Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Robbie
Ipull on my cap, double-check the baby carrier for the billionth time, and high-five Brando. This lunch is going to be the tits.
Because our friends are about to meet their new niece, who they have no clue even exists yet.
It’s still a surprise to Brandon and me. This last week has been a whirlwind of no sleep, poopy diapers, and adorable itty-bitty rompers and booties and mittens.
We were so not prepared for the sheer fuckery life was going to turn into, but one week in, and we have no regrets.
Truthfully, when people talk adoption, it sounds like such a long, tedious process that we’d been strapped in mentally to be dads in our thirties.
A year later, we’re unmarried and living with my fiancé’s parents, but the whole adoption process felt like it was on fast-forward.
We had an amazing team helping us, saved every damn cent we could, and our house is almost finished, ready for me to move my little family into it.
“Think they’ll be surprised?” Brandon asks, throwing a quick look at Lahna to make sure she’s settled in.
“Of course they will be. Someone gave us a kid. We’re never going to hear the end of it.”
He chuckles and grabs the door to the cafe. We were nervous driving all the way to New York with her in the car, but she just babbled for half an hour and then fell asleep. She’s still asleep. If only she slept like this at nighttime.
Chad and Bailey are waiting at a table with Zeke and Charles, and I’m pumped to see them all here together. With Zeke off winning golds and living on the West Coast, it’s harder to catch up, but he and Charles are still as much a part of our lives as ever.
“Hey, cuties!” I say, reaching the table. I plant a kiss on the top of Zeke’s head and blow one to Dooms. He grins, about to throw some smart-ass comment my way, when his gaze drops and—
“What the hell is that?”
His question gets the attention of the other three.
“Umm … I think that’s a child,” Charles says, confusion heavy in his voice.
Brandon rubs her back. “Everyone, meet Lahna.”
There’s silence until Chad finds his voice again. “You stole a baby.”
“Are we going to be at the scene of an Amber Alert?” Zeke adds. He looks at Brandon. “You’re supposed to be the one making sure we avoid these situations.”
“My risk manager days are over,” he says, holding up his hands.
Bailey cranes his neck to get a better look. “Ah … are you guys telling us you have a daughter?”
Somehow, the shock gets shockier, and it fills me with glee. “We sure are.”
“Holy shit.” Chad blinks at me. “Congratulations.”
“A daughter,” Zeke echoes faintly.
“Don’t you have to go through a whole lot of assessments to get one of those?” Bailey asks.
“Yep. Passed them all. They loved us.”
Bailey looks at Brandon. “Be honest. Who did you get to play the part of Robbie to the professional?”
Brandon’s face falls. “I know you’re all joking, but Robbie’s an incredible father. He’s taken to it way faster than I have.”
The amusement slides from Bailey’s face. “Sorry. It’s just hard to picture the guy who dressed up in a tutu and chugged a case of Jell-O before puking it all over the yard as a responsible adult.”
“Let’s not go that far,” I say. “No one claimed I was a responsible adult.”
“You’d better get there fast if you’re raising a kid,” Zeke says.
Brandon sets a hand on my back. “He can be the fun parent, and I’ll be the one making sure no one gets hurt. It’s like we’ve prepared for this our whole lives.”
Before the bickering can continue, Charles pipes up in a small voice.
“Can I hold her?”
That’s the reaction I’m after. It might be all fun and games between us, but I want them to love my kids as much as I do. “Wanna go to Uncle Charlie?” I ask Lahna, unstrapping her from my front.
Of course she doesn’t answer me because she’s a baby and she’s asleep, but when I go to hand her over, Charles has frozen and is looking up at me with big eyes. “Uncle Charlie?”
“Duh, dude. You don’t want to be her uncle?”
“You can’t take it back now!” He all but snatches her away, cuddling the teeny ball of baby to his chest.
Zeke pouts. “Charlie’s my name.”
“Dude, you won’t even share with a baby?” Chad laughs.
Zeke eyes her little face, and when he pokes her, she wakes long enough to wrap her fist around his pointer. His whole scowl softens. “I guess. She is pretty cute.”
“She’s the fucking cutest, and she’ll call Charles whatever the hell she wants.” Because my daughter is perfect, always will be perfect, and she’ll have us all twisted around her eeny weeny fingers by the time lunch is over.
“I call guncle,” Bailey says.
“What the fuck is that?” I ask, dropping into one of the spare seats.
“Gay uncle.”
“Ohh …” Chad turns to me. “Can I be buncle, then?”
I screw up my face. “That sounds like a fucking disease. No buncles or guncles or puncles.”
“Say that five times fast,” Brandon says, sitting next to me.
“My foot is down.”
Chad ignores me. “When can buncle Doomsy have a hold?”
“She is never going to be able to say that,” I point out.
Charles glares at me. “Touch her with those hands and I’ll bite them off.”
Zeke proudly slings his arm over the back of Charles’s chair. “I’m next, aren’t I, babe?”
“Nope.”
“But—”
“She’s mine now,” Charles says. “God knows she needs a responsible presence in her life.”
“Responsible?” Zeke rubs his jaw. “Which of the two of us sleeps naked and gets cranky when the other washes his team jacket after training?”
“Can’t hear you …”
“My daughter doesn’t need to know about the freaky shit you two get up to. Quit it.”
“Look at that little face,” Charles coos, and it’s so ridiculous that I thought this guy was a fucking wiener only a few years ago, and now he’s uncle—top uncle if he has his way, apparently—to my daughter.
My daughter. That panicky burst of love hits me again, and I’m not sure if it will ever go away.
Will I ever get used to the overprotectiveness?
The terror at the thought of something happening to her?
Even after a week, I’m so fucking smitten and obsessed with every little thing she does, and when Charles reluctantly hands her over, and she’s passed around the table, and I get to see the brothers I love fall in love with my daughter too, it makes me a bit teary.
Brandon squeezes my hand hard. “Don’t start crying.”
“Why?”
“Because then I’ll cry.”
“Maybe I want to cry. How can I not?” I wave a hand at the dopey idiots at the table. “Look at them all. Look at our baby. We’re dads!”
Chad sighs. “And I’m just a Daddy.”
“A Daddy?” Bailey whacks his chest. “You wish, big boy.”
“What? I have total Daddy energy.”
Zeke gives him a look. “Who are you trying to kid here, Dooms? Everyone at this table knows Bailey is the Daddy in that relationship.”
Lahna makes her way back into my arms, and I smile softly down at her.
She’s already six months old, but she basically fits in both my hands.
I’m gonna fatten her up in no time, and no matter what these idiots say, I’m going to do everything I have to in order to be the best damn dad in the world.
Even if that means—I shudder—growing up.
I’d do it.
For her.