Chapter 22
Ethan
“And that’s how you hold a fucking baby!” Jordan announces, pointing at me with his cue stick.
Two-week-old Lily Rose Bennett curls up on my chest while I lay back in one of the reclining chairs in the game room at Xavier’s Upper West Side penthouse.
Xavier and Brooke’s baby girl arrived exactly two weeks ago, and with the guys whining about not having seen the baby due to the girls hogging her, we decided to make a gentlemen’s night of it.
Every so often, we pull all-nighters in one of Xavier’s nightclubs, so we thought we might as well do it here and give Brooke a good night's rest. We figured it wouldn't be much different, except for no booze, no girls, and soft baby music.
“Hey, hey, language, jackass!” Xavier barks, and Lily Rose stirs and fusses while I coo gently to her.
“Great, wake her up, why don’t you, Daddy?” Wyatt, another one of the guys in attendance tonight replies.
“She’s just so used to my voice that she perks up when she hears it,” Xavier retorts.
“I don’t think that’s the case, my friend,” Jordan says.
“You’d think with your twins on the way that you’d shut up and take notes,” Xavier points out. Jordan is sitting at the edge of the pool table nursing a can of Coke. Beyond making funny faces at Lily Rose and patting her back while someone else carries her, he hasn't made an attempt to hold the newborn.
“I’m a natural,” argues Jordan.
“Yeah, right,” I scoff. I know he’s freaking out at how tiny she is, and I feel sorry for him.Before the night is over I'm sure he'll be fully cured of those nerves.
Ryan hasn’t put himself forward, either, though he's been happily fetching toys and wipes and anything else I've needed him to. He scrolls on his phone and in moments 'Baby Shark' comes back on. Brooke suggested we play classical music to help Lily Rose settle but we had to draw the line somewhere. Even Xavier backed us on that.
“We’re all taking turns, you know,” I say, having watched Ryan act like a golden retriever all night.
“We know, baby whisperer. But it's your watch at the moment, so stuff it.” Ryan retorts.
The baby settles with my gentle pats and as we'd like to believe, to the quirky beats of the music. Her shallow breaths calm me. While the rest of the boys talk business and argue about sports, keeping their voices as low as their excitement allows, I enjoy holding the newborn.
It’s the most at peace I’ve felt since that morning in L.A.
Bonnie has gone cold on me. It’s almost funny how hard she tries to avoid me, refusing to make eye contact except to make a snarky comment. It must be tough on her, speaking from my own experience of when I did the same to her, and also considering she’s handling a project I wrote, one which due to her brilliance at the expo, has generated a lot of interest and inquiries from avid gamers and the media, meaning she often needs to confer with me.
Because I can see how much she’s freaking out, I let her be, even though it kills me to stay away. I’ve even made myself scarce around the office.
Bonnie’s hard exterior drives me crazy and arouses me to no end, but the broken woman beneath has been calling out to me like a siren. After finally getting a good glimpse of that woman, I’m riveted.
While it's true that being around her makes me feel restless and out of control, which is physically painful for me, it’s a pain I’m prepared to put up with if it means being with Bonnie.
Whether or not we get together will be her decision. That much I'm willing to give her control over. If and when she does come to me though, all bets are off. I’m taking everything she has and pushing her to her limits.
Our limits.
I sent her a message last week to let her know that I’m here whenever she’s ready and left it at that. I've got nothing back so far.
Jordan leaves the rest of the boys and saunters over to me. I’ve been in and out of town on business in the past couple of weeks, so I haven’t seen much of him.
He watches Lily Rose nestle contentedly against me for a few moments. “How are you doing it? She seems to hate everyone except you. And her dad, of course.”
“I don’t know. I think babies can sense anxiety. You looked like you were about to bolt when Brooke gave her to you.”
“She’s so small.” Jordan puts his hand on her back to emphasize his point.
“Well, I hate to do this to you, man, but you do know that your babies are going to be even smaller than she is, right?”
“No way!”
“Yep. Sabrina can only get so big. Twins tend to be smaller than single babies.”
“How do you know that?”
“I saw Elsa’s twins the day after they were born.” Elsa is one of my dad’s girlfriend’s daughters, who lives in Prague with her husband.
If only Dad would just man up and marry Ingrid, so I can just call Ingrid’s daughters my step-sisters instead of this convoluted mouthful. I get that my dad is permanently scarred from having his wife walk out on him and leaving him with two small children, but Ingrid isn’t his ex-wife.
“Ethan, I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” Jordan says.
“About?”
“What happened with Bonnie in L.A.?”
I tense. “Why do you ask?”
“Ethan, I know it can take you ages to warm up to someone, but could you please cut Bonnie some slack? I’m begging here.”
I huff out a breath of relief. “You say that like I’m making her life a living hell.”
“Look, Lord knows Bonnie can be a bit prickly, and she sometimes has no filter with her thoughts, but you should know that she means no harm at all. What happened with Dreadlite was a genuine mistake on her part. I’ve worked with her, she’s otherwise great at taking instructions.”
“Okay.” Actually, you’re wrong. She filters the shit out of her real thoughts.
“So, can you stop being an asshole and punishing her for L.A.? The amount of work she’s done since then is phenomenal.”
“Okay.”
“If you say ‘okay’ one more time, I’ll fucking deck you.”
“Alright, fine. I’ll lay off.” I've been doing nothing but that for weeks and frankly I'm getting sick of it this slow dance. First I retreated while she pursued. Now she's pulling back and I'm bent on not pursuing.
Moments of silence pass before he takes a deep breath and says, “Ethan, I wasn’t going to mention this because she specifically begged me not to let you get wind of it.”
“But since you’re a tattletale, you’re going to tell me, anyway.” Typical Jordan. He can’t keep a secret from me to save his life.
“Dipshit.”
“Go on, then.”
“Bonnie asked me to put a word in with Xi-Gen. She’s sent in her application with them.”
I school my features to appear indifferent, and say nothing.
“She might have been approached by one of the Xi-Gen execs at the expo. Again, you were right on that count. Only partners should do presentations.”
“Fair enough. We would have done the same as those execs if we saw Bonnie do her thing,” I say.
“Well, no use crying over spilt milk. All I know is that we shouldn’t lose her to Xi-Gen. As a friend, I can’t sabotage her chances. But Bonnie is a diamond in the rough. Ideally, we should be grooming her to become a partner.”
Bonnie is phenomenal, but even I know that you can only promote someone so rapidly before eyebrows start to wag. Already, she’s gone from staff trainee to associate in less than six months. She’ll have to wait a year or two before she gets a junior partner role. “So, what will you do?”
“This. What I’m doing now, asking you for the sake of the company to be fair to her. If you’re going to come down on her hard when she messes up, then be the first to give her great feedback. Just generally don’t be a jerk, make her feel valued. Also, I might have to give her a ridiculous raise. Bonuses. More flexibilities. Essentially pull it out of the bag with a package she’ll like more than she hates you.”
“Alright. Noted.” She doesn’t hate me. It's ridiculous how much she doesn't hate me.
“Hey, word of advice, Jordan. Give her a glowing recommendation to Xi-Gen.” He looks at me like I’ve gone crazy, so I explain, “It never pays to hold on too tightly to something, or someone, you want. Let her go, and if she wants that recommendation, help her, but make sure she knows that she can return within three months. The grass isn’t always greener on the other side.”
He considers that for a while, then finally nods, returning to join the others currently arguing over baseball.
I’m floored. Xi-Gen is based in Vancouver, Canada. I did not expect her to even consider working for my competition let alone move half across the world to do it. This woman is not playing. That she would go to those lengths to bury what feelings I unearthed in her shocks me.
Just what the hell did I do to her, other than annoy her and make her come?
Lily Rose wakes up crying and fussing, and for the next half-hour, it's like a sinking ship, with everyone barking orders and throwing suggestions until a genius suggests she might be hungry.
And then, it’s hell trying to figure out the correct temperature. Poor Lily Rose is red-faced by the time we get it right and give her the bottle, after which Xavier burps her, and she drops right back to sleep.
Jordan then takes his turn for a couple of hours holding her until she wakes again.
I didn’t think a baby so small could poop so much, but thankfully, Xavier has had some training in changing diapers.
We’re run ragged by morning, but we all agree that the night was a resounding success since we managed not to traumatize Lily Rose or kill each other overnight. We hand the baby in one sleepy piece, over to a proud and well-rested Brooke, who declares us pros.
The only problem that remains is that Jordan is having twins in a few short months. Everyone is thinking about how we’ll survive another night like this with two babies but no one dares mention it.
By the time I make it home, I’m bone tired and still reeling from Jordan’s news, wondering just how long I can hold out for Bonnie.