2. Eli #2
His mouth twitches for half a second. “Samantha didn’t do shit after she discovered eyeliner and older boys, so in practice, yeah, I was.”
A laugh punches out of me, broken and awful. It turns into something close to a sob before I can stop it.
Jules sees that too. He steps closer and lowers his voice so only I catch the edge of it. “Hey. Stay with me. We’re doing one thing at a time.”
I nod, but my eyes go back to the baby. “I need to hold her.”
Julian’s face softens in a way that nearly puts me on my knees. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “You do.”
Killian steps in before I can move, the legal letter already in his hand. I don’t even know when he took it.
“I’m calling my family attorney,” he says.
“Then I’m calling a different attorney who specializes in custody and family law.
We need to know whether this paperwork is valid, whether Celeste can surrender rights this way, what happens if you’re named as the father, and what we need to do to protect you and the baby. ”
The baby.
Not the situation, the scandal, or the problem.
The baby.
My eyes burn so badly I can barely see him. “What if she’s not mine?”
Killian looks up from the letter. He doesn’t soften the answer.
That’s why I trust him. “Then we find out who she belongs to and make sure she doesn’t end up with someone who leaves newborns on fucking doorsteps.
But if she is yours, we move fast and make sure nobody can take advantage of the shock. ”
My stomach knots. “My parents are gonna lose their minds.”
“Let them,” Roman says from behind me, his voice rough. “They can lose their minds after the baby has diapers.”
That gets a few strained laughs. Mine doesn’t make it out.
Julian steps around me and reaches into the carrier, moving with a confidence that makes everyone else pause.
He unclips the straps carefully, his tattooed hands huge around the baby’s little body.
The contrast hits me hard: ink and muscle and bruised knuckles against yellow cotton and soft pink skin.
He slides one hand beneath her head and the other beneath her back, lifting her with so much care it makes something in my chest twist.
She fusses once, a tiny squawk of protest, and Julian murmurs, “Easy, meisiekind. I know. Whole lot of dumbasses making noise around you.”
I choke on nothing, and he glances at me, one brow raised.
“What? She should learn the truth early.” Then he shifts her toward me but doesn’t hand her over yet.
“Arm across your chest,” he instructs softly.
“Yeah, like that. Support her head. She’s not a football, so don’t grip her like one. Relax your shoulders, Eli. Breathe.”
“I am breathing,” I lie.
“You’re absolutely fucking not,” he says, and because it’s Jules, because he says it with that familiar dry bite, I somehow manage one full inhale.
He lowers her into my arms. The second her weight settles against me, I stop being twenty-two. I stop being my parents’ son. I stop being the guy who got ghosted by his girlfriend, humiliated by his own confusion, and left standing in a room full of people with a lawyer’s letter in one hand.
I become a father.
It happens before I’m ready for it, without asking permission.
She is warm. So warm. Heavier than I expected and still impossibly light.
Her head fits in the crook of my elbow, and her cheek presses against my shirt as she makes a soft little sound, offended at being moved but too tired to commit to crying.
Her fingers flex once, then brush the center of my chest.
I stare down at her, and everything inside me goes quiet in the most violent way.
“Hi,” I whisper, and my voice breaks on the one stupid syllable.
Her eyes don’t open. She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know I’m already hers. She doesn’t know I’m standing there with fear tearing holes through me and love rushing in so hard it feels like bleeding.
Jules stays beside me, close enough that his arm brushes mine. I feel him watching, but he doesn’t crowd me. He just… stays. After months of me ensuring he had every reason not to.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, and I don’t know if I’m saying it to the baby or to him.
Julian hears it anyway, and his hand settles lightly between my shoulder blades. “Later,” he murmurs. “You can fall apart later. Right now, you hold your daughter.”
My daughter.
I bend my head, pressing my mouth to her forehead because I can’t stop myself. She smells faintly of milk, powder, and the cold air from outside. She smells real.
“Celeste left her,” I say, and my voice turns ugly on the name. “She just fucking left her.”
“Yeah,” Julian says, and there’s something deadly under the calm now. “She did.”
“I don’t know her name.”
The thought guts me.
I look down at the baby, at her tiny mouth and soft cheeks and the little crease between her brows. “She’s one month old, and I don’t know her name.”
Ryan’s voice comes from the floor, quieter than I’ve ever heard him. “There’s a hospital bracelet in the side pocket.”
My head snaps up.
He holds up a small, clear bag containing a bracelet, along with a folded discharge paper. His eyes scan it, and his mouth tightens. “Baby girl Van Rensburg.”
Celeste’s last name, with no first name. Just baby girl.
A rage I’ve never felt before rises in me so fast I nearly sway. Julian’s hand presses firmer against my back.
“She didn’t name her,” I say.
My daughter shifts in my arms, her tiny face turning toward my chest.
Julian leans in, voice low near my ear. “Then you will.”
I look down again, and my vision blurs.
Killian folds the legal letter with controlled precision. “We also need a doctor to check her tonight. I’ll see if I can find a pediatrician who does house calls. We need to make sure she’s okay after being left outside, and we need records started.”
I look up at Julian. “Stay with me.”
He turns his head toward me, surprise flickering across his face for one naked second before he buries it.
“Please,” I add, my voice cracking. “I know I fucked up with you. I know I did. But I can’t—” I swallow and hold my daughter closer, careful not to squeeze too tight. “I can’t do this part without you, Jules.”
Julian’s expression shutters.
The room is full of our friends, full of people pretending not to listen while absolutely listening, but he only looks at me. His eyes drop to the baby, then lift back to my face.
“You’re not doing it without me,” he says, rough and certain. “I already told you. Not a chance.”
My knees almost give out.
Killian moves closer, his voice lowering for me. “Eli, listen to me. You don’t call your parents yet. Not from shock, and especially not with half information. We get the baby checked, we get legal advice, we get a DNA test started properly, and then you decide how to tell them. Not before.”
The Catholic guilt in me recoils hard. “They’re my parents.”
“Right now they’re not the first call,” Killian says flatly. “She is.”
My daughter sleeps against me, unaware that she just outranked everyone I’ve ever feared disappointing.
I nod once and look down at the baby again.
My baby.
Maybe not by memory, maybe not by choice. Maybe not by anything clean or fair or holy enough to satisfy the people who raised me. But by the sudden, brutal truth in my chest.
I touch one careful finger to her tiny fist, and she curls around it. That’s it. That’s the whole fucking world gone and remade in one touch.
“Hi, baby girl,” I whisper again, my voice cracking. “I’m Eli.”
Julian makes a quiet sound beside me, but when I glance over, his jaw is tight, and his eyes are wet.
I don’t call him out on it.
I just lean into him enough for our shoulders to touch, my daughter held safely between my arms, and for the first time since Celeste disappeared, since Jules and I fell apart, I let myself reach for him.
He reaches back without me having to ask.