottle on the coffee table and shifted Seb until he was a little more upright. A loud, wet burp slipped out of him, and I swear the little guy looked proud. “Nice work, buddy,” I congratulated him, and Abbie chuckled.
I stood and glanced at the door, dreading everything that waited for me on the other side. The small-town gossip. The whispered judgements. Admitting to the people I loved that I’d fucked up and gotten a stranger pregnant. Pretending I didn’t hear it when people said I wouldn’t be able to raise a child, that I wouldn’twantto do it—and there’d be plenty of arseholes who believed just that. An hour ago, I was one of them.
“Half the Bay will know about him before we reach the car,” I said.
Abbie’s plump mouth pressed into a thin line. She knew what was coming as well as I did. “Probably.”
I stuck out my hand, and Abbie handed me a plastic mat, a surprised curve to one eyebrow.Yes, Ellison. I’m going to change this kid’s dirty nappy. That’s what responsible dads do.
There was something else responsible dads did, and that was own up to the choices they made that led to them becoming parents in the first place.
I arranged the mat on the rug and knelt to deposit Seb in the middle of it. He tried to wriggle away the second his back hit the floor.
“Not so fast, little man.” I flipped him over and pressed an open palm to his stomach, and he blew a wet raspberry in reply.
It was frustrating work getting Seb undressed. Abbie echoed my sigh when we both saw the nappy was only wet, but she didn’t offer to help, and I didn’t ask. I could feel her watching me, and we both knew I had no idea what I was doing, but I was going to change this kid without asking for help. Then, I was going to face the music.
“Before we go shopping,” I said, fumbling at the sticky tabs on the clean nappy before finally getting the thing secured around Seb’s middle, “we need to make a stop.”
“Okay. And I think I know where.”
I was quietly confident she’d be cool with it—eventually—but the gossip in this town moved faster than cold beer on a hot Friday night, and I couldn’t let my mother find out she had a grandson from anyone but me.
7
Will
I left Abbie withthe baby so I could move my car from the street outside to the service lane that ran behind the building. In an operation any criminal would be proud of, I texted her when the coast was clear, and she came through the back door with her long blonde waves tucked into one of my old baseball caps and dark glasses on her nose. She held Seb’s bag over one shoulder and the carrier in the other hand, a light cover draped over it, and slid it straight into the back seat before climbing in after it and slamming the door.
I smirked at her in the rear-vision mirror. “This isn’t a kidnapping, Ellison.”
“Hey, smart arse,” she retorted. “You want to tell your mother about Seb on your own?”
I grinned and glanced down at the skin-tight yoga gear she wore. Abbie had always had a body that made me hard, but in the years since she’d become a yoga instructor and adopted Lycra as her official uniform, I’d been in and out of blue ball hell.Her long muscles had grown leaner and tighter, her arse was hard enough to break rocks, and her tits were always on show. Barely a handful, I estimated, and just enough.
Maybe I should have felt bad thinking of her in that way, but I didn’t. Abbie knew she was gorgeous, and it’s not like she didn’t get an eyeful of me every chance she got.
“Have I told you yet how hot you look today?”
“You should have seen me just after the pipe burst,” she muttered, then her nose scrunched up. “And don’t change the subject.”
I winked, then turned my head to check on Seb. “We need to belt the carrier in, right?”
“Right.” Abbie scrunched her nose as she ran her hands over the plastic frame, looking for instructions or an obvious way to secure the seat. “I’ve got no idea how. Can you Google it?”
It took five minutes to locate a how-to guide on the internet, then another fifteen to get everything secured properly. Seb didn’t object to the jostling, and he might have even liked it because he eventually fell asleep.
“Parenting isn’t really so hard, is it?” Abbie said once Seb was settled in. She slouched in her seat and took a swallow from the water bottle she’d tucked into Seb’s tote bag.
I gave her an unimpressed look from where I hunched awkwardly into the car, checking the straps on Seb one last time before wiping a line of perspiration from my brow. But Abbie wasn’t all wrong. Seb was asleep, wasn’t he? His stomach was full. His pants were clean. Two hours into this gig, and I hadn’t screwed it up yet.
Abbie chuckled at my pointed look. “You want me to ride in the back with him, just in case he needs something?”
I blinked in surprise. “Uh, yeah. Thanks.” I closed the door gently and returned to the driver’s seat, a little surprised about the relief I felt knowing Seb wouldn’t be in the back seat alone.
I turned on the engine and rolled out of the service lane, my hands tighter than usual on the wheel.
