Zach
September
I yanked the car door open and let the cool breeze wash over me. My back was soaked with sweat. I usually avoided the police, but how could anyone not arrest Amber for the way she drove?
“Come on. Give me change for the meter,” she said, pummelling my arm with her tiny fist before screaming. “I want to meet our baby brother.”
“You’re never driving my car again,” I croaked, turning to dig change out of the central compartment.
“Please. We’d still be in Cambridge if it were up to you.”
I considered quoting scripture to her again, but she never took me seriously. I filled her hand with change and she ran off to the parking meter. Just as I was about to get out of the car I spotted the car keys and grabbed them, only then did my poor heart beat normally again.
Living with Amber was fucking amazing, but damn, she was also a menace. What happened to the sweet young lady I’d accosted over Christmas?
She was back. Just as she moved into the car, I moved out. She placed the ticket on the dashboard and climbed out again. I went round to the back of the car and grabbed the balloons, flowers, and gift bags.
Thank god it was a boy.
? ? ?
It took forever, but Luke finally placed the baby in my arms. Amber hugged her mum, who held her close before kissing her forehead, then her cheek.
Amber whispered something in her mum’s ear.
Luke stepped back but kept his eyes fixed on me, and when I looked down at the tiny being in my arms, I understood exactly why.
Was this how my dad felt when I was born?
I traced my finger down the freshly exposed cheek. His tiny lips curled, and my heart overflowed with a tenderness I didn’t know I had room for. Yeah, we had to make one of these eventually. As soon as we figured out how to keep a houseplant alive first.
I held him close to my chest and walked to the window, the late afternoon light warm against the glass.
“I’ll always be there for you, lil bro,” I whispered.
I was never there for Amber, and that wouldn’t happen again. It didn’t matter if this was my brother or brother-in-law—it was all the same to me. I turned to see my family. Luke was still watching me, but his lips tugged upward, just like his son’s.
I smiled back and nodded.
There was peace for now, boomer.
? ? ?
She sighed again, her eyes glued to the screen glowing in the darkness of the room, the only light besides the faint orange bleed of a streetlamp through the curtains.
“Keep the plant alive and I’ll pump copious amounts of babies into you,” I snickered, before glancing at my own phone.
She groaned and flung herself onto my chest, her hair spilling across my skin.
“What if we get a cactus? No one can kill a cactus,” she said, kicking the quilt off her legs. “God, what if I kill a cactus?”
I opened Isabella’s message and found a flood of baby pictures waiting. Lewis already looked bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, a world away from the tiny, peaceful thing I’d held in the hospital just a week ago. Now my little man looked ready to take on the world himself.
I rubbed my chest absently, and Amber laid her hand over mine.
“He’s got my hair,” Amber murmured, tracing a slow circle against my sternum. “What if we went over for the October half-term and practised on Lewis?”
I stared at the photo one last time—the baby’s wide blue eyes, the soft tuft of chestnut hair—before setting my phone face-down on the nightstand.
“He doesn’t have auburn hair.”
“Yet,” Amber said, her head shooting up off my chest to glare at me.
“I think it’ll darken, like Luke’s.”
Her lips quivered, and she slapped her head back down onto my chest with an exaggerated huff.
She was so easily wound up that I couldn’t help myself.
I pushed her onto her back and climbed over her, the mattress dipping beneath us, moonlight slanting pale across her skin.
A good fucking always set her straight.
I ignored the sly smile tugging at her lips as I dragged her vest up to her neck, the fabric bunching beneath my fingers. The second I saw her bountiful mounds and fat nipples, my mind went straight to our babies suckling from her.
Shit. Baby fever was real.
I’d need to make do for now.
I lowered my head. Her hands tugged at my hair, pulling me down to her.
My dirty girl was always impatient.