Chapter 12
TWELVE
This was going to be the longest meeting of my life, and I kept thinking about the millions of other places I’d rather be than here, but I wasn’t about to let Drew tank my psych grade, so here I was.
I knocked on the front door of the hockey house and waited.
When no one answered after a few seconds, I tried again, louder this time. Still nothing.
The party last night had been loud enough that I’d heard it from my bedroom next door until well past two in the morning, so I wasn’t surprised they were all probably dead to the world. But it was already eleven. Surely he could function on less than nine hours of sleep.
I tried the door handle and found it unlocked. Typical.
“Hello?” I called out, stepping into the entryway. The house smelled like stale beer, and red cups were scattered everywhere. Did it always look like this after one of their parties?
Heavy footsteps came down the stairs, and Liam appeared, looking like he’d been hit by a truck.
His dark brown hair was sticking up in every direction, and there were dark circles under his eyes that made him look older than his twenty years.
He was wearing a Clark Fork Hockey T-shirt that fit snug across his pecs and biceps.
“If you did this as some sick joke, it’s not funny,” he said without preamble, his slight Irish accent thicker than usual and his voice rough with exhaustion.
I blinked at him. “Did what?”
He stared at me for a long moment, studying my face like he was trying to read my mind. I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. What kind of joke could I have possibly played that would have Liam looking at me like I’d committed a felony?
Before he could explain, the sound of a baby crying echoed from somewhere deeper in the house.
I froze. “Was that—”
“Drew?” Liam called out, not taking his eyes off me. “She’s here.”
Was I hallucinating or was that a baby? What the hell was a baby doing in the hockey house?
I heard Drew’s voice, muffled but clearly trying to shush someone—or something. The crying continued, high-pitched, distressed, and impossible to ignore.
Holy shit, it was a baby.
Who the hell would let Drew Dumontier babysit their kid?
Without thinking, I walked past Liam toward the back of the house, following the sound.
And then stopped dead in my tracks when I reached the kitchen and found Drew.
His sandy-brown hair was a complete mess, sticking up at odd angles like he’d been running his hands through it all night.
He looked like he hadn’t slept in days, with the same exhausted expression Liam was sporting, but amplified.
There were deep shadows under his eyes, and his usual cocky posture was nowhere to be found.
But what really caught my attention—what made my brain struggle to process what I was seeing—was the tiny baby in his arms.
He was bouncing her gently, making soft shushing sounds while patting her back with more care than I’d ever seen him show for anything.
The baby was so small she looked almost fragile, wearing a pink onesie with tiny elephants and a matching pink headband that was comically large for her head.
Her little fists were waving in the air as she cried, her face brighter than her headband, and Drew looked like he was barely holding it together.
This was not the Drew Dumontier I knew. The Drew I knew was arrogant and careless and treated everything like a joke. The guy in front of me looked lost and overwhelmed and surprisingly gentle with a crying infant in his arms.
“Did you do this, Tinsley?” he asked without looking up, his voice rough with exhaustion and a subtle hint of desperation.
The accusation snapped me out of my shocked observation. “I think you would’ve noticed if I had a baby, Andy. Even you aren’t that dense.”
His shoulders sagged, but he didn’t sit down. He kept patting the baby’s back, swaying slightly as he tried to quiet her cries.
He finally met my gaze, and the vulnerability in his expression nearly made me step forward.
I’d never seen anyone more in need of a hug as him in this moment.
But I’d never hugged Drew, and I wasn’t about to start now, even if he was tugging on my heartstrings.
The more I looked at him, the more I realized his expression wasn’t just filled with exhaustion; he looked genuinely scared.
That’s when it hit me.
“Wait…” I said slowly, pieces clicking into place in my mind. “Is that…your kid?”
“According to the note left with her,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Left with her?”
Drew’s jaw tightened. “She wasn’t quite abandoned on the doorstep, which I guess is a miracle since it was fucking freezing last night, but she was left in my room with a note saying she’s my daughter.”
Holy shit.
I felt like the ground had shifted beneath my feet. Drew Dumontier—the guy who went through girls like other people went through socks, who treated relationships like they were tissues you used once and then discarded—was standing in front of me holding what was apparently his child.
This day could not get any weirder.
“When?” I managed to ask.
“I found her last night. After the party. Just sitting in my room in a tiny baby carrier.” He shifted the baby to his other arm, and she settled slightly, her cries turning to soft whimpers. “Someone left her while I was downstairs.”
I stared at him, watching the way he automatically adjusted his hold when the baby shifted, the way he kept that gentle bouncing motion going even while talking to me.
There was something almost heartbreaking about how carefully he was holding her, like she was made of glass and he was terrified of breaking her.
“What’s her name?” I heard myself ask.
“Aurora.” The way he said it was soft, almost reverent. “The note said her name is Aurora.”
Aurora. It was a beautiful name.
“How old is she?”
“Six weeks.” Drew’s voice cracked slightly on the words. “She’s six weeks old, and I had no idea she existed until eleven hours ago.”
“Where’s her mom?” A part of me wanted to ask who her mom was, but the more important question was where. Why would she just abandon her baby?
He shook his head, staring down at his daughter. “I don’t know.”
I watched Drew continue to sway and bounce, his exhaustion obvious in every line of his body, and tried to wrap my head around what I was seeing.
Drew Dumontier. With a baby. His baby.
It felt like I’d walked into some alternate reality where nothing made sense. This was the same guy who’d tried to plastic wrap my car. The same guy who’d sabotaged my practice time and used my freckles as an insult.
And now he was standing here holding a six-week-old infant like his entire world had just been rocked off its axis.
Because apparently, it had.