Chapter 4
FOUR
ZEDEKIAH
I’m babysitting while Harper’s at work.
She hates it when I call it that. It’s your kid, too, she’s always saying.
About that…
I might’ve misled her a teensy bit.
And by misled, I mean, I might have gone into her email while we still shared a phone, deleted the actual email results from the DNA test, spoofed the email address and photoshopped a PDF with my name on it instead of his.
So as far as she knows, it’s my kid.
The baby’s been asleep for twenty minutes—a new record—which means I’ve finally got time to myself. Time to get back to what matters.
The raid’s reforming in ten, and Malik’s been on my ass all week about missing DPS checks.
I adjust my headset and pull up the game, fingers already finding their rhythm on the gaming laptop I scored a few Christmases ago from that lady before she died. The screen glows in the dim apartment, the only real light since Harper’s always on me about the electric bill.
Through the wall, Mrs. Chaudhuri’s TV blares some Bollywood soap opera. The couple upstairs is fighting again. Something crashes, followed by muffled shouting.
This studio apartment in East Austin is a shitbox.
But it’s our shitbox, and that’s what matters.
Real life is complicated and messy, sure. But I got the girl in the end, and that’s all that matters.
I always knew I was smarter than all the dipshits around me.
And look at me now—I got the girl, and I’m in a place of my own, with no one to smack me around or tell me what to do—
A whimper cuts through my concentration.
Goddammit. Fuck. Not yet.
I just put him down.
I turn up the volume on my gaming headset and pretend I don’t hear the baby’s whining. The leather presses against my ears, blocking out everything except the game.
Harper got her new gig through one of Dani’s cousins. That woman’s family network never ceases to amaze.
Dani saw Harper sketching late one night at the kitchen table—we all knew she wasn’t going to be able to keep up washing dishes at the end of the pregnancy. I figured Dani would toss us out on our asses when Harper’s belly got too big to hide from everyone at work.
Instead, she saw Harper’s sketches and got all soft about it. Then Dani introduced Harper to her cousin who owns a tattoo shop over on Fifth Street.
Harper started at the front desk, answering phones and booking appointments.
But everyone loves Harper. You can’t fucking help it. She’s got this light inside her that not even the shittiest of circumstances can put out.
Like she glows from the inside.
I saw it the moment I met her in the woods when we were twelve—this girl with leaves in her hair and a Zippo that didn’t work, looking up at me like I was something special.
Staying close to her is the only thing I’ve done right in my life.
Even if I had to do wrong to keep her.
The baby’s whimper turns into a cry.
My fingers still on the keyboard. I stare at the screen, watching my character stand there idle while the party chat lights up with messages.
Z you there?
Bro answer.
I grit my teeth and keep my eyes on the screen. “Come on, buddy. Just give me thirty minutes.”
Through the thin walls, I can hear Mrs. Chaudhuri’s TV change channels. A game show blares through the wall now, all bells and buzzers. The upstairs couple’s fight ends with a door slamming hard enough to rattle our ceiling light.
I’ve known life before Harper. Then life without her when her dad swooped in and put her underneath the same roof as that fucking stepson of his. Caleb.
Even thinking his name makes my jaw clench.
I need her more than that dumb bastard ever could. Rich fucks like him get everything in this world. The nice house. The college fund. The whole golden-boy life handed to them on a silver platter.
I wasn’t about to let him have Harper, too.
So I did what any real man would do.
I manned the fuck up and took her away from him.
Which was no easy thing to do.
The crying gets louder. More insistent.
I rock the bouncer with my foot—harder than I probably should—without looking away from the monitor. Sometimes the motion distracts the little bastard and he’ll go back to sleep. Maybe long enough so I can finish this one raid. Just this one.
The bouncer’s squeaky spring adds to the noise. Creak-creak-creak. A metronome adding to my irritation.
“Z, you there?” Malik’s voice crackles through the headset. “We’re starting invites.”
“Yeah, I’m here.” I lean forward, accepting the party invite. My eyes flick to the bouncer in my peripheral vision—the baby’s still crying, but not screaming yet. “Ready when you are.”
The studio apartment is already too small. But it feels miniature with a Goddamned baby in it. The baby shit takes up half the floor space in our “living room”—which is really just the corner by the kitchenette where we shoved the couch.
There are bottles on the counter. Diapers stacked in a corner because there’s nowhere else to put them. The Pack ’N Play where he sleeps takes up the only spot that used to be clear on the floor.
But I mean, thank fuck I’d already started putting my plan in action before she found out about the pregnancy.
I knew it would help Harper be more comfortable moving our relationship from platonic to intimate if she thought we’d already taken that step. She just needed a nudge. She had a made-up barrier in her mind—this idea that we were “just friends” even though I’d been there for her through everything.
So that third night in the hotel after I got her away from Dallas, I put a little something in the Jack to help her sleep, then poured the rest down the sink. She deserved a good night’s rest, anyway.
I just told her a little fiction the next morning.
No harm, no foul.
I didn’t, like, attack her or anything. Other than undressing her… and sure, there was that little hickey to make the fiction seem more real.
But other than that, I didn’t touch her at all. I mean, not really.
It might’ve been too soon.
I see that in hindsight.
Or maybe it was just in time, considering the pregnancy. Because thank fuck I had plausible deniability about it not being Caleb’s.
Just proves how I gotta trust my instincts more.
People whine about right and wrong like idiots.
They didn’t grow up how I did.
The only way I ate was to take food.
On screen, the raid starts. The pull timer is counting down. I’m watching my rotation, my cooldowns, and I got everything perfectly optimized.
I control my fuckin’ destiny. Online and off.
We launch the raid and I am on fucking point.
Then the baby’s cry cuts through my headset volume like nails on a chalkboard.
“Bro, mute your mic,” someone in the party says. “We can hear your kid.”
My ears burn under the headset. Goddamn it.
I slam the mute button.
As for the hickey—when Harper was there, lying out so beautiful on that hotel bed, like some fairy-tale Snow White princess—okay, fine. Maybe I got a little carried away.
But I averted my gaze when I took her clothes off and tucked her into bed. Like a gentleman. I kept my boxers on while I snuggled her warm body all night, breathing in the smell of her hair, dreaming of the life that would soon be ours.
And now it is our life. Because I made it that way.
“Z, adds on your six!” Malik shouts.
The words don’t register fast enough. I spin my character around, fingers jabbing keys, but I’m too late. Too distracted by the crying that’s getting louder and more desperate.
My health bar drops to zero.
Respawn timer: 45 seconds.
“Fuck!”
The baby screams. Full-blown, red-faced screaming that makes the neighbors bang on the wall. Three sharp knocks I know mean shut that kid up.
“Jesus Christ, can you just—”
I shove away from the desk so hard my chair rolls back and hits the kitchenette counter. I reach down to the bouncer.
“—shut up for five minutes?”
The kid’s face is purple and scrunched, fists waving, legs kicking like he’s trying to fight his way out of the straps. The pacifier’s on the floor next to him, covered in hair and crumbs from God knows what.
I pick it up, wipe it on my shirt, and shove it back in his mouth.
He immediately spits it out and screams louder.
The sound bounces off the walls of the tiny shitbox apartment, amplifying until it feels like it’s coming from inside my skull. Mrs. Chaudhuri’s TV goes quiet. Even the upstairs neighbors have stopped moving around.
Everyone can hear it.
Everyone knows.
I glare down at the baby, feeling so furious I want to fucking scream right back in its face. See how it likes it.
Because of course my perfect plan couldn’t come off completely scot-free. That bastard Caleb is still trying to hold onto my woman with his Goddamn tentacles even after I won. Greedy fucker.
I should have convinced her to abort it.
But by then she thought it was mine, and I saw how the kid could act as glue, securing her to my side forever. Especially when things were still so tentative between us. I saw a path and I took it, pretending to be so excited about being a father. But Jesus Christ—
“Dude, what do you want?” I finally yell at the baby, not caring anymore if the neighbors hear. “You have everything. Food. Toys. You’re not even wet!”
I checked. Like, two hours ago.
Maybe three.
The baby just screams louder in response. His face gets darker, fists pumping.
Three more bangs on the wall. Harder this time.
The screen behind me flashes red. We wiped. The whole raid wiped.
“Z, you coming back or what?” Malik asks through the headset.
I look at the baby, his face red and wet with tears and snot.
Then at the screen, where my character’s corpse is lying on the ground.
Then back at the baby.
It’s not even looking at me. Just wailing at the ceiling like I’m not even here. Ungrateful little shit.
“Give me five,” I tell Malik, and rip off the headset.
I grab the bottle from the counter. It’s sitting next to the sink where I left it this morning.
Or maybe last night.
Whatever. Formula doesn’t go bad that fast, right? It’s not real milk.