Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Daisy
“We’re havin’ a baby!” Owen announces, bounding into the quiet waiting room where our family is gathered to wait for the birth of my brother, Cal, and his wife, Charlie's, baby girl.
He’s in his uniform and loaded up with more balloons than is sane. His playful energy lights up every face in the room.
I’ve learned to expect nothing less from Officer Swift.
The man is charm personified. As much as I hate to admit it, it’s his gift. He brings a smile to everyone’s face. If you’re at your lowest, Owen will show you the light and help you crawl out of your despair. Not that I’d ever tell him that.
Mom fawns all over him. Sawyer, my best friend, Mia’s, two-and-a-half-year-old, is in awe over the pink bundle of helium fun he walked in with, but I keep my face buried in my phone, pretending I haven’t noticed him.
Owen and I have only been home from our long weekend with my family in New York for a few days, and I’m still reeling from our time together.
Declarations were made. He informed me that he was mine and when I was ready to admit it, I was his, he’d be waiting.
It was a lot. What most women dream of scared the shit out of me. I’m nowhere near ready to face him.
However, Owen, being Owen, makes a point of demanding my attention by taking the seat to my right and setting the enormous balloon bouquet at our feet, letting his absurd display infiltrate my space.
Batting the balloons out of my face, I stupidly acknowledge him. “Swift, why do you have to be so annoying?”
“Oh, sorry. Didn’t notice you there, Clover.”
Owen has called me his four-leaf clover, or simply Clover, since I was in the sixth grade.
He claims that when I was a kid, if he was having a crappy baseball game, I would show up and he’d hit a homer.
If he had been trying to get a girl's number and was striking out, I’d walk into the room and he’d get those digits.
And far too often, my embarrassing moments have brought him more luck than I’d care to admit.
Like the time we were playing Flip Cup and a bird shit on my head and he got the upper hand and won.
At the start, I was too young for the nickname to be anything other than innocent. The older we got, the more it turned into a tease. As an adult woman, the childhood nickname and Owen annoy me just as much as my brothers Knox, Cal, and Angus do.
To say things between us are complicated would be an understatement.
He's my brother's best friend. A member of our family. And yet, it’s a constant struggle not to reach for him when the pull between us is so strong. Yet, somehow, I manage.
Except when I don’t. Like our stolen moments in the dark.
Or a long weekend in New York. A trip to Los Angeles. Or a week in Hawaii.
Owen parts the balloons, sticking his face through the monstrosity. Being the idiot I am, I turn to face him and his viciously handsome face.
“Missed you,” he says, dimples on display.
“Would you be quiet?” I hiss, refusing to smile back.
His delight doesn’t subside, but he speaks in a whisper. “I’m just so damned happy to see you and meet the baby.”
My traitorous stomach flips. He’s always so earnest that my heart doesn’t know how to resist him. Still, there will never be anything real between us, no matter how diluted his mind is. So, why tell me he’s happy to see me? Didn’t he say enough in New York?
“Seriously, Owen. Look around you. Is this tiny room the place for you and your crazy?”
“Aw, you missed me too.”
“You need help, my friend.”
Luckily, Sawyer is distracting the other adults in the room. Nobody is paying us any attention.
He bats a balloon out of his face and into mine. “You’re right, I do. Wanna come over later and help me put Aquaphor on my tattoo?”
Owen and his damn tattoo! The man is pushing me to the brink of insanity.
“Sorry, you’re on your own there. Wasn’t it you who taught me that if you make stupid choices... you have to deal with the consequences?”
What a lame-ass comeback.
“As long as you know every time I lube it up, I’m thinking of you.” He places his hand over his heart, where his new ink resides. “And you loved fucking around and finding out. Those are facts.”
My mouth falls open, but I’m not sure why I’m so surprised. This is what he does. He pushes. I tell him to watch what he’s saying around my family, and he pushes it as far as he can.
“You’re deranged.”
“And you love it.”
“Keep telling yourself that.”
“Have you given any thought to what we talked about in New York?”
I roll my eyes in reply. Hoping he can’t see through my bullshit, because the truth is it’s all I’ve thought about. There’s no way I would ever confess that to him, though. I wish I could live in the same fairy tale world he lives in, but here in reality, this thing between us will never work.
“Take all the time you need. We’ve taken this long. Like I told you, I’m stuck. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’ve been stuck on you for years now. There’s no one else for me. I’m fucking stuck. Waiting for you.”
His words from three days ago hurt my heart, so I shove them to the back of my mind.
“I hope you're comfortable. You’re gonna be waiting a while,” I say softly. I’m not trying to hurt him, but I refuse to lead him on.
“Sweetheart, there’s nothing comfortable about being this close to you.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’ve always got a semi when I look at you. It’s really uncomfortable with all this gear on.”
“Lun-a-tic,” I reply before shifting the balloons until they block him from view.
Sawyer whines, stealing my attention from the ridiculous man next to me. Mia picks him up and walks in circles around the waiting room. He lays his head on her shoulder, and within a couple of minutes, he’s out for the count.
“Sorry about that. He’s exhausted after his big day with the horses,” she whispers.
“No need to explain,” Mom comforts her.
She continues to walk back and forth, gently bouncing him. “He’s not as light as he used to be.”
“I can take him,” Knox offers tentatively.
“You sure?”
Standing, he holds his hands out in answer. They transfer the sleeping toddler, and Knox starts his own laps around the room, only he holds the back of Sawyer’s head as though he’s an infant.
It’s adorable.
Once he’s convinced Sawyer won’t wake up, he sits back down in the seat to my left, being ever so careful not to wake his boy.
My heart splinters watching them together.
Did I mention my best friend and my brother, Angus, have apparently been in love forever and are now an item?
The kicker... her son’s father is my oldest brother Knox.
Yes, you heard me right. After a ninety-second hookup in a bathroom with Knox, she ended up pregnant with Sawyer. She refused to tell anyone who the father was. If she and Angus hadn’t gotten together, the truth might never have come out.
Knox lost the first two and a half years of his child's life. He’ll never get that back.
Mia is my sister from another mister. I love her like family, but I’ve had a hard time getting over what she did not just to Knox, but to all of us.
Yes, Mia and Sawyer are always around, but my mom was a grandmother and didn’t know it.
We didn’t get to call him our own. It’s taken some time, but we’re good again.
From the outside looking in, Mia falling in love and living with one brother but having a child with another seems insane, but Sawyer’s a pretty lucky kid to have both Knox and Angus as his dads.
From the looks of it, Knox is going to take Sawyer home with him and his girlfriend, Ryan.
This will be his first sleepover with his son.
The room has fallen silent as we all watch the touching moment.
Once Angus, Knox, Ryan, and Sawyer leave, Mia falls into an empty chair, instantly covering her face with her hands, her body shaking with sobs.
In unison, Mom and I rise from our chairs and take a seat on either side of her. Mom rubs circles on her back, and I take her hand in mine.
“It’s gonna be okay. Ryan will be there to supervise,” I say, trying to reassure her.
She shakes her head back and forth. Finally uncovering her face, she looks at me. “It’s not that. I’m such a horrible person. How could I have kept the two of them apart? What was I thinking?”
It’s Mom who answers her. “Us mamas will do anything to protect our babies. We may get it wrong from time to time, but it is always with the best of intentions.”
“You give me too much grace, Sharon. What I did was wrong.”
“It was. But you’ve made amends, and you can’t let guilt take over your life. All that matters is the here and now and how you all move forward to take care of my grandbaby.”
“Mom's right,” I chime in. “What’s done is done. We all deserve to be happy, including you.”
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, the reality of what I said hits me square in the chest, and my gaze wanders toward the beautiful man in uniform surrounded by pink staring right back at me.
It’s clear he heard what I said, because the lift of his eyebrow says I need to take my own advice.
If only life were that easy.