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“Well, you make sure he doesn’t fall. Seriously, I just have to pee,” she said, shaking her head as she turned and rushed off.
Alone, I kept my hand pinned to the kid’s back, but couldn’t figure out if it was too hard or too soft. He was just so fucking small. Fragile.
“Alright. Stop panicking. I’m coming,” Nyx said, moving toward me, but not immediately taking the kid back. Instead, she stopped to take a couple sips of her coffee while she looked down at us. “See? It’s not so bad,” she said. “I was a big baby about holding him the first time too. In my defense, he was even smaller then.”
“Hadn’t you held a baby before?”
“What? Because I’m a woman?” she asked, shaking her head at me. “Believe it or not, the world doesn’t just start shoving babies at us when we go through puberty.”
“Shit. What’s the matter with him?” I asked when his little knees started to pull up and his body wiggled as he let out a grumbling sound.
“We’ve established that I’m not the baby expert here,” she told me. “I just hold him while he sleeps,” she added as the freight elevator door closed, then footsteps made their way toward us. “Oh.Oh,” Nyx said, her nose wrinkling up as her grossed out face lifted to mine.
That’s when I smelled it too.
“The fuck do we do?” I hissed at her.
But she was already getting to her feet and reaching for the baby as Detroit moved into the kitchen.
“Hey, buddy. Look! It’s Uncle Detroit!” Nyx said in an exaggeratedly cheery voice that immediately had Detroit looking suspicious.
“You know, Nyx, you could learn to change a diaper,” Detroit said as he took the baby, cradling him in the crook of one arm in a way I was relatively sure I would never feel comfortable doing. And Detroit was an even bigger and stronger man than I was.
“I could,” Nyx agreed. “But why would I want to do that?” she asked, shooting him a wicked little smile before backing away to fetch her coffee once again.
“Come on, little man,” Detroit said, looking down at the fussing baby. “Let’s get you cleaned up and to your mama for some breakfast.”
“That man was born to be a dad,” Nyx decided as she watched him leave. “He cooks. He cleans. He changes diapers.”
I had to admit that I agreed.
Sway, Riff, and Raff struggled in the same way I did with the kid. But they each took turns trying to get some smiles out of him and shit like that.
But Detroit and Coach had really taken to the kid.
Coach claimed that because he had a big extended family, he’d been holding and changing and feeding babies since he was a kid himself.
But Detroit couldn’t say that. He had one brother, the cop, and that was it. For obvious reasons, they weren’t on speaking terms. So he really, from what I could tell, had no prior experience with kids. He’d just taken to being an uncle much more easily than the rest of us.
“I’m surprised any of you guys even get a chance to spend any time with him. It seems like one of the Murphy brothers is always over here.”
That wasn’t a lie.
Not a day went by when one of them wasn’t around to see their nephew.
“Yeah, they’re always around. Cillian especially.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“Why?”
“Because the man has baby fever.”
“Men get baby fever?” I asked.
“If you saw the way he interacted with babies and kids, you would see how much he wants to be a dad. Unfortunately, he just hasn’t found the mom yet. There you are!” she said, making me turn to find Morgaine coming into the common area in a lightweight silk robe.
Her flushed cheeks and mussed-up hair told me she hadn’t been sleeping in.
