Demanded by Him (Wanted Series #3)

by Hazel Kelly

  I guessed the white stuff was mashed potatoes. I figured the red one was either tomato soup or Jell-o, but it was too watery for toothed people regardless. And the yellow cups looked more like vanilla pudding than creamed corn, but some of the bowls looked more yellow than others so it was hard to say for sure.

  Either way, I hadn’t seen anything yet that wouldn’t be a huge let down, and Wyatt really needed some good energy. At least the counselor could leave when I got down there. If she was even still there. I wondered if she wanted kids. Probably. Camp counselors tended to have a high tolerance for children.

  Not that I thought tolerance was my problem. I guess I just knew better than anyone how fragile kids were, and how much didn’t get by them. And for that reason, they absolutely terrified me. Or rather, I was terrified of breaking or corrupting or scarring or rendering irreparable another living thing. Besides, I was too busy abusing myself to have a needy dependent who might require me to reacquaint myself with the food pyramid.

  However, it was moving to see Wyatt’s reaction that morning from the way he packed up the van to the focus he had driving us here. And I’m not going to say it was love that I could hear in his voice and see in his eyes when we saw her in the hospital bed, but it was something that felt powerful enough to make everyone else stop in their tracks and take notice.

  Not that I’d ever taken my eyes off him in the first place.

  But still.

  I should’ve guessed he’d made at least one baby. There was always something that plagued rock stars after their career, though I was pretty sure drug and alcohol addiction was more popular than fatherhood. Then again, I didn’t know very many rock stars. Pregnancy scares probably came with the territory.

  When I finally reached some foods I recognized, I was hugely relieved. They had peanut butter crackers and granola bars, bags of pretzels, Snickers, and yogurt. I got two of everything and then three cups of coffee. The coffee came out of the dispenser like sap at first, filling the cup so slowly it made me question the whole thing.

  But at least it was caffeinated- and free with the coupons I remembered in my pocket at the last second.

  I didn’t ask if I could take the tray out of the cafeteria. I probably could’ve made it without, but it made the hot liquids I was carrying around more obvious, and I was determined not to toss the world’s smallest hot coffees over anyone else unlucky enough to be in the same building.

  I pressed the elevator button with my elbow and waited, questioning whether I should’ve sprung for an extra Snickers. Some sugar was probably just what I needed, which reminded me that I should’ve gotten cream and sugar for the coffee. Shit. What the hell was I thinking about? I looked down at the tray and then back down the hall, questioning whether I should go back.

  I mean, forgetting the cream was pretty insensitive.

  Would I have to wait in the line again? Surely not. But it would be easier to run up and get it than go back with the tray if Wyatt needed it, though I suspect he was worried about other things… and that it was unlikely to improve the coffee much anyway.

  The elevator door opened, and I stared at a middle aged man gripping a piss bag on wheels.

  “Well?” he asked. “You getting in or not?”

  I stepped onto the lift and gave him plenty of space.

  “I didn’t realize they had such cute waitresses at this hospital,” the guy said, tightening the belt on his robe.

  “Oh I’m not a waitress I-”

  “I know,” he said. “I was just trying to lighten the mood.”

  I smiled. “Right.”

  “What are you in for?”

  “A friend of mine- his daughter’s here. She’s in a diabetic coma.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Is that very serious?”

  The guy squinted and scratched his shiny, never ending forehead. “It’s more serious than anything that doesn’t potentially end in brain damage.”

  “Brain damage?”

  “How old is the little girl?”

  “Nine.”

  The guy nodded, keeping one hand around the hanging bag between us. “Well I hope she pulls through.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Me too.”

  The elevator door opened, but no one stepped on so we watched the doors close again.

  “What about you?” I asked.

  He raised his eyebrows. “I came in for a vasectomy and got an infection.”

  “That’s unfortunate.”

  “I know. To make matters worse, I haven’t figured out a way to make that story any shorter.”

  “Are you already a father then?”

  He nodded. “I’ve got six kids by two different women and my current girlfriend is getting ideas.”

  “I see.”

  “I wish I could tell her what I’ve done,” he said. “But it would break her heart.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Don’t be. She’s gonna leave me when she realizes I’m broke anyway.”

  “Right.”

  “I used to have looks and money, you know?”

  “Better to have loved and lost they say.”

  He nodded. “So true. Less money for my women to cheat off me now anyway.”

  The elevator dinged and the man took one step towards the doors. “Pleasure meeting you.”

  “You too,” I said. “And good luck with your penis.”

  “Same to your friend’s kid.” He lifted his free hand in the air as the doors closed between us. “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “Thanks.”

  Chapter 11: Wyatt

  My hands were praying, but my mind wasn’t.

  Instead, it was racing, thinking of all the reasons Sophie was going to be okay so I wouldn’t dwell on the worst case scenario.

  I wasn’t naïve. I knew children died, that life was full of accidents.

  Before I became a parent, the death of a child was always tragic, but it wasn’t until after I found out about Sophie- after she became my responsibility- that I began to realize how many things could go wrong.

  Now when bad things happened to little girls, it made me tuck her in tighter at night.

  Sure, I still indulged myself by going out and sleeping around on occasion, but I was no different than a housewife with a white wine habit. It was just how I kept from forgetting the old me.

  Cause the new me was all about learning recipes that made eating vegetables more fun and keeping my eye out for new Disney princess merchandise. I genuinely couldn’t have embraced the role of being a parent any more. I read to her every night when she was home. I taught her how to punch people in the face. I even put on a fucking apron and made cookies just so she could eat the dough off the spoon with me until we both had stomachaches.

  But I liked all that shit.

  I liked taking care of her, especially now that she was old enough to try negotiating before bursting into tears to get her way. And we had stuff in common. It’s not like I was confused that she was my best friend, cause I knew I had to be a dad first, but she gave my life meaning even when it didn’t feel like there were many other things that did.

  She was like my little life support.

  And here I was failing to be hers, helpless in a waiting room that smelled like it was cleaned from floor to ceiling with hand sanitizer.

  The point was, I liked being a dad, and I was good at it. She was polite. She looked people in the eye, and up to now, she’d never actually had to punch anyone in the face, though I still liked to make sure she was ready.

  I didn’t want to be someone else. I wanted to be the person she made me. Just the way she looked at me meant everything, especially when she would get in one of those moods where she’d ask a question between every breath.

  It was different than the attention I got on the road when I was with the band. I always thought that was the kind of attention I wanted- ignorant adoration. But with Sophie, it wasn’t so much that she adored me, but the
fact that she thought I was interesting, that what I had to say had value.

  And I knew that would change, probably around the time she became a teenager. But at the minute, she was my little partner in crime and no one had ever made me feel more relevant.

  It was the best feeling in the world.

  Even the weight of her on my shoulders felt good. It grounded me. Frankly, I was kind of an asshole before she came into my life. And maybe I still was one, but I knew I wasn’t nearly as big a jerk as I was before I looked in her little blue eyes and felt her tiny hand wrap around my finger.

  That moment alone cut my ability to be an asshole in half for sure.

  Her eyes were greener now, though. For a while I thought she might have two different colored ones like David Bowie, and it’s embarrassing how thrilled I felt at the prospect, but it wasn’t meant to be. Instead, they both stayed a pale green color, just like her mom’s.

  And Addison’s for that matter.

  I looked up as she came around the corner.

  She was holding a red tray that only further highlighted what a nice shade her hair was. She smiled when she saw me, but it was one of those pained smiles, the kind people offer when they aren’t sure if they should be smiling at all.

  “Hi,” she said, taking the empty seat beside me. “Any news?”

  I rolled my shoulders back and shook my head. “Not yet.”

  Her eyes turned down at the corners. “Well, here’s the non-fat Mocha with cherub farts you ordered.”

  I felt the corner of my mouth twitch as I took the styrofoam cup from her hands. “Thanks.”

  “Actually, it’s so black it barely came out of the dispenser, and I forgot to grab cream and sugar, but I’m happy to go back up and get some if you-”

  “It’s cool,” I said. “My taste buds are the least of my concern right now.”

  “You should still probably eat something,” she said. “I got an assortment of snacks cause I wasn’t sure what would appeal to you.” She turned over the white paper bag, and a bunch of wrapped snack foods poured out onto the tray.

  I looked between the snacks, wondering whether there was merit in eating at a time like this.

  “Just pick one,” she said. “You have to eat something.”

  I reached for the Snickers.

  “Is Ashley around?” she asked. “I got her a coffee-”

  “I sent her home,” I said, taking a sip of my coffee. Addison was right. It was so thick I almost had to chew it. “I figured she’d exceeded her duties as Sophie’s camp counselor for the day.”

  She nodded. “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Plus, I don’t feel like being around strangers right now.”

  “Well color me flattered.”

  I smiled and looked at her.

  She was sitting up straight with the tray flat across her thighs.

  “You’re not a stranger,” I said.

  “I’m not family.”

  I squinted and cocked my head. “It would be hard for me to know you more intimately.”

  “Regardless,” she said, lifting one of the coffees. “Now isn’t an appropriate time to think of other ways to know me.”

  “As soon as this is all over I’d like to get back to that, though.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t believe you didn’t mention you had a kid.”

  “I know, but if we could talk about something else that would be great. I’m not exactly feeling like father of the year at the minute.”

  “You can’t blame yourself for this. You did the right thing letting her go to camp.”

  “Did I?”

  “Sure.” She shrugged. “I mean, I wish I got to go to camp when I was her age.”

  “Then you’d be able to swim.”

  “And maybe being on someone else’s schedule would’ve knocked my senseless need for control out of me.”

  I tilted my head forward and watched the grainy coffee beans pool in the bottom of the cup. “Maybe now you can understand why I find your control issues so amusing.”

  “I don’t know if they’re amusing.”

  “They are from a parent’s point of view,” I said. “Once you’ve got a kid, control becomes futile.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean I haven’t felt like things were under control since Sophie came into my life.”

  She smiled.

  “And even when I do for a second, I know it’s just an illusion and that she can take the control back whenever she wants.”

  “I’m surprised to hear that,” she said. “You don’t seem like the kind of guy that would let a nine year old run the show.”

  I shrugged. “What can I say? My love for her makes me foolish.”

  “Can I ask when she came into your life exactly?”

  “She was over a year old before I knew she existed,” I said. “Her mom never even told me she was pregnant.”

  “So how did you find out about her?”

  “Cause her mom finally mentioned it.”

  Addison raised her eyebrows.

  “In her suicide note.”

  Chapter 12: Addison

  I put my hand on Wyatt’s shoulder.

  I didn’t know what to say. He was obviously distressed, and I didn’t want to jump into asking him a bunch of questions about Sophie’s mom. For all I knew, he would regret telling me about her.

  “Thanks for the picnic, anyway,” he said, leaning back and crossing an ankle over his opposite knee. “I much prefer the lake shore to the hospital.”

  I watched him unwrap the Snickers and take a bite, wishing I could eat candy like a man, without feeling the need to savor it and calculate how much of my daily fat was in half a bar.

  “She was a good person by the way,” he said, chewing. “I don’t want you to think she wasn’t.”

  “Of course not.”

  He swallowed. “She was just troubled.”

  I nodded. “Who isn’t?”

  “I just didn’t know exactly how troubled when I was with her.”

  I guess I wasn’t the first woman who’d kept secrets from Wyatt. Then again, he clearly had his own.

  “She was a groupie.”

  “You don’t have to tell me about her,” I said, torn over whether I wanted him to or not.

  He continued as though he hadn’t heard me.

  But maybe his own voice was comforting him. I certainly preferred it to the sounds of wailing children down the hall so I wasn’t about to interrupt.

  “She was deeper into drugs than I realized,” he said. “But we all were then so I thought nothing of it.”

  I handed him the extra coffee, and he put his empty cup down on the tray before taking it.

  “She dated me for a while and then started hooking up with the drummer,” he said. “It was all just fun at the time.”

  “And then it got serious?”

  “Not even. She just left. I figured she wanted to get back to real life,” he said. “I assumed that’s why she didn’t keep in touch.”

  “Right.”

  “But my understanding now is that she got depressed right after Sophie was born.”

  My chest tightened thinking about what Sophie’s first year must’ve been like.

  “And I guess she got clean during the pregnancy for the most part.” Wyatt shrugged. “But obviously I’ll never know for sure.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Anyway, she relapsed one night and overdosed.”

  “Jesus.”

  “It was twenty four hours before someone found her at her apartment. Sophie was in her crib I guess, exhausted from crying.”

  “You said there was a note?”

  “More like a rant,” he said. “It was unfinished. I don’t think everything went according to plan.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I believe she was thinking about killing herself alright, but I don’t think she meant for it to happen the way it did.”

  “So you took Sophie and the rest i
s history?”

  He nodded. “Hannah’s mom got ahold of me and told me what happened. She didn’t realize Sophie’s existence was news to me. I guess Hannah let her think I just abandoned them.”

  “That must’ve hurt.”

  “To be honest, I don’t give a shit what her mom thought, but it hurt that Hannah never told me, that she might never have told me.”

  “So then what?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “I went to get her and took her home.”

  I nodded.

  “My brother and his wife stayed with me for a week and then my mom stayed for a while. Everyone was worried I was going to freak out as a result of going straight from touring to changing diapers overnight. Frankly, I thought I might, too.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “No,” he said. “I didn’t have the energy to freak out. I was too sleep deprived. Plus, I was completely enchanted by how tiny she was and how she smelled and the way her eyes lit up when she found something amusing.”

  “So she’s why you left the band.”

  “I didn’t mean for her to be at first. I thought after a little paternity leave I’d figure out a way to keep working, but she was mobile so quickly. I knew as soon as I baby proofed the house that I’d never be able to let her roam around a tour bus. So that was the end of that.”

  “Wow.”

  “I know,” he said. “I still can’t believe it myself.”

  “Understandable.”

  “I wouldn’t say I’m a natural or anything, but I try.”

  “Well, at the very least, she’s probably better off with you than she would’ve been with Hannah.”

  “I know. That crosses my mind a lot.”

  “I don’t know if this is a stupid question-”

  Wyatt looked at me. “Go on.”

  “Does Sophie remember her mom?”

  He shook his head. “No. She was too little. She has a few pictures of her,” he said. “So she thinks she remembers her, but she was only a baby.”

  “So what does she think happened?”

  He sighed. “I can’t tell you how much I dreaded the day she would ask.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “It’s not like I could go into groupies and drugs and depression.”