Beast walked in the bedroom. “Whoa, that’s bad.” He lifted his shirt to his nose.
“Can you do this?”
“Hell, no.” Beast lifted the shirt even higher over his nose. “I do everything for Elsa except change sloppy diapers. Well, so far I’ve managed to avoid it anyway.”
“But you’ve changed a diaper, right?”
“Yeah, but only when she’s just wet.”
“Well, walk me through this, man. I’ve never even done that.”
Beast walked him through it, the whole time holding his shirt to his nose. He started laughing when Orlando gagged but then gagged himself and started to walk away. “Get back here, ass,” Orlando called out for him in sheer panic.
He grabbed a handful of wipes as Beast instructed and started wiping. It took a while with Nine getting curious and sticking his head in the room only to run back out of there cussing like a little bitch. By the time he was done, Orlando was sure he’d used far more wipes than he was supposed to. But it was over. Beast offered to hold the baby while Orlando ran outside to throw everything out in the dumpster. Beast was coming down the stairs when Orlando walked back in. He looked way more comfortable holding the baby than Orlando had felt so far. But then the guy was a dad.
Before Orlando could take the baby from him, his phone rang. Remembering the call he was waiting on, his heart rate spiked. He rushed to his phone, and sure enough, it was Slater.
The first words out of Slater’s mouth the moment Orlando answered the phone were, “Call Child Protective Services.” Instantly, Orlando felt his stomach drop as he listened intently to everything else the guy had to say. “I just got off the phone with someone who knows about this stuff. Even if it is your kid, this needs to be reported. Do you know who the mother is?”
“I have no idea,” Orlando admitted. “He’s three and a half months according to the note, so this has to be someone I slept with last year. I don’t have a fucking clue.”
“Well, first things first, call Child Protective Services, and they’ll take it from here.”
“Whoa, whoa, wait.” Orlando turned back to Beast still holding the baby. “What if he is mine? What do you mean they’ll take it from here?” Unbelievably, he was already feeling alarmed. “Are they just gonna take him from me?”
“Absolutely. They’ll take him straight to the hospital to get him checked out and rule out any illnesses or abuse—of any kind. Then he’ll be put in emergency foster care until they know for sure he hasn’t been kidnapped and the real parents aren’t out there frantically looking for him. Even if you can prove you’re his dad, just ’cause you made him doesn’t mean you’re fit to be a parent. A child is a very delicate thing. If you really want to keep him, you’ll have to prove you’re fit. It’s a whole process. They’ll check your background, test you for drugs, and even send someone out to check out your living arrangements. But you gotta call them, O, or you’ll be in a lot of trouble, and I’ll tell you this much: if they find the mother, she’s already in a world of trouble.”
By the time he was off the phone, he felt dazed. Beast’s contacts told him pretty much the same thing. Orlando had no choice but to make the call. Then he sat and waited. His heart was already telling him this baby was his. The whole time he sat there holding the baby he felt numb.
What Slater had said was no exaggeration. The police arrived first, followed by the paramedics who’d be transporting his son to the hospital where they said he’d be thoroughly checked out. The social workers were going straight to the hospital. But even more surprising was he was asked to come into headquarters for questioning. The idea that he might be a suspect in the case of this kid’s missing mother hadn’t even crossed his mind. Just like that, Orlando’s world was turned upside down.
Chapter 2
Danica
It was the right thing to do. Danica knew this. There were no two ways around it. The only other choice she’d had was out of the question. All she could do now was pray Orlando would do the right thing and fight to keep him. As the biological father, he’d be the first choice for guardian of the baby. She knew he wasn’t the fatherly type, knew it was a risk to leave the baby with him, but she couldn’t imagine anyone not falling in love with that beautiful near-toothless smile. Thinking about it only made her sob even more. Danica buried her face in her hands. As much as she wanted to hate Ted for forcing her to do it already, she knew he was right. The only other choice meant losing the baby forever. Of course, she didn’t tell Ted that. Not only would he think her crazy for her farfetched plan of being able to see him again if she at least knew who was raising him, he’d be completely against it. It was still way too soon to know if that part had even worked. But her wretched heart was already begging for her to come up with something else. Seeing him just once in a while from afar was not going to cut it. As insane as it sounded, if Orlando did decide to keep the baby, she was definitely going to have to find a way to get her foot in. It hadn’t even been a whole day since she’d left him at that doorstep, and already she was falling apart. Gathering herself, she got up and walked to the bathroom in the spacious home. She rinsed her face clean only to start crying all over again when she glanced at the bathtub and saw the baby wash. Sitting down on the toilet seat, she snatched a towel off the rack and wiped her face. How in the world would she ever get through this?
Twice that morning she’d nearly just kept driving. Thoughts of packing her stuff too, running away with baby Orlando and never looking back, had plagued her for weeks. But in the end, she always came back to the same conclusion. She wouldn’t get far, and eventually she’d be worse off than where she was right now. At least now she was just without him and miserable but not locked up. Knowing where he was, was the only thing that keeping her from completely spiraling into a deep depression. When she’d tried to buy more time with the baby, saying she was afraid of getting in trouble for not taking him to his dad sooner, Ted had suggested she just take him to a fire station. “Just tell them his mother never picked him up and now you can’t get ahold of her.”
She almost had, but then another idea came to her. This way she still had a chance to try and be a part of his life. Even before she’d given him up, she was certain she’d try just about anything to be able to see him and be around him again. Now that she knew just how agonizing it’d be to go even a day without him, she knew she’d stop at nothing.
Chapter 3
Orlando
Ironically, it was only a few months prior that Orlando had started dating someone and taking it a little more seriously than he ever had in his life. Since getting his business running had been his only priority so far, a serious relationship hadn’t even made it onto his list of priorities. His mother had always said, “You don’t go out looking for the right one. The right one will show up one day when you least expect it. You won’t even know it until you realize she’s sucked you in.” And that certainly hadn’t been the case in this instance.
He’d met Felicia in the less-than-profound way he often met chicks, at the local watering hole just around the corner from the shop. He’d gone there after closing up shop, and they’d exchanged a few words and ended up hitting it off. She’d walked home with him at the end of the night since he’d walked there, and she and her friend had Ubered there. As expected, she’d spent the night. The only difference between her and any other girl he’d brought back to his place after just meeting her that same night was that she was still there in the morning, and for once, it hadn’t felt awkward. He’d awoken to the smell of breakfast being made. Normally, a girl inviting herself to stay for breakfast would’ve annoyed him. But the way Orlando saw it even now, she had three things going for her that made her a standout from most of the girls he’d come home with. For one, she hadn’t been a lush. She’d known when she had enough and switched to water before they even left the bar. Two, she’d known exactly what she was doing when she agreed to come back to his place and hang for a while. Most girls, unlike Felicia, were pretty lit by the time they got back to his place then did the walk of shame in the middle of the night or early morning, and thankfully so. Three, Felicia had been perfectly honest and upfront about her decision to stay the night. For starters, she said one-nighters with someone she just met weren’t the norm for her, and somehow, Orlando believed her. She also said she had too much going on to be looking to get into anything too serious. “But naturally I do have desires that crave more than the DIY stuff every now and again.”