Chapter Twenty-Six #3
Every thought leaves my head. I look at Michael, then Blaire, then the baby.
“Me?”
Blaire laughs softly. “No, the other Rose standing behind you.”
“You’re serious?”
“Come here.”
My feet finally start working again as I cross the room, and suddenly I’m terrified of everything. She’s so small. I knew babies were small, obviously. I’m not an idiot. But this seems unreasonable. Nobody should be allowed to hand me a person this tiny without at least making me sign a waiver.
“You’re sure?”
Blaire gives me a look. “Rosalie.”
“Okay. Right. Sorry.”
I sit carefully in the chair beside the bed, and Jackson moves with me. His hand brushes across my shoulder as he steps behind me, and it’s trembling.
Blaire leans toward me, and I watch every movement as she lowers this impossibly tiny person into my arms. The second her weight settles against me, every muscle in my body locks.
"Oh."
She's warm. That's my first coherent thought. Warm and tiny and real, with her little face all scrunched up and one miniature fist tucked beside her cheek.
Then her mouth moves, just a tiny little pout, and I fucking lose it.
“Oh my GOD!” I immediately slap a hand over my mouth, then panic because I am holding a newborn and perhaps removing one of the hands involved in that operation was not my finest decision.
I put it right back where Blaire positioned it.
“Sorry. Sorry, baby. Auntie is loud. You’re going to learn that very quickly. ”
Blaire starts laughing from the bed while I stare down at this baby like I've never seen a human being before.
"Michael, look at her."
"I've seen her, Rose."
"No, look at her again. Look at this fucking baby."
"Language," he says automatically.
I whip my head toward him. "She doesn't speak English. She's thirty minutes old." Then I tilt my head as I reconsider. "But that's actually a valid point. We all drop at least a dozen F-bombs a day. This child is fucked."
"Rough fucking roads ahead," Blaire says with a smirk.
Michael slowly turns his head toward his wife.
She blinks at him. "What?"
"You couldn't even make it ten seconds."
"I just pushed your daughter out of my vagina, Bennet. I'm not accepting performance reviews tonight."
Jackson laughs behind me, and I look back down at the tiny person whose future vocabulary is clearly doomed.
"Oh my God, Mikey. You made this." I start crying harder, which is impressive because I genuinely thought my tear ducts had exhausted their operating budget for the evening. "You and Blaire made a whole fucking person. Look at her nose. Whose nose is that?"
"I don't know."
"How do you not know? You've had her for half an hour."
"Sorry, I haven't completed the inventory yet."
I laugh through a sob and carefully touch one finger to her tiny fist. It closes around me. That's it. I'm done.
"Oh, fuck off."
"Rose," Michael warns again, but he's laughing now.
"She grabbed me!" I look at everyone in the room because they all need to be notified immediately. "Did you see that? She grabbed my finger."
"I saw it, baby," Jackson says.
"Hi, Jaxon." I sniff hard and wipe my cheek against my shoulder because both hands are currently occupied with extremely important aunt business.
"I'm your Aunt Rose, and I'm going to tell you right now, your parents have already started putting completely unreasonable restrictions on our relationship. "
"Oh Jesus," Michael mutters.
"No pony, apparently. You're not even an hour old and they've taken horseback riding off the table."
"Rose."
"It's fine. Auntie has lawyers."
"You are the lawyer."
"Exactly. We're already ahead."
Blaire is laughing hard enough now that she has to hold her stomach. "Please don't make me laugh. Everything hurts."
"Sorry." I immediately sober. "Don't laugh. Nobody make the woman laugh. She just expelled a person."
"Expelled?" Jackson repeats behind me.
"I don't know. My vocabulary is gone. Look at this baby."
I turn slightly so he can see her better, and that's when I notice his face.
Oh, fuck. Jackson is crying. Not cute little glassy eyes either. Actual tears are running down his cheeks while he stares at Jaxon in my arms.
And considering what we were talking about before Michael and Joe tried to beat our front door down...
Well.
That's going directly into the part of my brain I'm not touching tonight.
I look back down at my niece before I start another emotional wildfire.
"You're perfect," I whisper to her, still smiling like an absolute lunatic. "Your Aunt Rose is going to be a terrible influence on you."
"Finally, something we agree on," Michael says.
I lift my middle finger at him without taking my eyes off the baby.
"Great role modeling," he says.
"She's asleep."
"She's doomed."
"She's mine."
"She's literally mine." he argues.
"Don't you fucking ruin this for me, Michael."
Michael closes his eyes. "We're never going to stop cursing, are we?"
"No," Jackson, Blaire, and I answer together.
"Great."
"We can start a swear jar," I offer.
Blaire snorts. "We'd bankrupt ourselves."
Valid.
Very rough fucking roads ahead.