While We Waited (The Reed Brothers #8) (9 page)

“Oh.” I forgot about that in the melee. And the subsequent calm after the storm. I unzip my hoodie and pull the shoulder back.

“She got you pretty good,” he says. His fingertips tickle a slow path over my shoulder and I shiver.

“I’ve had worse.”

“I’m sure you have.”

I look up at him. He wets a paper towel and wipes away the sticky ooze that has seeped from the small wound.

“It didn’t go very deep,” he says.

I snort. “That’s what she said.”

His cheeks redden, but a smile tugs at the corners of his lips. “Why do you do that?” he asks, shaking his head.

“Do what?”

“Deflect with humor when someone tries to care for you.”

“Dude, you’ve known me for half a second,” I remind him, my ire rising.

“Tell it to someone who has never been inside you,” he says slowly, looking into my eyes.

My heart lurches. “I’m ready to go home.”

He reaches past me to throw the damp paper towel away. His arm grazes my boob and he freezes. “Sorry,” he says, blushing.

“You totally just did the boob graze. That’s, like, the oldest trick in the book.”

He laughs. “Yet I’ve never done it before.”

“Liar.”

He arches his brow and looks down at me. “I have never grazed a boob that no one asked me to graze.”

“So I get to be your first.”

Heat creeps up his cheeks again. He’s not a virgin. He has a kid, for Christ’s sake. Not to mention that he fucked the shit out of me that night.

We walk quietly toward the exit, and a few of the residents call out thanks for the flowers. I wave at them and keep walking.

When we get out on the street, I wince and ask him, “You won’t tell my sisters about what happened today, will you?”

He looks confused. “Why don’t you want them to know?”

I shrug. “They worry.”

“They
should
. She could have hurt you, really hurt you.”

I nod. It’s not anything I’m not used to.

“Let’s make a deal, okay?” He looks at me, his gaze hopeful. “If you’ll bring me with you when you come visit, I won’t tell anyone.”

I roll my eyes. “I told you I don’t need a chaperone.”

“I don’t have to hang out with you,” he counters. “I can go visit the other residents. I like talking to people.” He shrugs.

“That’s all it is? You’re not trying to be a macho save-the-damsel bullshit-slinger?”

He puffs out his chest. “Macho, yes. Crap-slinger? Not right this second.” He nudges my shoulder with his. “Bring me with you. Please.” He puts his hands together like he’s praying.

“Fine.” But a grin tips the corners of my mouth. “Does this mean we have a date?” I nudge his shoulder this time.

“Do you want it to be a date?”

Do I? Two hours ago, I would have said
fuck no
. But today…after what he did for me with my mom? And after?

“Maybe,” I say quietly.

“Then it’s a date.”

My skin feels too tight and my heart trips a beat. “I’ll think about it,” I whisper.

Tag

Fin and I get back to the apartment and I find Benji asleep in his portable crib. Wren borrowed it from Peck, who also has a new baby. I didn’t have more than a pack of diapers, some formula, and a few pieces of clothing that the nurse passed over in one of those giveaway diaper bags.

And no money to buy anything. I am going to have to find a job. Quickly. But in order to find a job, I’ll also have to find someone to care for Benji.

I have to make a lot of plans and figure out what I’m going to do going forward.

I go into the bathroom, turn on the shower, and think.

Benji.

Job.

Money.

Babysitter.

…Finch.

I stop, brace my hands on the counter, and stare at my reflection.

Finch is a problem I didn’t anticipate.

Before Finny, I’d only slept with one woman my whole life. There had never been another for me, so it surprised the heck out of me when just looking at Finch took my breath. I can still feel her wrapped around me. Then when I held her at the assisted living facility… The sixty seconds I held her in my arms lasted for the duration of an eye-blink, it seemed.

An eye-blink that rocked my world.

I knew there was something powerful between us. I just didn’t realize how powerful. I pulled her against me, hoping just to help her calm down, to center herself. But it was me that went sideways when I held her in my arms.

And now I’m naked in the bathroom getting hard again at the thought of holding her in my arms. We were in a public hallway. She’d just been stabbed by her mother. And I was hard as steel then, and hard as steel now.

Finch is a tiny little thing. Her long dark hair was piled on top of her head in that awkward bun, and I know it hangs down over her shoulders when she sets it free. In my mind, I can still see it spread out over her pillow. I love dragging my fingers through her hair. But since it was pulled up in a bun when I held her, I let myself drag my fingertips up and down the ridges of her spine instead.

I’d halfway expected her to slap me, but I’m not even sure she noticed how she affected me. I’m sure I was just something to do. An easy fuck. Right. I
hope
she didn’t notice the way she affected me. She’ll think I have bad intentions, and I don’t. I don’t have any intentions at all.

Or at least I didn’t.

Now my only intention is going to be to stay the heck away from Finch Vasquez. Because I feel a connection to her. And connections are scary and dangerous and they make you stupid. I can’t afford to be stupid. I have Benji to take care of, and I can’t let anything affect the fact that I currently have a roof over his head, some formula to put in his belly, and diapers to cover his behind, but…

…I could lose everything if I’m not careful. And that means I have to be very careful with Finch.

I push the thoughts of her to the side, because she belongs behind a door labeled Happiness, and that door has been firmly locked to me my whole life. I’ve never been given the key, and I doubt I ever will.

Finch

There’s a quick rap on the front door and I jump up to go to my room, but just as quickly the lock turns and the door opens. Peck and Star walk into the room, and they’re carrying lots and lots of shopping bags. Peck has a carrier with her baby in it, and Wren immediately goes to get him out of it.

“You t-take Sammy out and he’s going to w-wake up hungry,” Peck warns.

I look around at all the junk. “Are you doing meals on wheels again?”

Star shakes her head. “We went baby shopping.” She grins.

“You’re barely pregnant,” I scold.

“It’s not for me, dummy,” Star says. “It’s all for Tag and his baby.”

I wave my hand over the piles and piles of stuff. “You bought all this for that little thing in there?” I jerk my thumb toward Tag’s room.

“Well, Tag didn’t have anything with him. We thought he could use some stuff.” Star shrugs.

“Wait a minute!” I cry. “Aren’t you supposed to be on your honeymoon? Why the fuck are you out shopping instead of screwing that amazingly sexy husband of yours?”

She winces. “Oh my god,” she breathes. “My vagina is sore already. I couldn’t go one more time on that swing.” She grins. “Well, not until tonight, anyway.”

“So the swing was a hit?” I ask.

“Oh hell yeah! You can do some crazy shit with that thing. Upside down. Right side up. Backward. Forward. You name it.”

Sammy starts to cry, and Peck holds out her arms to take him from Wren. “I w-warned you,” she says. Then she sits down and lifts her shirt. He makes a sweet little humming sound as he finds his breakfast. Wren rubs his head. “Be quick about it, dude,” she says. “Aunty Wren wants to play with you.” He pops off Peck’s boob long enough to grin at Wren. Then he turns his head and dives back in.

A noise sounds from Tag’s room.

“Oh, another baby! I’ll go get that one!” Wren cries.

“There are entirely too many children in this apartment,” I grumble.

Wren comes back carrying Benji, and she has the back of her hand pressed against his forehead. “Does he feel warm to you?” she asks. She lowers him like she wants me to take him.

“Oh, hell no,” I say.

“Take him. Feel his forehead,” she insists.

Begrudgingly, I take him from her and set him in my lap. He looks up at me and immediately starts to cry.

“She makes
me
feel like that too,” Star tells him.

“Here, you take it.” I hold him out toward Star. She has baby fever, so I assume she’ll take him, but she jumps up and starts to sort through bags of baby stuff instead. “Hel-loooo,” I cry. Everyone ignores me.

I feel a little wobbly with him in my arms and I’m afraid I’ll drop him, so I pull him closer to me. He settles his little head against my shoulder and I look down my nose at him. The weight of him in my arms feels awkward.

“He does feel warm,” I say. “You don’t think he’s getting sick, do you?”

Star unwraps little sleepers and blankets and then takes them to put them in the wash.

“Shouldn’t you ask Tag if he
wants
that stuff?” I say.

“It’s just some used crap that my neighbor was throwing out.” Star grins at me as she comes back into the room. She hides all the empty packages in the trashcan, burying them deep. “And it’s not like he doesn’t need it. I don’t think he has much.”

“Except for Wren’s fifty thousand dollars,” I remind her.

“I used that to get Benji from Julia,” a deep voice says from behind me.

I jump, and the baby jumps too. I pat his back to calm him down.

“Who’s Julia?” Star asks.

“His mother,” Tag answers. He’s wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, and he doesn’t have shoes or socks on. He rubs a towel across his wet hair, chafing it briskly.

“Where is she?” Star asks.

“I have no idea.” He sits down next to me on the couch and smiles at his son. “I didn’t think you like babies,” he says to me.

“I don’t,” I grumble. But the baby’s being so still and calm. I hold him, because I want to hear the story about the mother of Tag’s child.

“Well, babies like you,” he says. Then he tweaks the end of my nose with the tip of his finger.

I reach up and cover my nose. I can’t believe he just did that. I catch my sisters looking at one another with shocked expressions. “Shut it,” I say to them all.

Peck pops her baby off her boob and switches sides, all beneath a blanket that Star handed her from her bag. “So she’s not coming b-back?” Peck asks.

He shakes his head. “No.”

Star asks softly, “Do you want her to?”

“I did. Even after all that happened, I wanted her to come back. But she’d moved on. It was my own fault, I think.”

So you just offered her fifty thousand dollars and she gave you the baby?” I ask.

“No.” He scratches his head. “There was a little more to it than that. But to make a long story short, I’m broke and I have Benji.” He shrugs. He looks down at Benji, who is starting to fidget in my arms. “Does he look warm to you?”

Benji is still fretful, so Tag gets up and fetches a bottle. I expect him to take the baby from me, but he just warms the bottle and then hands it to me. I look up at him like I’m lost, because I am.

Tag adjusts Benji in my arms so that he’s reclining a little, and he sticks the bottle into his mouth. Tag grins at me. “I had to figure it all out too,” he says. “I’m still learning.”

“I don’t particularly want to learn,” I grumble.

He laughs. “He likes you,” he says quietly.

“Well, that’s one of us,” I toss back.

I try to maintain my aloofness, but I find that I kind of like the little guy.

Tag’s leg is pressed along the length of mine, and my shoulder touches his arm. He could move over some. There’s room on the other side of him.

“We brought you some baby stuff,” Star tells him. “You didn’t look like you had much with you.”

He heaves a sigh. “I don’t have much. But you really didn’t have to do that.”

She waves a breezy hand through the air. “Oh, it was nothing. Just some stuff my neighbor was tossing out.”

“Liar,” he says.

She grins. “Whatever.”

They sit and talk quietly while I finish feeding Benji. When his bottle is empty and his eyes are heavy, Tag adjusts him on my shoulder and picks up my hand to show me how to burp him. “Is he going to throw up on me?” I ask, panicking a little.

Peck tosses him a burp cloth and he slides it between my shirt and his kid’s face. I relax a little. Then the little guy lets out the biggest burp I ever heard. I’m about to sit him back from me so I can give him some serious props for that massive burp, but before I can move him far enough he spits up on me. White stuff flies out of his mouth and onto my shirt.