2. Eli
Eli
The letter shakes in my hands.
I don’t mean a little tremor either. I mean full-body, bones-rattling, stomach-gone-cold shaking. The paper crackles so loudly I can hear it over the silence packed into the foyer.
Celeste’s handwriting is still pretty; that’s the first stupid thought I have. My throat closes so abruptly I nearly gag.
Eli,
I’m sorry to do this to you this way.
My eyes drag over the words once, then twice, then a third time because they refuse to make sense the first two times. I know the guys are watching me. I feel every stare, but I can’t look up. I can’t move. I can barely keep air in my lungs.
My parents found out. They said they didn’t raise me to kill a baby, but they also said they weren’t letting me shame them by having a child out of wedlock. They wanted me to give her to a family from church. I didn’t want that. I thought you should have her because she’s yours.
“She,” I whisper. Not it. Not baby. She.
My daughter is asleep in that car seat on the entryway table, wrapped in a pale-yellow blanket with tiny white stars, her mouth soft and open, one fist tucked under her chin.
My daughter.
Jesus Christ, the words don’t fit inside my head. They scrape against everything I thought my life was supposed to be until nothing feels solid anymore.
Attached is the lawyer’s paperwork. I signed away my parental rights. I don’t want anything to do with her. I’m sorry. I know you’re probably going to hate me, but I can’t be a mom. I don’t want to be. Please don’t call me. Please don’t try to find me.
Celeste
Behind the letter is another sheet—thicker paper, formal letterhead, legal language blurring in front of me. Voluntary relinquishment. No intention to seek custody. No visitation. Counsel retained by parents. I see Celeste’s full name. I see my name. I see a birth date.
Born one month ago.
One month.
She’s been alive for one month, and I didn’t know.
I make a sound I don’t recognize. It comes out cracked and small—nothing like the version of myself who my parents raised to stand straight, speak clearly, keep clean hands, pray before meals, confess sins, and never embarrass the family name.
I think about my mother’s rosary beads looped around her fingers every Sunday morning.
I think about my father’s work boots by the back door, mud on the soles, and judgment in his silence.
I think about the crucifix above our dining room table and the way my mom once cried when I missed Christmas Eve Mass because my truck broke down.
A baby out of wedlock will break them open. No, it won’t just break them open, it’ll make them furious.
My mom will cry first. Dad will sit with his jaw tight and his knuckles hard on the kitchen table, and he’ll ask me what the hell I was thinking.
Then Mom will ask whether I understand what I’ve done, whether I understand the sin, whether I understand how this looks, and whether I understand what people will say.
And the worst part—the part that makes bile crawl up the back of my throat—is that I don’t know what I’ve done.
Because I never had sex with Celeste.
Not once. Not when she begged, not when she cried, not when she said I made her feel unwanted, and she told me other guys didn’t make their girlfriends feel ugly for wanting sex. Not when she said God would understand because we loved each other and called me cruel when I pulled away.
I wanted to wait. I hated myself for wanting to wait some days, but I still did.
My body remembers other things, though… that’s the problem.
My body remembers sitting beside her at parties with a cup in my hand that she kept refilling, and her laughing when I said I felt weird.
It remembers the sticky heaviness behind my eyes after movie nights in her room.
It remembers waking up with my shirt off and my head pounding while she curled against me, smiling.
I remember asking if something had happened.
I remember her kissing my jaw and saying, “Don’t be dramatic, Eli. You were tired.”
Tired.
I was always so fucking tired after spending time with Celeste.
“I didn’t,” I say. “I never slept with her.”
Julian’s arm tightens around me, where he still has me pulled against him, his hand steady at the back of my neck.
He smells like Coke and clean laundry and his body wash, and it ruins me because it’s familiar.
It’s childhood. It’s scraped knees and late-night drives and stolen fries and church parking lots and every good thing I pushed away because I was too stubborn and too ashamed to admit he was right about her.
“What?” Damien asks carefully from somewhere to my left. “What do you mean?”
“I didn’t have sex with her,” I say louder this time.
Killian’s gaze sharpens first. It’s terrifying how fast his expression changes, how the calm drains out and leaves something colder behind.
Roman’s mouth parts slightly. Luca curses under his breath.
Ryan stops moving completely, his phone limp in his hand.
Damien looks at the baby, then back at me, something careful and awful settling over his face.
Julian’s hand slides from the back of my neck to my shoulder, slow enough not to startle me, but his fingers curl hard.
“What do you mean, you didn’t have sex with her?” he asks, and his voice has dropped so low it sends a chill down my spine.
I swallow, but my throat refuses to work right.
“I mean, I didn’t. We fooled around, okay?
I’m not saying I was some fucking saint.
I’m not. But we never—” My voice breaks, and shame hits me even though I know it shouldn’t.
I stare at the yellow blanket because it’s easier than looking at him.
“We never did that. I told her I wanted to wait, and she hated it.”
A sound comes out of Roman. “Jesus.”
“She kept saying I made her feel unwanted. That I was judging her, and I thought she was dirty for wanting it. And then sometimes…” I press the heel of my hand to my forehead, trying to shove the memory back into place, but it’s loose now.
It’s all loose. “Sometimes I’d be with her, and I’d get so tired.
Not normal tired. Wrong tired. Heavy. I’d wake up with no memory of falling asleep, and she’d be there, acting like I was being weird for asking questions. ”
Nobody speaks for a second as the implication of what I’ve just said settles in.
“I need to sit down,” I say, but I don’t move.
The baby makes a tiny sound then, a sleepy little snuffle from inside the carrier, and every nerve in my body lights up at once. My head jerks toward her so fast it almost hurts. She’s still asleep, her tiny face half-buried in the blanket, one fist tucked under her chin.
She’s so small it makes my chest ache. A whole person. A whole real person dropped on our front step with a note, a legal packet, and a casual apology as if a baby is a fucking delivery.
Everything else fades behind the sight of her mouth trembling before she decides whether she’s going to cry.
I’ve heard people say it my whole life. Parents at church, my cousins, strangers in grocery stores with newborns strapped to their chests.
They say you don’t understand love until you see your child for the first time.
They say it hits immediately. They say one look, and that’s it, your life belongs to someone else.
I always thought they were full of shit because love never felt instant to me.
Love felt built. Love was showing up. Love was staying after someone disappointed you.
Love was Julian climbing through my bedroom window at fifteen because I texted him that my parents were fighting again. Love was years. Love was proof.
Then my daughter makes one tiny, angry noise, and my heart caves in.
It isn’t soft or sweet; it’s terrifying. It comes down on me with a command I can’t argue with. Mine. She’s mine. Whether I understand how, or whether a blood test will prove what the letter says. She is here, she is tiny, and she has no idea that everyone has already failed her.
My hand drops from the letter, and Jules catches it before the papers hit the floor.
I look at him because I don’t know where else to look.
His face is pale beneath his tan, and his hazel eyes are locked on mine with something that makes my chest hurt worse than panic.
Fear. Rage. Love, maybe. No, I can’t look at that either.
I have no right to look at that after the way I treated him.
“I don’t know what to do,” I admit, and the raw honesty rips out of me. “Jules, I don’t know what the fuck to do.”
“Okay, then here’s what we’re doing. We’re not standing around staring at her until she wakes up hungry and pissed off,” he says, already reaching for the diaper bag.
“Babies need food, diapers, somewhere safe to sleep, and someone who isn’t about to pass out holding them.
We check what she came with. Formula, bottles, diapers, wipes, clothes.
If there isn’t enough, someone’s going to the store.
Actually, someone’s going to the store anyway, because whatever’s in this bag won’t be enough. ”
Sage straightens immediately. “I’ll go.”
“Take Nate,” Julian says without looking at him, unzipping the bag and peering inside.
“You two look less likely to come back with steak seasoning and a stuffed giraffe and call it supplies. Get newborn diapers, wipes, ready-to-feed formula unless this bag says something specific, bottles, burp cloths, a thermometer, baby wash, diaper cream, pacifiers, and a bassinet. Not a crib. Bassinet. We need something she can sleep in tonight.”
I stare at Jules because my brain can’t handle how fast he takes control. “How do you know what to do?”
He gives me a look that’s almost irritated, almost tender, and completely Julian. “I basically helped raise Jess after my mom died. I know babies.”
“But you’re not the oldest,” I say automatically, because my brain grabs the familiar correction before I can stop it.