Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
“All right. Okay. Sí, Mama, I know.” Sam shook his head. “The baby’s not even two days old. I’ve got to get her to Evan’s place, get settled, sleep one night through the night, and then we will drive home. It’ll take us about three days to get there. You’ll see her when she’s about a week old.”
“Don’t snap at me,” his mama snarled.
He closed his eyes and counted to ten before answering. “I’m not snapping at you, I’m tired, and trust me, I want to be home as much as you want us to be with you.”
She sighed softly. “It’s just not right, mi’jo, that I haven’t been able to hold her. I’ll—”
“Just think, her other grandmother? It’ll be a year, maybe, before they see her again.”
Mama stopped. He could feel her shock. He knew exactly how big her eyes were getting. “They’re going to wait that long, and we’re going to get her on her first birthday, aren’t we?”
“Mama, I don’t know. I don’t know anything. Look, Annette and Bobby…Bobby travels for work a lot. I imagine Annette would come, but she has three little ones still at home.”
“Ay de mi, three?”
“Yes. The youngest one’s only six. They’re actually talking about having one more.”
“Well, then her hands are full, and she doesn’t have to worry about Natasha, does she?” Mama could do tart like no one else.
“She’s very tickled about Natasha. You’d like her, Mama.” Annette reminded him a lot of his sister, Susan.
“I know. I know. We’ll meet her soon.”
“All right, I’ve got to get this baby in a car seat, and—”
“Did you find one you liked, then?”
He was not going to scream. Not even a little bit. “Annette dealt with everything. She brought Hillary some nursing bras and some soft clothes, along with all the onesies and diapers and shit we can possibly carry.”
“I’m so jealous, mi’jo.”
He chuckled softly. “So I shouldn’t tell you she also got the baby a fuzzy little Christmas outfit for when she comes home?”
“Argh!” She stamped her foot audibly. “I want pictures, send pictures.”
“I texted you a bunch, Mama.”
“Videos, then?”
Sam shook his head and grinned. “I’ll take tons. Don’t you worry.”
Mama sighed. “Gracias. Evan’s coming with you, si?”
“Evan is coming to stay. We’ll bring a bunch of his clothes and stuff, and then he has a few pieces of furniture and all he’ll have shipped.”
“Bueno. That way you have help driving. I like that boy.”
“He’s been solid as a rock, Mama. Now, I’ll call you when I get to Evan’s. After supper. Sí?”
“Sí, sí. I love you, mi’jo.”
“I love you, too.” He sighed with relief when he hung up, and Evan walked in with a wheelchair, raising an eyebrow.
“You okay?”
“Just dealing with my mother. I can do that anytime.” He winked and rolled his eyes. “She’s very frustrated that she hasn’t got to hold that baby yet.”
Evan let his eyes go wide, face a mockery of shock. “And, of course, all of his other four great-grandparents have been able to come see her.”
“A la maquina, I haven’t told her that. We’re just going to ignore that part.” Jesus, he could imagine. It would be all bad.
“It’ll be a while before they get to see her again in person, I bet, so she can’t be too mad.”
Sam nodded. He understood. It sucked because they had children, so they couldn’t just drop everything and visit, even with a nanny.
That didn’t mean he was going to be comfortable with his nieta flying for a little bit. There were diseases, plane crashes, drama, possibly snakes. He just didn’t like it.
They had agreed that if Bobby played in Las Vegas or Phoenix they would drive to see him.
The same if Max played anywhere that was easily drivable.
Sam wasn’t one hundred percent sure how it worked, but it seemed unlikely to happen.
He’d never heard of the college that Max was going to.
Of course, he’d never heard of there being college hockey where he lived either, although Evan insisted it happened.
“Are we ready to get this show on the road?” Evan grinned, doing a weird little dance with the wheelchair. It was kind of adorable.
“I so am. Let’s get the ladies to your place, and we can shower and nap before we have to load the car.”
Evan moved over, sans wheelchair, to give him a kiss. “It’s going to be okay. We can even take two days to load the car. I have a little hitch, so we can rent a U-Haul trailer. Whatever you need.”
Sam couldn’t imagine what all they needed to bring of Evan’s, but it wasn’t like he’d had enough time to go through and snoop. “Whatever you need, guapo. I just want to get the girls home and order a pizza.”
He would wait until he was home to New Mexico and get tacos.
“Sure. Come on.” Evan bumped hips with him before they went from the waiting room to Hillary’s room to get her loaded up.
It seemed like an age later when they got to the townhouse in the Back Bay.
Evan took about a million pictures of them going from the car to the house and inside there was a huge banner and balloons and shit that said welcome home and new baby and there was this huge stuffed bear in the chair in the foyer.
Then there had to be at least a million presents—wrapped in everything from pink to hockey to happy birthday.
Hillary stumbled, her eyes big as saucers. “What is this?”
Evan shrugged. “Annette activated the WAGs phone tree. They came through.”
She looked up at Sam, eyes huge. “Papa.”
“Breathe, mi’ja. It’s all good, no? You can go to the room and sleep. I’ll watch my nietita.”
“Yeah? I just want…”
“Go. I’ll be right here.”
Evan grinned when Hillary eased herself down the stairs, leaving them with the babies. “A bit much huh?”
Sam snorted. “I think she panicked.”
“Well, she can take it all home and open it one a day for a year if she wants to. But the WAGs do love a baby…”
“WAGs?” he teased. “Women against giraffes? Wonderous aunties gifting? Uh…Witches Able to…” Dammit, he didn’t want to use gift again.
Evan watched him, eyebrows up, as if waiting to see what he would come up with. When he shrugged as if to say, “I got nothing,” Evan cut in.
“Wives and girlfriends.”
“Ah.” Yeah, they’d talked on that before.
“As a gay man, I lobbied for spouses and partners or non-gendered significant others, but no one wanted SAPs or Nugsos.”
He hooted, kicking off his boots. “You are a nut.”
“But I’m your nut. Pizza?”
“Mhmm. Can we do it with green olives and pepperoni? Ooh…or sausage and onion? Shit, can we get a deluxe?” He sat, bringing the baby’s seat close so he could scoop her up as soon as she started to whimper.
He stared at the piles of goodies. “These people are very generous. She’s going to be writing thank you notes for a hundred years. ”
Evan blinked at him. “Seriously? You make your kid write thank-you notes?”
“Of course I do. Can you imagine what Mama would say if she didn’t?” Hillary had been raised right. “I have to send a picture of this stuff to Valerie. I have to tell you, she would be here right now, but she just got a promotion, and she’s working on a big story.”
Evan sat down next to him, tucking his phone away. “Pizza ordered. She’s not much of a maternal type, is she?”
He shook his head. “No. Tanya is, and she loves her kids, all of them. But while Valerie really does too, her first love is being a journalist, and that is her biggest passion.”
Evan tilted his head. “What’s your biggest passion?”
He thought about that a second. “My biggest passion is taking care of folks. That’s what I do.
Now, my biggest responsibility and honor is taking care of my family.
If you said, ‘In order to take care of Hillary, you would have to give up the rodeo,’ I would tell you, ‘Okay’.
This is just what I do for a living, being a good father is what I strive for. ”
Evan nodded. “But who are you?”
“I’m a family man—you, Hil, Natasha, Mama and Papa, all my sisters and brothers and the little ones. Kacey. Even the Biyaliks now. Y’all are my family, and I am here for you.”
Evan gave him this smile that was at once soft and happy and also amused. “You’re something else, Sam, something amazing, and I love that. I love you.”
“Yeah? You think you can be happy settling down and being a family man with me?”
“Fuck yes. I’ve already been talking to a lot of people, and some of what I do I can do through Zoom meetings.
I mean I’m going to have to travel a bit, but I’ve already decided I’m not going to be gone all the damn time.
” Evan reached out to play with his fingers, toying with them, thumb rubbing over the back of his hand.
That touch sent a shiver right up his arm.
Sam hummed with it, even though there was nothing they could do about it until after they ate and Hillary took the baby to bed with her, assuming she did, and that they didn’t have a slumber party in the living room.
They’d wait down here for the food, but then they’d take it upstairs.
“Vovo needs to be around for his new baby, huh?”
“Yep.” Evan said it cheerfully, popping the last p. “I am entering a whole new stage of my life. This is me being present, in the moment. I don’t want to miss a bit of this baby’s life. I don’t have to, and now that I have you, I don’t want to be alone in a hotel room someplace.”
“I hear you. When we can, I want us to travel together, you and me, and then I want us to go home during the week and see the baby.”
Evan raised his hand to his mouth and kissed the palm, which made his fingers curl a bit. Damn, this man did it for him. He still couldn’t believe it sometimes, how Evan had just moved into his life and made space in his heart and made his body sing.
“So, we make it work. We put the plan into motion, and we just hold out for how we want it to be. Shit, if I have to, I’ll hire another assistant who can do the traveling and put out the fires when these kids do stupid, asshole things.”
“I can probably help with the assistant thing if you need me to, so you can stay home more. I’ve been saving like crazy, because I’m coming up against being too old to do what I do, and—” He chewed on his bottom lip and shrugged.
“You know how it is. They don’t have retirement plans for old bull fighters.
I have some business things going, and I can sell some stuff to help, but…
well, I’m trying not to get a job, and I’ve been working with the horses a lot.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to hang out with my grandbaby, work the horses more, and make it a going thing. ”
Evan shot him a curious look, then winked. “You mean you don’t have a retirement plan in place?”
“Shut up. You know I don’t. I do have the safety equipment business and some shares of bucking bulls…
I’ve been real lucky, though. I haven’t had a bad wreck in a couple years, maybe longer.
I only had one that took me out for months.
Everybody runs out of time. Me and Kacey have been talking on it a lot, and we both got maybe five years. ”
He’d actually been thinking about three years until a certain little girl turned out pregnant, and now he was going to have another baby he was going to have to support some.
While he had no doubt Hillary would have enough for the basics, all the extras—the gymnastics classes and the dance classes and ‘Uelito, I need a pony’, and that sort of thing until Hil graduated from college with her degree? That was going to be his job.
Evan tugged his hand until they were sitting facing each other, Evan staring right into his eyes. “Well, we’re an us now, baby. What’s mine is yours.”
“That goes both ways. That’s why I said…”
Evan nodded, slate blue eyes twinkling, the scar on his cheek pulling with his smile. “Okay, but you know I made a chunk of change while I was playing, right? And I get ten percent on things like endorsements and bonuses I negotiate…”
Sam tilted his head. “I ain’t sure what you’re trying to tell me exactly, guapo. Can we be clear?”
“Baby, my net worth right now is about twenty-six million. Aside from the house, I was never a big spender.”
“?Chale!”
Sam blinked. Then he blinked again.
Oh, oh shit.
“Okay, guapo. To be honest, I got maybe two hundred thousand in the bank. That’s it. If I’m lucky, I’ll put another two away before I get hurt and retire, and that’ll be it. I need you to know that.”
Twenty-six million? ?Qué chingados? How did people even have that kind of money?
Evan had more in the bank than he was ever going to be worth, than all of them together were ever going to be worth.
“Well, my plan is that we’re going to retire together, right?
I’m in this for the long haul.” Evan squeezed his hand.
“We’ve got plenty. I’ve already made arrangements for Natasha’s college fund, too.
Not that Bobby and Annette won’t contribute to that, because they will.
I mean, Bobby is still playing, and now that he’s recovered and cleared to play, he’s not worrying about money. ”
Sam shook his head, feeling kind of stunned. “They have little ones of their own that they need to put into college.”
“Yeah, they like having babies.”
Sam had too. He’d loved raising his baby, hard or not.
Speaking of babies, his Natasha started wiggling.
“Ay, mi munequita. Tranquila, si? It’s all good. ‘Uelito’s got you.” He reached down to scoop her up. She was so tiny she fit in his hand.
He rocked her, giving her her chupete so she could suck on it. “Oh, munaquita, your mama’s gonna love you so hard. Her and your vovo and me. You’re going to have a happy life with the people who love you so much.”
Evan watched him like a hawk. “Does she look like Hil?”
“Sí, just smaller, no? Hillary was a big baby. Almost thirteen pounds. This is the littlest baby I’ve ever held. No, that’s not true. Serafina, she had the twins. They were premature and sick, and they were tiny. I rocked them a lot.”
“You did? Why you?”
He shrugged. “We didn’t want them to ever not have one of us there, so we took turns. All of us.”
Evan chuckled. “It’s good to be part of the Marrón family.”
He grinned. “There’ll be times you don’t think so, but yeah, it is. Do you want to hold her, Vovo?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Sam handed her over, then took a picture so he could send it to everybody. He sent out a mass text with the caption,
Somebody’s in love
Because it was clear Evan was completely smitten with this baby girl and he was going to be in her life no matter what. The best part was that Sam knew Evan was going to be in his life, too, and that was nothing less than a miracle, just like Natasha was.
Sam knew he was one lucky son of a bitch. Now he needed to get them all home.