by L. P. Maxa
It didn’t matter that the baby might not have my blood, it honestly didn’t. What made me hesitate last night was the fact that Travis was still here. He and Landry worked together. They’d broken up a month ago. He could be here for my girl when I couldn’t. He could be present every day for them and I’d be spending the next year of my life on the road.
Shit. What would I do if the baby wasn’t mine? There were so many variables, and I tried to see things from all sides. If Travis didn’t want the baby, why wouldn’t I step up? If Travis did want the baby, would he want me in its life? Would that matter? If Travis wanted to be a better man, if he wanted Landry back, would I let her go?
Life wasn’t as simple as Talon made it sound.
I wish it was.
Chapter Eleven
Landry
Last night sucked, hard. I’d alternated between throwing up and crying myself to sleep. I kept hoping there would be a knock at my door, or my phone would ring. But nothing. Brody never called, he never came back. Why would he? He was forced out.
Eventually my pity party slowed enough for my brain to come back on line, and I started to get a little worried since he’d passed out earlier in the evening. I’d texted Talon, wanting to make sure Brody had made it home, that he was doing okay.
Landry: Hey. Brody mentioned he fainted earlier this evening and I wanted to make sure he made it home okay.
Talon: He’s here. He’s down at the beach drinking alone.
Landry: Glad he’s safe. Can you keep an eye on him for me?
Talon: Sure.
Talon: How are you doing? Brody was pretty upset when he got back to the house.
Landry: I’m fine. Been a long day.
Talon: You need anything?
Landry: No, thank you though. I’m tired, I’m about to go to bed.
Landry: Thank you for the pizza, you didn’t have to do that.
Talon: I’m here for you Landry, please don’t hesitate to ask when you need help. Or food. Brody will come around. You mean everything to him.
Landry: You’re a good friend.
Talon Roberts was one of the good ones, genuinely kind and gorgeous to boot. He and Brody looked like they could be brothers. Same wild blond hair, same sun-kissed skin. But Talon was a few inches taller, lanky with eyes as dark as night.
I closed my phone. This was the fifth time I re-read my texts with Talon from last night. Maybe I wanted a reminder that I did have a friend. Or maybe I wanted to believe what he’d said, that I mean everything to Brody. I’d eaten the whole pizza then thrown most of it back up. Served me right. Maybe the constant puking was because of all the secrets I’d been holding inside, and the lies I’d been spewing.
I kept telling myself that keeping the pregnancy a secret was the right thing for everyone. But it wasn’t, and I was an asshole. The truth was, I was scared. If the baby was Travis’s, I risked Brody walking away and a lifetime of having to deal with my ex. Who would make a loathsome father, demeaning and stuck up.
If Brody was the father, I risked having my heart broken. Never for one minute had I actually believed that he’d walk away from his child. I used it as an excuse, protecting my baby when in reality I was protecting myself.
Somehow, over the last month, I’d started to fall for the crazy drummer. And eighteen years of watching him love our child but not me would be hard to endure. But I knew now, without a shadow of a doubt, that I’d do it. I’d suffer every day for the rest of my life if it meant that my child grew up with a kind and loving father.
“Landry?” Crap. Caught in my reveries while leaning against the wall near the scrubs cabinet. “Are you ill? You look terrible.”
I closed my eyes, sighing heavily before addressing my ex, the man who was the opposite of kind and loving. “What do you want?”
“I’m still your boss, you should treat me with more respect.” His hands were on his hips, his short brown hair styled neatly. Nothing about him was appealing anymore, nothing in the slightest.
“What do you want, Dr. French?” Technically he was right, he was my boss, but I thought him getting caught with his dick in another woman should supersede hospital hierarchy. From the look on their faces every time he walked by, the nurses agreed with me.
“I wanted to check in on Mr. Weston, see how his surgery went yesterday. Did you get his post-op labs yet?”
“Surgery went great. Post-op labs have been ordered. I left his room not ten minutes ago and he was feeling okay. Pain is being well managed, and I made sure to bring in an extra full-sized bed for Minka.” I was charting on my tablet while I talked. I didn’t want to see his smug face. I was disgusted with myself for ever having sex with him in the first place, and the thought of it was making me nauseous.
“We call our patients and their family ‘Mr.’ and ‘Mrs.’ Seems you have a problem with respect all the way around, Dr. Cole.”
At that, I did look up. “Mrs. Weston asked me to please call her Minka, and Mr. Weston demanded I call him Wes. So if you have a problem with me doing as our VIP patient asked me to, I’m sure we can take it up with the chief. Is that what you’d like to do?” He didn’t get a chance to answer, because I bent over and puked on his stupid squeaky-clean shoes.
***
I was home in bed, where I’d been since I’d thrown up on my asshole ex and he’d sent me home. Apparently, according to Dr. Know-It-All, there was a terrible stomach bug going around and I didn’t need to infect the whole hospital. I’d felt fine as soon as I’d defiled his shoes, but I couldn’t tell him that. So I’d taken the sick day. I was tired and emotional, and a day in bed would probably do me some good.
Not counting missing work, I was doing two things I never did: drowning my sorrows in a tub of ice cream and watching crap TV. I was on the fourth episode of my current binge when my cell started vibrating somewhere in the pile of blankets strewn across the bottom of the bed. I had to dig for a while to actually locate the phone.
I hit accept on the FaceTime call and did my best to appear like I hadn’t been having a terrible horrible no good very bad day. Well, two days. “Hey, Mom.”
“Hey, Buttercup.” She squinted and then pulled the phone farther away from her face. “Are you sitting in the dark? Wait. Are you at your apartment? Is everything okay?”
I reached to the side, turning on the lamp next to my bed. The one Brody had glued back together after he’d knocked it to the floor trying to silence my alarm one morning. “There. That better?” I plastered a smile on my face—but not too big, I still had to sell it. “I’m at home, I took a sick day.”
“You? Took a sick day?” She shook her head, her eyes slightly narrowed. “You never take sick days. What’s wrong? Is it the baby? Do I need to come over there? I can leave right now. I’ll take the private jet. I can be there in two hours. Maybe less.”
“I’m fine, I promise.” I shrugged, picking at invisible lint on my oversized t-shirt before quickly pulling the covers up further. In my pitiful woe-is-me state, I’d put on one of Brody’s Clashing Swell shirts. “I’ve been throwing up a lot, which is normal, but I think it’s finally taken its toll.” I laughed lightly, like I found the whole situation amusing instead of exhausting. “First trimester morning sickness mixed with fifth-year residency is not something I’d ever recommend.”
“Is there anything you need, sweet girl? If you don’t want me to come, how about Halen? Or your brother? You need help. You need to have family around you.” Her eyes looked misty and her face was sad. I was stressing her out.
“You have work, Halen has school, and Beau is trying to build a home in world record time.”
“Landry Hope Cole, you have more family than I can even name right now that would drop everything to come help you. We all want to be there for you, Buttercup, let us.”
I took a deep breath and sent her my most encouraging expression. “I’m doing great. The baby is doing great. There is no reason for anyone to come stay with me. I’m rarely home, and afte
r this one small day of rest, I’ll be good as new.” And I can’t handle anyone else being mixed up in my crazy life. Not right now. Silently, I prayed that she’d let it go.
“What about the baby’s father?”
“We’ve been over this. The baby’s father isn’t in the picture. Please stop bringing it up, it’s not easy for me to keep repeating.” And at that current moment, any baby daddy talk was likely to make me start bawling again. I put my hand to my stomach. “I got this, okay? I make good money. I have more in savings then I’ll ever need. I’ll get a bigger place, a safe SUV, and a world-class nanny. I can do this.”
“Of course you can do this, Landry. Never for one second had I thought this was something you couldn’t handle.” Her shoulders fell, like she was suddenly as tired as I was. “I am your mother, it’s my job to worry about you. It’s my job to help, to want to make your world as perfect as I possibly can.”
She was my mother, in every sense of the word. She had dropped everything the day her best friend called and told her he was a dad. She got on a plane, she flew to Florida and she fell in love. With me, and my father. And every day since, she’d been there for every goodnight kiss and every giggle over breakfast. Jacks and Bryan Cole hadn’t only given me parents; they’d given me a childhood. They’d given me a family. Bryan and I didn’t share DNA, but that was the only thing we didn’t share.
“I love you, Mom, so much.” Tears started to roll down my cheeks, so I smiled, to let her know they were happy ones. “You’ve taught me everything I need to know about how to be a great mother. And now, it’s time that I put it all too good use.”
She smiled, wiping at her own tears. “You’re going to be spectacular, sweet girl.”
“Is that my daughter?” My mom looked to her right, nodding as my dad’s face came on the screen. “Hey, Buttercup, how’s that fetus—or is it an embryo—treating you?” He wrinkled his nose. “You look exhausted.”
Like father, like son. My dad and Beau were the only two men on the planet that could get away with telling me I looked like shit. “Thanks, Dad.”
He grinned. “You are always beautiful, but right now it’s beautiful mixed with two seconds from passing out. You feeling okay?”
I nodded. “Yep. Just a hard first trimester, nothing I can’t handle.”
“Of course it’s not, you can handle anything.” He sat down next to my mom, throwing his arm around her shoulder like they were young kids in love. “The label’s lawyer knows a great PI. If you want, we can hire him to find the baby’s—”
“Stop.” I held my hand out, shaking my head slowly back and forth. “Do not finish that sentence, and do not hire a private investigator. Please. That will only make things more complicated.” Because the high-priced detective would tell my parents there were two possible fathers. One was a degrading dickhead and one was a stage-diving drummer working under my family’s label.
My dad leaned his head back, sighing at the ceiling. “You’re killin’ me, kid.”
“I love you guys.”
“We love you too, Buttercup. Get some rest. We’ll call you tomorrow.” My mom blew me a kiss and my dad waved like a dork.
I ended the call and stared at my phone. My wallpaper was a picture of Brody and me. We were at the beach, lying in the sand, our shades on and our skin tanned. He’d put it on my cell the day Talon had taken the snap. I’d made fun of Brody. I’d told him flings weren’t to be immortalized in photographs.
But I’d never taken it off my phone.
Chapter Twelve
Brody
I’d spent the day feeling hung over and sorry for myself. Talon was irritated with me, and Brax and Dane seemed to be at a loss for what to say. I missed Landry, but it didn’t make me pick up the phone. I was in a shit mood, and I couldn’t seem to shake it. I didn’t know how I felt or what I was supposed to do. Talon was right, which sucked. I didn’t want Travis around Landry. I didn’t want her to have to deal with him for the next eighteen years. But did that equate with me stepping in, no matter who the baby’s father was? Was that even my place? Was that what she wanted from me? Did I want her to want that from me?
I couldn’t answer my own questions; how the hell was I supposed to answer hers? I surfed for hours, then I’d played the drums until my arms ached. But nothing was bringing me clarity. The answers didn’t magically appear in the waves, I couldn’t hear the right choice in the beat of the music. I felt lost.
“You’re bringing down the vibe of the house, you know that, right?” T plopped on the couch next to me, munching on an apple. The guy actually ate an apple a day to keep the doctor away. Germ freak.
“The last thing I need is more shit from you.” I’d gotten my yearly quota in one day. And I still couldn’t figure out why he was being such a dick.
“No can do.” He took another chunk out of his fruit, chomping loudly. “I’m your best friend, it’s my job.”
“I think as my best friend, your job should be to help me through all this. Not make me feel like a piece of shit at every turn.” I was pouting. I felt like I’d earned it.
He rolled his eyes. “If what I’m saying has been making you feel like a piece of shit, maybe that’s your answer right there.”
“That my best friend is an asshole?” I sent him a sarcastic smirk.
“No. That you’re ashamed of the way you’re acting.” He took one more bite and then tossed the core into the sink, sinking a three-pointer with a loud clank. “You think this is hard for you, it’s harder for Landry.”
“Look. I don’t need another lecture from you, okay? I can’t handle it, not right now. I’ve been wracking my brain all day trying to figure out how I’d feel about the baby if it was Travis’s and—”
“And that’s your problem right there.” Talon got to his feet, looking down at me, making me feel like a child. “Stop thinking about it like that. Stop thinking about the baby and start thinking about its mother. Landry. The girl you’ve been falling for over the last month. These were your words, not three days ago: My life will never be the same from having her in it.” He did an air mic drop like a loser and then walked away.
Fuck me.
Today sucked almost as much as yesterday.
***
“Brody. What the flying fuck was wrong with you tonight? You played like utter shit. You were either too fast or too slow.” Luke wasn’t nearly as happy after watching tonight’s rehearsal as he was last night. Not that I could blame him. As he said, I played like utter shit. “You threw both your guitarists off and Brax fumbled a verse trying to keep up. What gives?”
“I don’t know. Sorry, man.” I took a deep breath then let it out loudly. “I, uh, I’ll do better tomorrow. Promise.”
“He’s okay, Luke, we all have off days.” Dane glanced at me then back to the holo-image.
Luke shook his head. “Not this close to a freaking sold-out tour.” At his words we all looked around at each other and then to Luke again. His smile was all the conformation we needed.
“Holy shit. We’re sold out.” Brax clapped his hands once then high-fived Dane.
“Yep, received word a few hours ago. So you better help your drummer pull his head out of his ass.” Luke’s narrowed eyes fell to me again.
Talon scoffed then mumbled, “If his head was up his own ass we wouldn’t be having this problem.”
Luke moved his head forward and to the right, like he was trying to see around Dane to look at Talon. “What was that?”
“Nothing, man. We’ll get it together, no worries.” Talon shot me a mean side eye, and I flipped him the bird.
“Hey, Talon, I actually need a favor from you. You got a minute? It’s about my niece Landry.” Luke made eye contact with the rest of the crew. “You guys mind giving us some privacy?”
“Sure man, no problem.” Brax and Dane headed out, and I made like I was leaving, but I walked around behind the computer projecting the holo-image. Sure, if Luke turned around, he’d see me, bu
t there was no reason for him to; he was focused on Talon. And as pissed as Talon was with me, I knew he wouldn’t alert Luke to the fact I was listening in on their conversation.
Although he did send me a little glare before crossing his arms over his chest and addressing Luke. “Okay man, we’re alone. What’s up with Landry?”
“Well, first of all, she’s pregnant.”
Talon made his eyes go wide, giving Luke the impression that he was surprised at the news. “Oh, wow, that’s exciting for her.”
I heard Luke chuckle lightly. “Exciting and terrifying, the staples of every first-time parent. But she’s all alone in this and I’m worried about her. The baby’s father isn’t in the picture, and she works long hours.” There was a short pause. “Would you mind checking in on her? Jacks said he talked to her earlier today and she looked terrible. I think she needs a friend.”
Talon’s gaze darted to me then back to Luke. “Of course, not a problem. Is she at home or still at the hospital?”
“She’s at home, she took a sick day. Her parents said she wasn’t doing well.” Another pause. “They said it looked like she’d been crying. Landry is a tough cookie, and she’s refusing our help. She’s hell bent on doing this on her own. And she can, I know she can. But she’d doesn’t have to. That’s what family is for, right?” We’d heard it a hundred times—RiffRaff Records was all about family, your chosen family.
“Right.” Talon pulled his cell from his pocket and waved it at the screen. “I’ll shoot her a text right now.”
