“Thanks, Mom.”
“But Abraham?”
“Yeah?”
“Something goes wrong with you two?” she said as she pulled away and moved toward the back door. “You don’t bring that shit to my table, you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
Mom left me on the back porch, staring at the beer in my hands. That had gone a lot easier than I’d envisioned.
I set the warming beers back in the cooler and grabbed a couple new ones to take inside.
“All good?” Alex asked as he passed me on his way to get drinks.
“Yep.”
I found Ani sitting with an empty chair beside her and grinned as I sat down. I was pretty sure Alex had been sitting there before I came in. He was going to be irritated as shit to sit between Gavin and my aunt Ellie in the only spot left. Gavin couldn’t keep his food on his plate, and Aunt Ellie kept asking Alex when he was going to find a nice girl.
“Your brother’s going to kill you,” Ani said with a smile as I set her beer in front of her.
When she looked at me, my tongue got stuck to the roof of my mouth. Shit, she was pretty. Her hair was crazy around her face, and she wasn’t wearing any makeup since we were only having family dinner before we headed back to her place. She wasn’t even showing any skin in the concert T-shirt she was wearing. But shit, was she pretty.
Ani went still as I leaned forward and raised my hand, gently nudging her septum ring down until it hung beneath her nose.
“Bram,” she said quietly, her eyes darting around the table as my thumb swept over her cheek.
I leaned closer.
“They already know it’s there, baby,” I teased, watching her eyes grow wide. “Might as well flaunt it.”
I kissed her softly.
I knew then that something had shifted. Hell, I’d known it the minute Henry slapped her ass and I’d wanted to choke him to death with his own hands.
Even if I said it a thousand times, I wasn’t just fucking Ani. It never could have been that, and I was an idiot for assuming it could. Our lives were intertwined. I cared too much before we’d started sleeping together. There was no way I was going to be able to shut that off once I’d been inside her.
We liked the same things. Liked each other. There wouldn’t be any talk of kids or pressure to move her into my place when she had her own cool-as-fuck house. She was pretty much perfect for me, and knowing that was almost a relief. I could stop fighting it. My body actually relaxed at the thought.
“We’re together, yeah?” I asked, leaning my forehead against hers.
“I think once we started sleeping in the same bed most nights, we were together,” she replied quietly.
“I’m a little slow on the uptake.”
“That’s okay.” She wrinkled her nose and grinned at me, and my stomach flipped.
“Gross, Uncle Bram!” Keller yelled as I leaned in to kiss her again.
The table grew loud as everyone dug into their dinners. Fifteen conversations were going on at once, but I could barely pay attention to any of them because Ani’s hand was resting on my thigh underneath the table. She wasn’t trying to turn me on—she wouldn’t do that in my parents’ house—it was more of a comfort thing.
She finally had permission to touch me whenever she wanted, and she was using it.
“Ani, I think your phone’s ringing,” Alex called from down the table. “Did you leave it in the kitchen?”
“Oh shit,” Ani mumbled, her hand sliding off my leg as she jumped to her feet. “Sorry, I have to get that.”
She left the room, and conversation started up again at the table, but I couldn’t focus. Who was calling her on the weekend? Everyone she talked to was already here. I watched the door, but it was almost twenty minutes before she came back in, looking completely shell-shocked.
“Ani?” my Aunt Ellie asked as I got slowly to my feet.
“What’s wrong?” Kate got up from her seat as well.
“Uh…” Ani looked around the table, then stopped with her eyes on my mom. “I’m going to be a mom.”
“What?” my mom whispered as she pushed herself up out of her seat.
“I’m adopting a baby.” Ani’s eyes watered as her face broke out in the biggest grin I’d ever seen, and everyone surged up from their places at the table and started talking all at once.
They were asking her the specifics, when she was getting the baby, who the baby was, and how it happened.
All I could do was stand there, my fingers clenching against the edge of the table as I watched her, white noise filling my head.
It was over. Jesus Christ, it had just started, and it was already fucking over.
And I was such a fucking idiot for letting any of it happen in the first place.
* * *
Dinner after that was filled with talk of Ani’s new baby.
A fucking baby.
What the hell was she thinking?
I knew from bits and pieces of her conversations with the people around the table that she was going to take her sister’s kid in. Apparently the girl had called Ani and asked her if she could, then called back a few hours later demanding an answer.
So many things could go wrong.
Ani’s hand fell lightly into my lap again, and I didn’t move it. My mom had asked me to keep our shit from her table less than an hour before, and I’d told her that I would.
I didn’t want to.
I wanted to drag Ani out of the house and fucking shake her.
That kid could come out with a whole host of medical problems. Her little sister could change her fucking mind. The baby’s dad could step in and say he wanted it. If she did this, she’d never escape her birth mother. She’d always be there in the goddamn wings, reminding Ani of how she’d thrown her own daughter away.
It was the most ridiculous plan I’d ever heard in my life, and I was practically vibrating with the need to start laughing as the shit show at the dinner table played out.
She didn’t even know if it was a boy or girl. Her house was a fucking disaster. She had zero experience with taking care of a baby and had a goddamn full-time job.
“Hey, you okay?” Ani asked, turning to me as my brother and Shane started clearing the table. Her eyes were shining, and she couldn’t seem to keep a smile off her face.
“Fine,” I answered with a nod, clearing my throat. What the hell was I supposed to say?
“I think I’m going to head home,” she said with an overwhelmed sigh. “Oh shit. I rode with Alex.”
“It’s all right, I’ll take you,” I said, the words flowing out of my mouth before I could change my mind.
“Ani,” my dad called as we stood from the table and started saying our good-byes. “You clean out a bedroom. Me and Dan’ll bring all the boys by tomorrow and get it finished up for you.”
“Are you sure?” Ani stuttered through her words. “It needs to be painted and the floors done and everything.”
“Well, we’ll get the walls done tomorrow. Come back the next day for the floors,” Uncle Dan piped in with a smile.
“Okay,” Ani said, her voice high. “That would be rad. Thank you.”
I ushered her out of the house before they could waylay her with anything else. I needed to get the fuck out of there before I blew. Now I had to go to her house for the next two days to prepare for a baby that I thought was a really fucking bad idea? There was no way my dad and Uncle Dan would let me out of it without giving me a huge ration of shit. I clenched my teeth hard as we climbed in my truck and drove back to Ani’s place.
I’d talk her out of it once we were alone and she wasn’t surrounded by offers of help and congratulations.
“Hey,” Ani called as I rounded the hood of my truck, jumping into my arms like a spider monkey. “I don’t know if being able to touch each other during family events is any better than not touching,” she said with a small laugh. “I’ve wanted you all day.”
She leaned in to kiss m
e, and I inhaled deeply. She always smelled so good. I’d miss that.
“Let’s get inside,” I said gruffly, grabbing ahold of her ass so I could walk us to the front door. “Keys?”
As soon as we were inside, it was like the floodgates opened.
Ani danced around the house, cleaning up Henry’s mess from that morning and racing around to pick up random dish towels and shoes. She was talking about the baby—some shit about her sister and how soon she’d go into labor—but I swear to God I barely heard a word she said.
She was so happy. I’d never seen her so bubbly and excited, and I hated that I was going to have to stop all that. When I finally couldn’t keep my mouth shut any longer, I grabbed her by the hand and wrapped an arm around her waist.
“You really think this is a good idea?” I blurted out, no buildup whatsoever.
“What?” Ani laughed nervously, pulling away from me. “What do you mean?”
“This whole—” I threw my arm out to the side. “—baby thing.”
“Do I think it’s a good idea?” she asked incredulously. “Uh, yeah. Or I wouldn’t be doing it.”
She took a couple steps away from me, and I clenched my hands into fists at my sides.
“You’re just going to take in some baby that you know nothing about? Just like that? No thinking it over or planning ahead?”
“It’ll be a newborn, Bram,” she said slowly. “No one knows anything about it yet.”
“What if your sister’s a cokehead?”
“That’s a shitty thing to say.”
“She got pregnant at what, fourteen years old?”
“You are such a dick!” she hissed. “Sometimes I forget that, and then you open your mouth and I’m reminded all over again.”
“Oh, I’m a dick?”
“How is this even any of your business?” she shot back, crossing her arms over her chest.
“I’m your man!” I yelled, so fucking frustrated I wanted to pull my hair out. I’d been listening to baby shit for over two hours, and I was done. “You didn’t say shit to me about this, and then you’re just announcing it at the fucking dinner table?”
“I just found out today!” she yelled back. “And when she asked me, you were still maintaining the illusion that we weren’t in a relationship!”
“What, so now I’m supposed to play daddy to your kid?”
“I didn’t expect you to do anything,” she said quietly, her face twisting into a grimace. “Don’t worry, Bram, Maury says you are not the father.”
“This is so fucking insane,” I ground out, shaking my head. I ran my hands through my beard and then up over my head. “The whole reason we started hooking up was because I could fuck you without having to deal with baby drama.”
I knew the words were shitty the minute they rolled off my tongue, but I had no chance to take them back.
“Get out,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “Get the fuck out of my house.”
“That came out—”
“Get out of my house, Abraham,” she said a little louder.
I stared at her for a long moment, wondering what the fuck I could do to make her change her mind. We were good—just the two of us. At least for as long as whatever it was between us lasted. We had fun together. Made each other laugh. Got into fights and made up between the sheets. She was the best lay I’d ever had.
A baby would change all that.
Chapter 10
Anita
Henry came flying in the door less than ten minutes after Bram left my house. I was still standing in the center of the room, my arms wrapped around my chest and my heart racing. But I wasn’t crying. I wouldn’t.
“Honey, I’m home!” Henry called out cheerfully as he saw me. “Where’s Bram, little mama?”
Hen’s face fell when I didn’t immediately answer him.
“Anita Bonita?” he said gently. “Where’s Abraham?”
“He left,” I said with a humorless laugh, shrugging my shoulders. “He’s not ready to play the Mike to my Carol.”
“What?”
“Brady Bunch reference,” I said distractedly, walking toward my hallway. “Obviously.”
“Right,” Henry said slowly. “Not sure how I missed that one.”
The bedrooms in my house were tiny. At one point, there had been four and a bathroom, but sometime in the ’70s, the previous owners had remodeled the front two bedrooms into a master with a connected second bathroom. So I only had two bedrooms to choose from for the baby’s room.
I knew without even looking which bedroom I would choose. It was bright, with two tall windows that I’d have to get child locks for at some point, and was directly across from my bedroom. There was no closet, but I didn’t think that really mattered. If he or she needed one at some point, I knew Trev would help me frame one in. He was good with shit like that.
I wondered what Trev thought about me adopting a baby. He’d been kind of quiet lately, and he hadn’t even discussed the whole Bram scenario with me yet—but I knew he would. As soon as we had a chance to talk without fifteen people butting in, he’d corner me.
“This one, huh?” Henry asked, stepping into the room behind me. I’d forgotten he was even in the house as I’d looked around the baby’s room, imagining where I would put everything. “Cool windows.”
“I know, right?” I said, smiling up at him.
“So…you wanna talk about it?” he murmured, glancing down at me.
“Not even a little bit.”
“You want to drink beer and clean out this room and not talk about it?”
“Yes, please.”
“Then I’ll go get beer.” He wrapped a clumsy arm around my head and kissed the top of it before ambling back out of the room.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to form a game plan in my head for clearing out the room—but I couldn’t. I couldn’t think about anything except the way Bram had stared at me incredulously as I’d made the baby announcement earlier that night. The way he’d picked apart the decision, echoing my own thoughts with every word out of his mouth.
He was right. I didn’t know if the baby would have health problems. Adopting a baby from a family member was a huge gamble normally, and it was even more of a gamble when you took my history into account. I was jumping into something and I had no clue how far I’d fall. I was terrified.
But this was my chance. The chance I’d never thought I’d have. I had to take it.
* * *
I was up and ready early the next morning as the guys started showing up at my house. I’d already sent Hen to get some donuts and coffee, so we were all set to get painting as soon as I’d actually bought the paint.
“Uh, we overlooked a small detail,” I said to Dan as he hugged me hello. “I don’t have any paint.”
“I figured that,” he said with a chuckle, patting me on the back. “The rest of ’em will start taping off around the walls while we head in and get some. You know what you want?”
“I have no idea.”
“Well, you’ve got about ten minutes to figure it out.”
I grabbed my purse off the table and followed Dan out to his truck just as Bram was parking in front of my house.
What the hell was he doing there?
He looked good, wearing a ratty old gray T-shirt and blue jeans with holes in the knees. Work clothes. The kind of work where you knew you were going to get messy so you put on the oldest shit you owned. I swallowed hard, running my gaze from his messy hair covered in a baseball cap to the worn boots on his feet. As he turned toward me, I jerked my head to the side and hurried to the passenger door of Dan’s truck.
Dan didn’t seem to notice his son was there so I climbed into the cab of his truck and didn’t mention it as we pulled away from the curb. I’d deal with Bram…later. Much later. Just looking at him hurt at the moment, and I wasn’t about to let that show.
“Wanted to apologize to you for yelling, but I didn’t have the chance unti
l now,” Dan said as we pulled up in front of the local hardware store. “Didn’t mean to scare you or make you feel bad.”
“No.” I shrugged off his words, extremely uncomfortable with the conversation. I thought I’d gotten away with never talking about that day with him, but apparently Dan had a good memory. “It’s fine. I’d forgotten about it.”
“All right,” he said with a small nod, shutting off his truck and hopping out.
See, that’s what I dug about Dan. His wife could talk the ear off a statue, but Dan was more reserved. He didn’t push for answers or nag to get what he wanted. If I said we were fine, he took that at face value and let the subject drop. Thank God.
I’d been on emotional overload for the past twenty-four hours, and I wasn’t sure how much more I could take.
It was weird. I’d been spending so much time with Bram that, even though I was super pissed at him for being such a jackass, I still wanted to text him a picture of the paint swatches I’d found and ask for his opinion. I’d gotten used to discussing shit with him. Nothing life altering, but small things. What I should get for dinner. Where I should get my oil changed. If he thought a bug bite on my thigh was from a mosquito or a deadly spider.
“I like the green,” Dan said quietly beside me, somehow sensing my complete indecision.
“You think?”
“Yep. Went with yellow when we had Katie—back then you didn’t know what you were having until they came out—and her room was damn near blinding.” He laughed. “Green’s better. Works for a boy or girl.”
“Yeah, okay.” I nodded in relief. “We’ll get the green then.”
We were back at the house with my freshly mixed paint within twenty minutes, and by then the entire family had descended like a pack of wild dogs.
“Let’s get painting,” Dan said with a smile as he parked behind my Toyota.
* * *