by Tia Lewis
Rubbing her back idly, I stepped out into the hall, determined to find Barret. It was way past time for this child to be in bed. The door to the interview room opened as soon as I stepped out into the hallway, sure that the commotion was far from us. Barret walked out, catching my eye as he did so as he shut the door behind him. “Parkman.”
“Detective,” I said as Amelia went limp in my arms. For a moment I froze, but it wasn’t but a second before I was awarded with her breath against my neck. The poor thing, she had fallen asleep. “I think she’s down for the count.”
His face softened as he looked at the child, no doubt thinking of his own two. “She’s had a rough go at it, hasn’t she?”
“Yes,” I said softly, my hand still touching her warm back. “Is her father ready to take her home?”
Barret ran a hand over his face wearily. “Hell, I don’t know. The fucker thought I was joking. Can you believe that? Why would I joke about this?”
I frowned. “Wait. He’s not devastated about his wife?”
“He doesn’t even know the child existed.”
Crap. I had assumed that they were at least married. What if he wasn’t fit to take care of a child? What if he was some asshole druggie or something? “We can’t give him this child,” I said to Barret, hugging her tightly against me.
Barret gave me a look. “It’s his child, Parkman. Don’t forget that.” I watched as he opened the door and a tall man stepped out into the hallway, searching with his eyes until they landed on me. They were the same blue eyes I had gazed in only moments before, but also familiar eyes. Too familiar. “Benji?”
His eyes widened in surprise. “Danielle? What the hell are you doing here?”
It was obvious what I was doing here. I was in my uniform for god’s sake. “I work here.”
He didn’t say anything, his gaze shifting to the precious bundle I had in my arms. “Is that, is she?”
I heard his hesitation, unable to believe that Benji Lomns was standing before me, in this situation of all things. He had been my brother’s friend growing up, all of us dirt poor and living in a small town on the outskirts of Chicago. I had the biggest crush on him growing up, and I could tell that life had been good to him in more ways than one. In his t-shirt and shorts, I could see the outline of a well-honed body, his face just as gorgeous as I remembered. His startling blue eyes had nothing on his strong jawline and perfect features, the muscles in his arms flexing as he reached out. “I-I’ll take her.”
I hesitated. Just because I knew Benji back then didn’t mean I knew him as an adult. The woman in me urged me to keep Amelia in my arms, where she would be safe, but the logical part of me (plus the glare I was being given by Barret) told me I had no choice. I had no claim on this child. Reluctantly, I handed over the sleepy baby, watching as he struggled to even take her into his arms. Clearly, he hadn’t had a lot of experience in the baby department.
Finally, he got her situated, and I crossed my arms over my chest, feeling the emptiness immediately. “There will be some paperwork,” Barret was saying to Benji, pulling out one of his cards. “So you can file for your rights as a parent.”
“Um yeah whatever,” Benji replied, looking out of place holding a baby. I had heard that he was some big fighter, his dream of being in the limelight coming true. I could not even count how many times as kids that he had talked about how he was going to be some prized fighter one day. “I’ll get those started.”
“Call me in the morning,” Barret replied, shifting his glance over to me. “Or call Parkman here and we can walk you through the process. I know this has to be a shock to you Mr. Lomns, but we are here to help.”
Benji took the card, shifting the child up on his shoulder carefully in the process. “I appreciate that. I guess I’ll be going home then.”
“Good night,” Barret said. I watched as Benji gave me a nod before turning and walking away, his tall frame disappearing down the hall and out of sight. I couldn’t help but wonder how he was going to get through the night with a child he didn’t know, a child that he hadn’t even known about two hours ago.
“He’ll be fine.”
I turned to Barret, giving him the eye. “How can you say that? Didn’t you just say he thought this was a joke?”
“Yeah but he’s not a man to give up easily,” the detective replied, looking down the hall where Benji had disappeared. “I think he will take care of the baby better than you or I could do.”
I snorted. That remained to be seen. I wasn’t going to just let this stop here. My conscience wouldn’t let me.
Benji
Fuck. I glanced over at the passenger seat, my heart beating wildly against my chest. Double fuck. She was so fucking tiny, strapped in the car seat that the police officer had offered me on my way out, sleeping like she didn’t have a care in the world. I still couldn’t believe that this was my life, that this wasn’t real and I was going to wake up at any moment with a shake of my head and a chuckle at the bullet I dodged.
A horn blared behind me, and I looked up, realizing that the light had turned green and pulled forward. It was somewhere around three in the morning, and I was exhausted physically. After a long day at the gym and then the extra training, I could head home and sleep like the dead until my five a.m. wake-up call. But I didn’t know what to do with my passenger. Not even one thought. Until tonight, I had never held anything under the age of twenty.
I made a right turn and pulled into the parking garage, finding a place near the elevator and climbing out so I could go around and grab the car seat, with the baby still attached. She was sleeping so soundly that I didn’t want to wake her, but more so because I wouldn’t know what to do with her if she did open one eye. In the dim light, I couldn’t see a resemblance and blonde hair wasn’t going to be enough. Besides, there were a lot of babies that had blond hair.
The ride up in the elevator seemed to take fucking forever, and I walked carefully to the door, rapping on it hard. I didn’t know where to go, but I would start here, and if they couldn’t help me, then I would move on. The door opened, and I found myself staring into Hannah’s surprised face. “Benji?”
“Why are you opening the door at this hour?” I asked, surprised to see her and not Tony’s ugly mug.
She frowned. “What are you doing here at this hour? Wait, is that a baby?”
“Now you know,” I answered. “Hell, Hannah I didn’t know what to do.”
Her face softened, and she opened the door. “Come on in. Anthony had his hands full of dough. That’s why I opened the door.”
I rolled my eyes as we walked down the hall to the expansive living room. Tony was standing before the granite topped island, his hands knuckle deep in the dough as he took in my presence, his eyes straying to the car seat. “Fuck. Don’t tell me you stole a baby.”
“Anthony!” Hannah hissed as she held out her hands. “Let me take her.”
I gratefully turned the car seat over to her and walked to the fridge, opening it to pull out a beer I knew would be in there. Hannah and Tony were some of my closest friends, Tony one of the part owners of the gym, retired fighter now, and Hannah, the owner of the best bakery in Chicago next door to the gym. In fact, there were two more fighters who owned a piece of the gym, and they had been dropping like flies for months, finding women who were willing to put up with them. They joked way too often that my time was coming, but I had bigger fish to fry, starting with the baby that was still sleeping away in that seat. I popped open the bottle and took a long draw of the cold liquid, the beer doing nothing to loosen the knot in my fucking chest. “I’m so fucked.”
Hannah set the car seat gently on the floor. “She’s precious. If you stole her, I might not want to give her back.”
Tony groaned and pulled his hand out of the dough he had been working on. “Fuck man, why the hell do you have a baby and why did you bring it here? I just got through explaining why we didn’t need a kid right now and look, she’s all gooey eyed ag
ain.”
“She’s mine,” I forced out, seeing their eyes widen at my words. “Unknown until tonight.”
Hannah let out a breath. “And the mom just dropped her off? With you?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, come on,” Tony laughed, wiping his hands on a towel. “You are the last person who needs a kid in their life.”
I couldn’t disagree with that. “I had no choice. Her mom died in a car accident tonight.”
Hannah let out a gasp, her eyes straying back to the sleeping baby. “Poor thing. I can’t even imagine.”
“Shit,” Tony said, looking at me. “And when were you going to tell us about her?”
I drained the bottle, setting it on the counter. I was hoping the beer would calm my nerves, but it only keyed me up more. “I didn’t know. Shit, I just found out tonight.”
Tony wiped a hand over his face, his eyes looking at the baby. “Damn man.”
I felt it too. Leaning against the fridge, I felt like whatever was keeping me together had just unraveled. “I-I didn’t even know her. I looked at her fucking picture and couldn’t even figure out who she was.” It was a low point, my mind racing at what she must have gone through pregnant, with no one to help her. I would have been there.
I shook my head. No, I would have sent her money, but I wouldn’t have been there, and I could start to see why she had kept the kid a secret. “I’m an asshole.”
Tony walked over and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Now that I can’t disagree with, but this isn’t your fault. She could have told you.”
“Anthony’s right for once,” Hannah said softly as she leaned against the island. “This isn’t your fault. What matters is what you are going to do about your, her future.”
I chuckled, feeling miserable inside. “Hell, I don’t even know what my future entails, much less how to take care of a one-year-old.” I had nothing in my apartment fit for a child to be there, no nursery for her to grow up in, no food for her to eat.
“We’re here if you need us,” Tony replied, looking over at his wife. “Stay the night, let us help you take care of her. We’ll figure it out in the morning.”
“Please,” Hannah added as a whimper came from the car seat. “We have milk if nothing else, good milk.”
I gave them both a tired smile. “I owe you, both.”
“Damn right,” Tony said, squeezing my shoulder with his hand before dropping it. “Come on, I want to meet your daughter.”
Daughter. She was my daughter. I swallowed the emotion in my throat as we walked over to Hannah, who had already extracted Amelia out of the seat, cooing at her as she jiggled her against her body. “I guess you don’t have any diapers either?”
I shook my head. “What you see is what I have.”
Tony was already grabbing his keys, sliding his feet into his shoes. “I’ll go to the market right down the street.”
“Diapers, wipes, and a bottle,” Hannah called out to her husband. “We’ll go shopping in a few hours.”
I watched as Hannah turned her attention back to Amelia, her expression all kinds of soft as she looked at her face. “She’s precious Benji. I can see you in her features.”
“I, thanks,” I mumbled, running a hand through my hair. “What the hell am I going to do with her Hannah?”
She chuckled as Amelia’s cries got louder. “We are going to love her and spoil her rotten. You are going to show her what a daddy’s love truly means.”
I hoped I could do that. Not having a father figure in my own life, I had no clue what a dad looked like. Hell, I barely had a mom. My life was a piss pot from the beginning, my mom too high on whatever her drug of choice was to actually be a real parent. I had relied heavily on my smarts and the streets to raise me for the most part.
Danielle’s face floated through my mind, and I couldn’t help but wonder how the hell Luke’s younger sister had ended up a police officer. Luke had been my running mate when we were younger, the duo that no one could truly stop or contain. He and I got into more trouble than I cared to admit now, and Danielle was always around. Though then she had looked different. Tonight, those same laughing green eyes looked haunted, her face sterner looking than I had last remembered. I wanted to find out more about what she was doing in Chicago or where her brother was, but after finding out about Amelia, I couldn’t even process the information, much less have a reunion.
Amelia started to cry louder, and Hannah started to walk around the room, humming softly. I didn’t know why Tony was holding out on her. She looked like a damn natural holding the baby. Me on the other hand, I was going to be lucky to get through the next couple of hours.
Danielle
I unlocked my apartment door and stepped inside as the sun was peeking over the horizon, another shift down and a weary body to answer for it. I was tired, physically, but my mind was still reeling over the fact that I had seen Benji Lomns for the first time in ages and he was the father of a child, a child he didn’t even know he had. It was hard to believe.
Throwing the keys on the counter, I locked the door behind me and walked to the bathroom, stripping my clothes off as I went. My apartment wasn’t much, and on a cop’s salary, I was lucky I only had me to support. Reaching the bathroom, I cut on the shower, letting the hot water fog up the small space. Being a police officer hadn’t been my first thought, more like becoming a wife and mother with the white picket fence and all that jazz.
And I had tried. I stepped into the shower, feeling the scalding hot water burn my skin. Seven years ago, I was a fresh-faced eighteen-year-old straight out of high school who had no intentions of going to college. I had met a guy in the senior year of high school, Tom, who had gotten a job at the local plant and within the first month of being considered as an adult, we moved in together. I found a job as a secretary, and for a while, we were happy. I was happy. We were just two people trying to make it in the middle-class world, making the best of our lack of money. After a year of limping along, Tom proposed and I said yes. Our wedding consisted of standing in the courthouse, but neither one of our parents had enough money to throw us a proper wedding. It didn’t matter. We loved each other, and at the time, that was all we thought we needed.
I turned around and let the water hit my shoulders, closing my eyes against the tears that still threatened after all this time. Two years into our marriage, I got pregnant. Everything was near perfect. Tom had gotten a promotion at work, and more money was coming in. We were well on our way to making a down payment on a little house not far from his parents. Everything was going so well until the night I gave birth.
I sighed and reached for my washcloth, pouring the soap on it as my eyes stung with tears. I didn’t think about that night as much as I used to, but having that child in my arms, Benji’s child had brought back a flood of feelings that I had locked deep inside me for the last four years. I could still feel the pain of that night, the anguish as we raced to the hospital, Tom holding my hand as I pushed out a perfect seven-pound-two-ounce baby girl. The tears of joy suddenly changed to tears of sorrow when I didn’t hear her cry out as the staff rushed her away. The next time I saw her, the doctor had already pronounced her dead, handing her over to me with tears in her eyes as well. Cord asphyxiation, she had stated as I gazed at our baby’s perfect features, the small thatch of hair that was just barely dark enough to see on her head. While parents worried over disfigurements and conditions that their child could encounter, I was just willing for mine, my perfect baby, to wake up. It didn’t seem real.
The water started to lose its steam as I hurriedly soaped up my body and my hair, shutting it off before it could grow cold. After toweling off, I wrapped my robe around my body and then stared in the mirror, seeing the haunted look in my eyes once more. For the longest time, Tom and I grieved over her, him harder than me. I would catch him at night, sitting in the dark after we had buried our precious girl, sobbing as he held one of the many stuffed animals we had purchase
d for her. No matter what either of us did, we couldn’t grieve together, and in just over six months after her death, our marriage was all but over. Love couldn’t conquer all. I filed for divorce and headed for Chicago, hoping to run from my grief. Why I chose the police academy, I do not know.
Tom never left, and to this day, he was still in that town, living in the small house that we had once thought about buying. I checked in on him from time to time, our divorce in no way bitter, but we couldn’t talk about our loss to this day. With a sigh, I finished up in the bathroom and walked to the bedroom, collapsing on the bed with the covers pulled to my chin. As I stared up at the ceiling, I couldn’t help but wonder how Benji was doing with his child. It had to be a shock to know that he was a father. Clearly, he didn’t look like the type of man who had another family waiting at home, a wife able to care for his daughter.
And I had searched him. I couldn’t help it. After all the commotion had died down, I looked him up on the computer, reading about his fights and his gym. So he had become a fighter, after all, a successful one at that. He and my brother, Luke, were two years older than me and I loved to follow them around relentlessly growing up. That and Benji was probably the cutest thing I had seen in my short life, and I was forever attempting to get his attention, hoping that he would not just see me as Luke’s bratty sister. Benji hadn’t had the best life growing up, and he spent more time over at our house than he did his own. His mom was known for her drugs, the cops busting her more than once but somehow she always skirted by with a slap on the wrist. My own parents were just hard working people, barely making enough to scrape by with two kids and a ramshackle house that was on the verge of falling down.
But that didn’t stop Benji from coming over. As my eyes grew heavy, I thought about the last time I had seen him, the only time I felt like he had looked at me in a different light.
