She gives a small cry as we walk up to the front door. I stiffen, prepared to take her if he can’t handle it, but he shocks me when he starts bouncing her up and down, a quiet hum rumbling in his chest. She quiets, bottom lip still trembling but content for now.
I unlock the door and scoop up the pizza box from the porch, letting Travis head in first with the baby.
I wish I could say it wasn’t sexy as hell seeing tattooed, muscled Travis holding a baby, but damn I’m glad he already got me pregnant or I might just ask him to do the deed right now.
“Where should I put her?”
“Just hold onto her for now.” I walk past him into the kitchen, setting the pizza box on the table and taking off my purse, draping the strap over the chair. “I need to change her diaper.”
“Can I change it?”
I whip around, staring at him in shock. “You want to change a dirty diaper?”
“Well, yeah? Shouldn’t I? I have to learn somehow.”
I blink at him, half expecting him to disappear like some sort of mirage.
“Okay, then.” I lead him over to the downstairs playpen with an attached changing station.
He lays Dahlia on it while I grab a diaper, wipes, and ointment from the side compartment.
“First, you have to take off her pants and undo her onesie snaps.” He gives me an apprehensive look but follows those steps. “This is a pee diaper, so you’re getting off easy this time. She might not be a boy, but she has peed on me before so don’t be surprised if that happens.”
His eyes widen with panic. “Babies pee on you?”
I giggle and he gives me a large smile in return. “They can’t exactly control it.”
He shudders. “Okay, what do I do once the diaper is off?”
“I always fold it under her so none of the nasty gets on her, wipe her, and switch out the dirty for the clean.”
“I can do this,” he says more to himself than me.
I finish talking him through the process. It takes him twice the time that it would me, but I don’t complain, I’m just happy he’s trying.
“Good job.” I give him a literal pat on the back because I’m a giant dork and he grins, amused by my awkwardness. “I’ll take her.” I hold my hands out for her, but he shakes his head.
“No, I’ve got her.” He saunters past me into the kitchen. “Where are your plates?” He starts opening cabinets with one hand, holding onto Dahlia tightly with the other.
“Just make yourself at home,” I mutter sarcastically, greeted with a cocky grin in return. “It’s that one.” I point to the cabinet on the right of the sink.
“Aha!” He chimes like he’s the one who found it. He pulls down two plates and I open up the pizza box, giving us each two slices to start. Something tells me I’ll need more than two to deal with Travis this evening.
“Are you going to hold her while you eat?” I pull out a chair and sit down, trying not to let out a sigh at how good it feels to rest.
He looks down at our baby and back at me. “I want to hold her for as long as I can. I have to make up all the time I’ve lost.” He glides his tattooed finger over her plump cheek, a mystified expression on his face. “How is it possible that I already love her? I don’t even know her.”
I shrug, biting into a slice. “That’s how kids work. It’s darn annoying. You pop them out and it’s insta love.”
He settles in the chair across from me. “Were you scared when you found out?”
I let out a humorless laugh, shaking my head. “Terrified.” Rubbing my lips together, I hesitate on whether to say more or not, but then the words just start coming out. “I never saw myself as a mother, but as soon as the I saw the positive test I knew I had to step up to the plate. I was never not going to have her. Personally, that wasn’t a thought in my brain when I missed my period. I figured if I was pregnant then this was life steering me onto a path I hadn’t thought was for me, but apparently needed. Now, I don’t know what I’d do without her.” I let out a breath, staring at the veggie and meat pizza instead of him. “Life gives us unexpected miracles and she’s the biggest and best one that’s ever been sent my way.”
God, I sound insane. Like a total nutcase, but it’s how I feel. The universe knew I needed Dahlia when I didn’t. She’s changed my life for the better and I wouldn’t take anything back.
Silence falls, both of us eating our pizza with only the quiet whir of the fridge as background noise.
Travis wipes his fingers on a napkin, clearing his throat. Dahlia is passed out asleep in his arms. Her easy acceptance of him surprises me. She’s never done well with strangers. I can’t understand how, but maybe on some level she knows he’s her dad.
“You’ve never asked me why I left.”
I blink at him, surprised he brought this up. “I don’t care.”
“You don’t?” His brows furrow, at a complete loss.
“I did to start with, I was pissed that we…that we…”
“Fucked? Slept together? Did the dirty?”
“Shut up,” I grumble, blushing. Yes, I’m a grown woman blushing, but after so long without sex when I’m not utterly exhausted, I’m hornier than I’ve ever been in my entire life. Any topic of sex now makes me ache in a way I never understood before. “Anyway, I was mad to start with since you literally disappeared like you never existed, but I got over it. We’re adults. Your business is yours.”
I take the last bite of my pizza, dropping the crust onto the plate.
“My brother needed me,” he murmurs quietly, rocking Dahlia.
“Hmm.”
“He got cancer.” His voice thickens with emotion. “Terminal. I…I dropped everything to be with him. He didn’t want me too, but Christian was my little brother, my best friend, and I couldn’t not be there for him. I wanted all the time I could get with him because I knew it was limited. I wasn’t going to look back and regret not going.”
“I’m really sorry.”
I swear tears swim in his eyes, and he gives Dahlia a small smile. “He would’ve loved her and being an uncle. I know he would’ve spoiled her silly.”
I don’t know what makes me do it, but I reach over and put my hands on his forearm. He jolts like I’ve electrocuted him. “She has him as a guardian angel now and you’ll make sure she knows all about him.”
“I will,” he vows.
It’s more than an hour later when I come down from putting Dahlia to bed. Travis helped me give her a bath, but I insisted on handling getting her settled for the night. We have our routine and I didn’t want his presence to affect that.
A shadow moves and my hand flies to my chest. “Oh my God!” I flick on the light, finding Travis sitting on the couch. “You’re still here.”
It’s such an obvious statement. He’s right in front of me. But when he descended the stairs after her bath, I expected him to let himself out.
“Is that okay?” The elegant slope of his brow arches.
He unfolds that long lean body from my small couch, towering above me. My heart beats faster, the throbbing impossible to ignore.