4. Eli
Eli
I wake up to a sound that doesn’t belong in my room.
For one confused second, I think I’m dreaming. My brain is still thick with sleep, limbs heavy, mouth dry. The dark shape of my ceiling is unfamiliar in that strange way it always gets when you fall asleep with too much on your mind and wake up disoriented.
Then the sound becomes louder—sharp, thin, and furious—every part of me jolts with such a force that I nearly launch myself straight out of bed.
The baby.
My daughter.
The memory slams back in so fast it steals my breath. I twist toward the side of my bed, and there she is, this tiny, red-faced person in a white sleeper with yellow ducks on it, fists punching the air, mouth open in pure outrage. The sound coming out of her is way too loud for someone that tiny.
Last night, Killian had three different people ordering same-day delivery while Damien read instructions out loud. Somehow a bassinet, diapers, wipes, bottles, formula, and enough baby supplies to stock a small daycare ended up in my room.
“Oh shit,” I whisper, throwing the covers off. “Shit. Okay. Hi. Hi, baby. Fuck. No, not fuck. Sorry. I mean—shit.”
She keeps crying. Of course she does. She’s one month old, and I’m standing over her in sweatpants and yesterday’s T-shirt, hair a mess, chest tight, and whispering profanity.
I reach down, then stop, because suddenly all the warnings from last night come back at once. Support her head. Don’t let her roll. Watch her neck. Check the diaper. Check hunger. Check temperature. Don’t panic.
Great. Awesome. Very helpful.
I panic.
“Okay. Okay, I’ve got you.”
I do not, in fact, have her.
“Hey,” I say immediately, voice cracking because I have no idea what I’m doing. “Hey, okay, okay, I’m here.”
She does not care that I’m here. If anything, she gets louder.
My heart starts pounding so hard I can hear it in my ears.
I stare at her for one useless second too long, trying to remember every single thing Julian said last night, and I finally slide one hand beneath her head and the other under her little body the way Julian showed me.
She feels impossibly fragile, all squirming limbs and rage.
The second I lift her, her head tips in a way that makes terror blast through me, and I jerk her closer to my chest too fast.
Her crying gets worse.
“Oh my God,” I breathe, horrified. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Fuck, I didn’t mean to—”
The door swings open so fast that it hits the wall.
Julian steps in wearing black sweatpants and no shirt, dark curls wild from sleep. His eyes are alert before the rest of him should be. No confusion or groggy blinking. Just an immediate focus locked on the baby in my arms.
“Eli,” he says, voice rough with sleep but calm enough to cut through the screaming. “Give her to me.”
“I don’t know what I did,” I blurt, clutching her to my chest while also being terrified of clutching her too hard. “She started crying, and I tried to pick her up, but her head—Jules, her head moved wrong, and I—”
“She’s okay,” he says, crossing the room. “Hand her over.”
I do it because it’s Julian, and even when everything else is splitting apart, some old part of me still trusts him before I trust myself.
He takes her smoothly, one big, tattooed hand supporting her head, the other under her back, tucking her against his bare chest with a practiced ease that makes shame burn hot under my skin.
She’s still crying, her face scrunched up and furious, but somehow she already sounds less panicked in his arms. Or maybe that’s me projecting because he isn’t shaking and I am.
“Okay, meisiekind,” he murmurs, bouncing her gently, not up and down but this small rocking motion from his knees. “I know. Your dumbass dad woke up scared. He’s new here.”
I stare at him. “Did you just call me a dumbass in front of my daughter?”
He glances at me, one brow lifting. “She screamed at you first. I’m translating.”
Despite everything, a laugh cracks out of me, weak and broken. It dies fast when she wails again and roots her face against his chest, mouth open and searching.
Julian looks down at her and nods once. “Hungry. Probably wet too. Newborns are dramatic little dictators. Food, diaper, warmth, sleep. That’s the whole cycle, and somehow, they still make everyone feel like shit at three in the morning.”
He moves around my room easily, as if he hasn’t spent months staying out of it because I was too much of a coward to fix what I broke between us.
Then he lays her carefully on the changing pad someone set up on top of my dresser last night, keeping one hand on her belly while he reaches for the diapers with the other.
I stand uselessly beside the bed.
My hands are empty now, but they still feel the shape of her.
Warm, squirming, too small. I flex my fingers and look at them as if they belong to someone else.
These are football hands. Tight end hands.
Hands made to block, catch, shove, and lift.
Hands that know cleats and tape and gym chalk.
Not this. Not tiny snaps and fragile necks and soft skin that could bruise if I breathe wrong.
“Eli,” Julian glances over his shoulder. “Come here.”
“I’ll get in the way.”
“You’ll learn.”
The words are firm enough that I move before I argue. He doesn’t look away from the baby as he talks, which somehow makes it easier.
“First thing, always keep one hand on her if she’s on a raised surface. Doesn’t matter if she’s tiny and can’t roll properly yet. You make the habit now, so later you don’t fuck up when she gets stronger.”
I nod even though my throat is too tight. “Okay.”
“Hand on her belly,” he says, and when I hesitate, he looks up at me. “You’re not gonna hurt her by touching her, Eli.”
“I know.”
He says nothing, and my jaw tightens because we both know I’m lying.
I place my palm gently on her stomach. She’s still crying, her tiny body flexing under my touch, and the vibration of it travels straight through my hand into my chest. She’s real. She’s real in this awful, loud, helpless way that makes my body want to move and freeze at the same time.
Julian pulls open the snaps of her sleeper. “These are stupid,” he mutters, working fast. “Whoever designed baby clothes with this many snaps needs to be dragged into the street.”
“That’s a lot of violence for duck pajamas,” I say, my voice unsteady.
“I’ve seen war, Eli. It looked like trying to dress my sister at two in the morning while she kicked me in the throat.”
“Jess did that?”
“Jessica came out personally offended by existence,” he says, but there’s softness in his voice when he says her name.
He opens the diaper and pauses for half a second. “Okay, wet. Not bad. No blowout. Blessed morning.”
“Blowout?” I ask.
He turns his head and gives me a look. “You sweet summer football idiot. A blowout is when shit escapes the diaper and gets everywhere.”
I feel my eyes widen. “Everywhere?”
“Back. Legs. Clothes. Soul.”
My stomach turns. “Jesus.”
“Jesus won’t save you from baby shit,” he says, tugging wipes free from the packet.
“Now watch. Always wipe front to back, especially with girls. Fold the diaper under, clean her properly, give her a second because sometimes the cold air makes them pee again, and you don’t want to learn that lesson on your shirt. ”
He says it all in a practical and calm way, like he’s explaining a play formation instead of how to change the diaper of a newborn who was dropped into my life by the girl who may have destroyed more than I can even look at yet.
That thought slides in, quick and ugly.
Celeste.
The baby’s tiny legs are kicking while Julian changes her, her face red from crying, her body made from something I can’t remember doing.
A cold sweat breaks across the back of my neck. I yank my gaze to the side and grip the edge of the dresser.
Julian catches it immediately. “Eli.”
“I’m fine.”
“Bullshit.”
The baby cries harder, and he goes back to the diaper, but his voice stays on me. “Look at me.”
“I said I’m fine.”
“Yeah, and I said bullshit. We can both repeat ourselves all morning, or you can look at me before you spiral so hard you fall over.”
I force my eyes back to him. His expression is steady, but not soft in the way that makes me feel pitied. I hate pity. He knows that. Jules has always known the difference between comforting me and making me feel small.
“You’re here,” he says, closing the clean diaper with practiced hands. “She’s here. It’s morning. That’s all we’re handling right this second.”
My throat burns. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“No one does at first.”
“You do.”
He shakes his head. “I know how to change a diaper and make a bottle,” he says, snapping the baby’s sleeper closed again with only a slightly murderous glare at the ducks. “That’s not the same as knowing how to raise a whole human.”
“But you’re not scared.”
He huffs once, and it’s low and humorless. “I’m fucking terrified.”
That shuts me up.
Julian discards the dirty diaper into the trash, lifts her from the changing pad, and settles her against his shoulder while he reaches for one of the premade bottles on my nightstand.
“I’m just useful when I’m scared,” he adds, checking the bottle with a little shake. “You get frozen, I get bossy. Same panic, different outfit.”
I watch him tuck the bottle to her mouth. She latches onto it instantly, greedy and furious, her cries cutting off into hard little sucks. The silence that follows is almost worse, but my ears ring with it. Julian keeps her angled in his arms, supporting her head while she drinks.
“You see how I’m holding her? Not flat on her back. A little upright. Helps keep her from choking and makes burping easier after.”
“Burping,” I repeat, as if I’ve never heard the word.
“Yeah. Babies swallow air, and it hurts their stomachs, so they scream while you wonder what demon possessed them. Then they burp and act as if nothing happened.” He glances at me. “You’ll learn her sounds.”
I stare at her tiny mouth working around the teat. “She has sounds?”