We hadn’t really talked much on the rest of the walk on Sunday. Plus, I hadn’t missed his comment about needing to call his manager or lawyer. I shouldn’t be surprised he hadn’t told anyone about Mo. Had he by now though, or was he still… waiting?
“Twice a week he drops her off at daycare for a few hours. Sometimes my friend’s father-in-law keeps her for part of the day too. She comes to the gym a couple times a week too. It changes. We wing it.”
“Oh.”
I blew out a breath away from the receiver before reaching up to pinch the bridge of my nose for a moment at the sudden sting there. “So did you want to go see her?”
“Yeh, but I was asking because I called about the paternity test. It isn’t much notice, but they can see us this afternoon if you can get away. Next available time they can fit us in is two weeks from now.”
“At what time?” I asked, even though I damn well knew I could leave whatever time I needed to.
“One.”
I let go of my nose. Now, or two weeks from now, or months from now? At least he wasn’t waiting. “Yeah, sure. I can get away. What’s the name of the place?”
* * *
I saw the big brown-haired man the second I pulled into the parking lot. Jonah was leaning against the wall beside the two glass doors, arms crossed over his chest, taking advantage of the shade from the building. He must have recognized my car from his visit to Grandpa’s house because he stood straight up just as I pulled into a spot.
By the time I was slamming the driver’s side door shut, he was only a few feet away.
He smiled at me.
I didn’t smile back.
And I wasn’t going to overthink what it said about him that my nonreaction didn’t do anything to his. “Glad you could come,” he said, sounding genuinely pleased.
In the time we had known each other, I hadn’t seen him in a bad mood. I wondered what got the job done. Maybe it was just injuries that made him lose his shit and turn into a dick.
Or maybe he had used his injury as an excuse for not coming back.
Okay, that was far-fetched, and I could admit it. I hated reasoning that out. He really had gone a year without posting anything on his social media accounts. From the moment he had been injured, he literally had wiped himself off the face of the planet like a missing person. There had been articles written about him just removing himself from any and every kind of spotlight, and if it hadn’t been for his agent claiming that he had heard from him, everyone might have thought he was dead. That article with his quote had hurt, but I hadn’t believed for a second after that first month that something bad had happened to him. He’d left of his own free will.
I’d stopped looking him up by the time he’d rejoined his team. I’d only known he had because of the article that had come up under news on my homepage. Like he’d been reborn out of the ashes or something.
“It’s one of the benefits of working for my grandpa,” I told him after a second, hearing my grumpiness, as I beat him to opening up the rear passenger door and ducked inside. Mo was wide awake as I unfastened all the little straps holding her in her car seat, giving her cheek and forehead a couple quick kisses in the process as she babbled away.
I smiled at her. “I don’t want to do this either, Mo Peep, but we kind of have to, okay?”
Based on what she replied with, I don’t think she believed me.
Thankfully, I managed not to bang my head as I backed out, holding her to me as I snagged her bag with my free hand. I was pretty much a fucking magician as I moved out of the way just enough to hip check the door and close it, holding a heavy baby in one arm, a backpack in another, and holding my keys in my hand at the same time.
Jonah was still smiling when I looked at him.
I still didn’t smile back.
He held out his hand. “I’ll take the bag.”
The baby was heavier, but I nodded and handed it over.
“Choice,” he noted as he slung one of the straps over his shoulder. “Keeps your arms and hands free, eh?”
Mo’s backpack had been a good idea. I had tried using a regular diaper bag for about a week before I’d gotten annoyed and shifted everything to a backpack. But I didn’t tell Jonah any of that. I just shrugged.
Jonah’s smile stayed in place as his eyes moved from the baby who was giving him wide identical eyes, to my face, and back to Mo.
Little Mo Peep reached a fist out toward him with a happy smile and a “Ba!”
He took it and gave it a shake. “Nice to see you again, wee one.”
I cleared my throat.
“Right then, I found the office,” he said as we walked beside each other following the handshake that had rattled me just a little. “They wouldn’t let me register until you arrived.”
Up ahead, one of the two glass doors that he’d been standing beside opened and a tall brunette came out, her phone held to her face. Jonah kept right on talking as he lunged forward to take the door just as the woman let go of it, her eyes locked on him.
“Shouldn’t take but a minute or two, I would think. It’s on the second floor,” the Still a Shithead kept talking, his eyes on me over the head of the woman who was basically staring at him with a dreamy expression on her face, still holding the phone up. “The lift is right here.”
Jonah wasn’t just one of the tallest men I had ever met, he was built as one of the biggest too. Muscles on top of muscles on top of muscles. And with that trimmed facial hair that became a beard halfway through the day and that perfectly shaped head…
Well, there was a reason this lady was probably pulling a muscle in her neck looking over her shoulder.
He was all fun and games to look at. But that was about it.
“Okay,” I told him as he let the door shut behind him, and we loaded into the elevator.
Once upstairs, one of those big hands gestured to the left of the hallway. We went that way before he pointed at the first door on the left. It was nondescript and the name of the business didn’t exactly scream DON’T KNOW YOUR DAD? DON’T KNOW YOUR MOM? WE CAN HELP! Thankfully.
It didn’t take Jonah long at all to go speak to the receptionist behind the desk and come back with a small stack of paperwork on a clipboard. “If you trust me to hold her while you fill it out, I’ll take her.”
I didn’t trust him to text me back, but hold Mo? I nodded, telling myself not to feel irritated and failing.
He didn’t say a word as we traded the clipboard for the baby. His hands were mostly steady as he lifted her up and brought her against his chest, fitting her there tightly as Mo still looked up at him with these eyes like she didn’t know what the hell to think of him… but she was trying to figure it out. And not exactly having a terrible time while she did from her wide-eyed expression and those grabby little hands clutching his shirt.
That was a good thing. I guess.
The paperwork only took a few minutes, and I turned it back into a receptionist with a smile and took the same seat, with Jonah still standing there, holding Mo and doing something that might have resembled the slightest bounce I’d ever seen. But that wasn’t what caught my attention. They were both looking at each other… but she had a hand on the tip of his nose, was mumbling who the hell knew what, and he was smiling at her from under her grip and asking, “Yeah? Is that what you think?”
That was what she thought because she kept on going.
Once Mo was done telling him her life story, I decided to be decent and try my best to be a good person.
Okay, at least a decent one.
“Were you waiting for long?” I made myself ask, even as I told myself that I didn’t really care how long he’d been waiting.
“Yeah, nah.” His eyes flicked down toward me, but his head didn’t actually move. After all, Mo was still holding on to his nose even though she was staring at something over his shoulder.
“Did you drive here?” I suddenly thought about how I hadn’t actually seen him getting in or ou
t of a car at any point. Now that I thought about it… I couldn’t remember seeing a parked car outside of the house on Sunday when he had come over either. Or Saturday night when he’d left. I’d taken Monday off and not seen him.
Jonah was busy still looking at Mo as he lowered himself into the seat beside me, knees going wide to plant her on the thigh furthest from me… the side of his opposite leg touching my knee. “An Uber brought me,” he explained. “I do need to look into a hire car company though.”
A hire car company? Like a rental company?
“I wasn’t sure how long I would be here.” He glanced at me with those honey-colored eyes, lingering on my face for a second too long. “At first.”
It was a miracle I didn’t scoff.
“But I have my IDP,” he rattled on, like I’d asked, moving his attention back to probably the nicest person in the room. She was definitely the cutest person. I watched as one of Jonah’s cheeks went higher than the other and his fingers touched her red stretchy pant-covered lower leg. “I’ll get a ute for the rest of my holiday soon.”
His holiday.
That got me thinking about our time frames again. How he would have to leave. For work. For rugby. Because his life was elsewhere. I didn’t know where. But the point was: he would be gone for a long time, regardless of what continent or country he was in. Would he actually come back?
I really wasn’t sure how we were going to make this all function, but… we couldn’t be the first dumbasses to put ourselves in this kind of situation. One person living and working on one continent, and another living and working on another.
If you want something to work, you find a way to make it, my fucking brain attempted to remind me right then.
Damn it, I hated when my conscious made me feel guilty. If Jonah had been a friend, I wouldn’t have hesitated to offer him help. Yet here I was.
I glanced at the Fucker and found him smiling gently at Mo who had half her fist shoved into her mouth as she stared at the ceiling tiles.
Jesus, I was going to need to tell Luna about this. Someone was going to need to fawn over me being a decent human being toward someone I legit wanted to kick in the ass.
“If you need to borrow a car before you rent one…” I started to say, feeling only slightly bad that I was struggling so much to get the words out. I was a decent person. Just with people who I didn’t have beef with, is all. He was my girl’s dad, and I was going to be stuck with him, I tried to reason. And mostly, I’d just fucking promised myself that I wasn’t about to make my life more miserable because of him. I wasn’t going to be the crazy shit non-ex. I was going to be the cool one that thought she’d dodged a bullet by not being still together. “You can borrow mine.”
Jonah blinked, and I would swear even Mo looked at me like she didn’t know who I was.
“Thank you,” he replied after a second, clearing his throat. “But I wouldn’t want you to be without a car. I can hire one, it’s no problem at all.”
Mo’s hand moved to Jonah’s ear, and I watched his gaze follow the movement. His nostrils flared, and the cheek I could see twitched. Then he reached down to tap her own ear in return, earning him the cutest, sweetest little giggle.
They were going to make me throw up.
“If you change your mind, just let me know,” I pretty much mumbled. He was still a fucker.
The smile he aimed was at the baby. “It’s all good. No worries.”
Uh-huh. I had a good idea of how much money he made. I had done my crazy-person research right after he’d gotten injured, when I wanted to find him. I bet he was all good.
Thinking that then made me flash back to the microscopic apartment he had lived in in Paris. Real estate was expensive in France; it had made me never take for granted what I had in Houston. Jonah’s place—an apartment he had shared with two teammates—had been smaller than Grandpa’s bedroom, bathroom, and closet.
I doubted Jonah knew anything about designer clothes. His tennis shoes were nothing that couldn’t be bought at a mall. He had never been flashy about his money or his belongings. He had a watch on his wrist, and I couldn’t read the name on the face of it, but I’d swear it was a Casio or a Timex. It wasn’t a new one either.
Jesus knew I didn’t care about material things. I didn’t spend more than ten dollars on a shirt nine times out of ten, but I’d upgrade to guacamole any and every time I had the option. Those were where my priorities lay.
The receptionist came back to the window then and called us around to the back while I was watching Jonah and wondering what the hell he did with all the money he made.
Neither one of us said much as we went through a door and on down a hallway, following a tech. We hadn’t gone very far when my phone rang. I pulled it out of my pocket and took a look at the screen.
“Grandpa, let me call you back,” I answered, knowing damn well I couldn’t form that sentence into a question without him turning it around on me.
He ignored me. “Where are you?”
I lowered my voice when Jonah glanced over his shoulder as he continued down the hall. “I texted you. We’re about to do Mo’s paternity test. I’ll call you when we’re done.”
He sucked in his breath over the line. “What? Jasper doesn’t believe you?”
I made a face and tried my fucking hardest not to laugh at him calling Jonah Jasper on purpose. “He does,” I insisted, not exactly whispering, “but we have to do it anyway, I’m sure, for legal shit, Grandpa. I’ll call you back.”
“Has he looked at her?”
“That’s not how it works, and you know it. Calm your titties.”
Jonah stopped walking and turned around, a hint of a smile making the right side of his mouth creep up. It made his dimple pop. Ugh.
I couldn’t help but smirk at him, shrugging a shoulder that felt a lot friendlier than it should have. But then again, I guess we were talking about him. And our kid. So…
On the receiver, Grandpa choked. “I don’t have titties, Lenny. They’re still flat, and you know I work hard to keep them that way. And you know what? I don’t know where I went wrong with you. I swear, I don’t know—”
I laughed. “I’ll call you back when I get out of here. Go finish reading that firefighter book or take some Ensure or some A positive blood in the meantime, okay?”
“Ensure?”
“Love you, bye.” I laughed again and hit End, pulling a Grandpa Gus on him with the hanging up. Only he would get upset over Ensure. The blood thing didn’t even faze him. He took it as a compliment.
I fucking loved that crazy-ass old man, I really did.
I was still laughing when I glanced up to find that Jonah and Mo had stopped outside of an opened door, but it was Jonah who was looking at me. Mo was too busy looking at the man holding her, clutching the collar of his shirt, stretching it and trying to put it in her mouth. Jonah was smiling.
At me.
I almost stopped smiling but then got myself to drop that shitty idea. What was I going to do? Give up my happiness for somebody else? Hell no. How many times was I going to need to go over this? I could hate him passively. I could hate him in the deepest little corners of my heart and not waste any energy doing so.
I raised my eyebrows instead, set my phone on airplane mode, and slipped it back into my pocket.
We filed into the small room, the technician pulling out whatever it was that she needed. I had barely stepped inside when the Shithead held her out toward me. I made a face at him as I took her.
To be fair, his expression was somewhere between embarrassed and sheepish. “She’ll want you if she cries.” His smile faltered. “To her, I’m still some bloke.”
I pressed my lips together and told myself there was nothing to feel bad about. But when those lids slid over his honey-colored eyes slowly and I saw his Adam’s apple bob, I opened my mouth to tell him that wouldn’t always be the case.
But he beat me to it.
“Not for too long though, yeh?”
he asked me, or Mo, or maybe both of us.
Since I was the only one who could answer, he was lucky I nodded.
Fortunately, the buccal swabs didn’t take long at all, and even more luckily, Mo didn’t fuss. She was too busy pulling on my hair, and I was too busy telling her “No, no, no” to pay that much attention either.
Jonah stood right at my elbow the whole time, a physical eclipse of muscle blocking the overhead lights, as he’d burned a hole into the technician helping us.
“This won’t hurt her, will it?” the kinda-new dad had asked, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans.
The woman gave him a knowing smile. “Not at all.”
Then we were out of there with promises that we would be contacted with the results. The formal results at least. I was positive that the Fucker trusted I wasn’t lying about him being the father.
It wasn’t until we were walking down the hall to head out of the building that my stomach grumbled, and literally a split second later, I heard his grumble too. I remembered that from back in France. We’d had that in common—we were both always hungry.
This was the rest of my life.
And I wasn’t going to fucking ruin an hour of it, even if he did deserve a twenty-four-hour case of the shits.
Fuck it.
“I haven’t had any lunch,” I told him, even though I didn’t want to. But I knew I had to practice being decent to him. Not nice, just… okay. “You?”
He held the door open for us. “I had second brekkie about ten.”
Second breakfast had been my favorite thing back when I’d been trying to compete in a higher weight class. I missed those days of eating even more than I usually did and knowing it was for a good cause. “Want to go get some? I can probably drop you off at your hotel afterward if it isn’t too far. I need to get back to the gym.” I really didn’t, but he didn’t need to know that.
I could hear him directly behind me as we approached my car. “I’d love to. The hotel isn’t too far of a drive from here, if you wouldn’t mind.”
The Best Thing Page 14
