Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
Three fucking days of maybe four hours of sleep total, plus the game against Denver Tech, and I was starting to lose my mind.
My daughter—Christ, I still couldn’t believe I was thinking those words—had apparently decided that nighttime was for screaming and daytime was for brief, merciful naps that lasted just long enough for me to think I might actually survive this before she woke up wailing again.
“Come on, baby girl,” I whispered, my voice hoarse from exhaustion. “Please. Just sleep for like two hours. That’s all I’m asking.”
She responded by letting out an ear-piercing shriek that made me wince.
“Dude, what the hell?” Liam appeared in the doorway, looking like he’d been dragged through hell backward. His hair was sticking up at impossible angles, and there were pillow marks on his face. “It’s been three hours.”
“You think I don’t know that?” I snapped, immediately feeling bad. None of this was his fault. “Sorry, man. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”
Gordy emerged from his room a moment later, rubbing his eyes and yawning. “Maybe she’s hungry?”
“I fed her an hour ago,” I said, still bouncing. “And changed her. And checked her temperature. And tried that thing Sam showed me with the swaddle blanket.”
The baby’s cries intensified, and I felt that familiar surge of panic that had been my constant companion for the past few days. What if something was actually wrong with her? What if I was failing as a father before I’d even figured out how to be one?
“Okay, new approach,” Liam said, moving closer. He was shirtless and wearing pajama pants with little tacos on them. “What do we know about babies?”
“Absolutely nothing if her nonstop crying is anything to go by,” I said flatly.
“Wrong,” Liam said with the kind of confidence that only came from being slightly delirious with exhaustion. “We know about girls. And this is technically a girl.”
“She’s not a girl; she’s a baby,” Gordy said from where he was leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed.
“But she’s a female baby,” Liam continued, clearly on some kind of logic train that made sense only to him. “So maybe we should treat her like we would any other female we’re trying to calm down.”
I stared at him. “You want us to buy her dinner and tell her she’s pretty?”
“No, you idiot. But think about it—what calms girls down? Music.”
I paused my bouncing. “Music?”
“Yeah, man. Singing. Lullabies. That’s, like, basic parenting stuff, right?”
Gordy pushed off from the doorframe. “Actually, some of the YouTube videos I watched said music therapy is proven to reduce stress and promote relaxation in infants. Their auditory development makes them particularly responsive to rhythmic patterns and melodic phrases.”
Liam blinked at him. “I was going to say chicks dig musicians, but sure, let’s go with the science thing.”
The idea was so simple I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it. Then again, I’d been running on fumes and panic for three days straight. Higher brain function wasn’t exactly my strong suit right now.
“I don’t know any lullabies,” I admitted.
“So we make it up, or we can sing her a pop song or something,” Liam said. “How hard can it be?”
Famous last words.
What followed was probably the most ridiculous twenty minutes of my life.
Liam started us off with what I can only describe as a folk-rap version of “Rock-a-Bye Baby” that somehow incorporated references to hockey and beer.
Gordy followed with an attempt at “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” that devolved into him just repeating “twinkle” over and over in different octaves like some kind of demented wind chime.
And me? I ended up singing a slowed-down, acoustic version of “Don’t Stop Believin’” because it was literally the only song I could remember all the words to thanks to Ava’s love of 80s music and the fact she used to blare the song nonstop when we were growing up.
The crazy thing was it worked. Not immediately—my daughter clearly had standards that we weren’t even close to living up to—but gradually, her cries softened to whimpers, then to occasional hiccups, and finally to the kind of deep, even breathing that meant she was finally, blissfully asleep.
We stood there in the living room, three college hockey players swaying slightly and humming Journey under our breath, afraid to move and break whatever spell we’d managed to cast.
“Holy shit,” Liam whispered. “We’re geniuses.”
“We’re idiots who got lucky,” I corrected, but I was smiling for the first time in days.
“Same thing,” Gordy said softly, looking down at Rory. We’d all ended up circled around her during our serenade.
That’s when a throat cleared and we all looked up to find Sam standing there with a huge grin on her face.
She was wearing a little black dress and heels, her blonde hair still perfectly styled despite whatever sorority chaos she’d been dealing with all night.
Her eyes moved from Gordy to Liam to me, still holding my finally sleeping daughter, and she looked suspiciously like she was trying not to laugh.
“Don’t,” I said quietly. “Don’t say a word. She literally just fell asleep.”
Sam pressed her lips together, but I could see her shoulders shaking slightly. She set her purse down carefully and kicked off her heels, moving toward us with the kind of exaggerated stealth that suggested she’d had a few drinks at whatever event she’d been at.
“If only the women on this campus knew about you three,” she whispered, shaking her head with a grin that was part amused, part amazed. “You’d never sleep alone again.”
“We’re not sleeping anyway,” Liam muttered, but he was grinning too.
“This is actually kind of sweet,” Sam continued, moving closer to peer at the baby in my arms. “Look at you guys, all domesticated and—”
“Don’t get used to it,” Gordy interrupted, but his voice was soft. “This is a one-time thing.”
Sam looked at him, and something passed between them that I was too tired to analyze. She tilted her head slightly, studying his face in the dim light from the lamp.
“Right,” she said with a bit of challenge in her tone. “Because you’re such a badass.”
Gordy raised an eyebrow, his expression somewhere between amused and mildly offended. “I prefer ‘quietly competent.’”
“You’re wearing navy blue flannel pajama pants and looking completely domesticated,” Sam pointed out. “Very intimidating.”
Gordy glanced down at his perfectly coordinated sleepwear—solid navy pants and a matching navy T-shirt—then back up at her. “They’re comfortable and practical.”
“Of course they are. I would expect no less from you, Harry.” There was a fondness in the way she said it, like his predictability was endearing rather than boring.
The look Sam gave him was different from her usual friendly teasing she gave me and Liam.
They stared at each other for a moment longer than necessary, and I felt like I was witnessing something that maybe I shouldn’t be. Liam must have felt it too, because he cleared his throat softly.
“I’m going to bed before she wakes up again,” he announced, already backing toward the stairs. “Good luck, man.”
“Thanks for the help,” I called after him as quietly as I could.
“Anytime,” he said, and disappeared up the stairs.
Gordy lingered for another moment, still looking at Sam with an expression I couldn’t quite read.
Gordy broke their stare off first and looked at me. “You good?”
I nodded and he headed for the stairs. “Night, Drew. Night, Sam.”
“Night,” Sam called softly after him.
And then it was just me and Sam and my sleeping daughter in the quiet living room. Sam moved closer, studying the baby with a gentle smile tugging at her lips.
“She’s really beautiful, Drew,” Sam said quietly.
Rory’s tiny face was finally peaceful, her long eyelashes dark against her cheeks. She had these perfect squishy cheeks and the smallest nose I’d ever seen. Her skin was so soft it looked like it would bruise if I breathed on it wrong.
And yeah, okay, she was pretty fucking cute.
Even sleep-deprived and completely out of my depth, I couldn’t deny that she was the cutest baby I’d ever seen. I wanted to protect her from everything bad in the world, even though I had no clue how to protect her from basic things like hunger and dirty diapers.
“I guess she is,” I admitted.
Sam smiled. “You guess?”
“I mean, I’ve been a little busy trying to keep her alive to notice much else.” I tried to downplay how much this little girl already had me wrapped around her tiny fingers.
“You’re doing good, you know,” Sam said. “It’s only been a week. Nobody expects you to have it all figured out yet.”
“Thanks, Sam. I know this isn’t exactly what you signed up for when you took Foster’s room.”
She shrugged her shoulder. “Eh, it’s fine. I knew things wouldn’t be boring living with you guys, and you’ve certainly delivered on that. Anyway, you should try to get some sleep.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “Didn’t you say you were meeting Harper tomorrow? Or later today at this point?”
I grimaced slightly at the reminder. Just the thought of sitting across from her for hours, pretending to be civil, made me tired. And that was saying something, considering how exhausted I already was.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “Should be interesting.”
She patted me on the arm and then headed to her room.
As I looked down at my daughter again, sleeping so peacefully in my arms, something inside me shifted. I started thinking about more than just diapers and feeding schedules and whether I was completely screwing this up.
I started thinking about the kind of man I wanted to be for her.
The kind of man I wanted her to think her father was.
And that led to thinking about the kind of men I’d want her to date someday, and what I’d do to any guy who treated her the way I’d been treating…
Well, the way I’d been treating Harper.
The realization hit me like a puck to the gut.
I’d been a grade A asshole. Not just to Harper, but to a lot of girls over the years.
I’d treated dating like a game, relationships like something to avoid, and emotions like a weakness.
I’d been the guy who treated hookups like transactions, who kept everything surface level and casual, who made it clear from the start that feelings weren’t part of the deal.
Who never let anyone get close enough to matter.
And now I had a daughter.
A daughter who would grow up watching how I treated women. Who would learn what to expect from men based on what she saw from me. Who might someday date guys who thought it was funny to mess with girls’ heads, or who saw women as conquests instead of people.
The thought made me feel physically sick.
I’d been that guy. Hell, I was still that guy.
But looking down at my daughter’s sleeping face, I knew I couldn’t be that guy anymore. Not if I wanted my daughter to be proud of me, and not be ashamed of the example I was being for her.
Maybe it was time to take Gordy’s advice seriously and end the feud with Harper. If I was going to be the bigger person, that meant stopping all retaliation against her.
I’d fight anyone who ever treated my daughter the way I’d treated Harper. Hell, I’d probably end up in jail if some college asshole pulled the kind of stunts I’d been pulling.
But knowing that and knowing how to change it were two completely different things.
How did I let go of something that had been ingrained in me for as long as I could remember? How did I change patterns that felt like they were part of my DNA or as easy as breathing? How did I become the kind of man my daughter deserved to call her father?
The weight of her in my arms, so small and trusting, made one thing clear—I was going to have to figure it out.
For her sake, if not for my own.