“Hee haw!” Hatch cries, running to Naomi. The winter hat she bought him, complete with donkey ears and earflaps has barely left his head since she brought it home. He rushes over to me. “Hee haw!”
“Even your kid knows you’re a jackass,” Jude quips, as he walks in followed by Elliot.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Hatch darts back to Naomi and plops into her lap.
“Is that any way to treat your friends who have the new Zombie Clash game and came to play it with you?” Jude says, pulling a bottle out of my liquor cabinet.
I’m not much of a gamer, but there are a couple of console games I play. With all that’s happened, it completely slipped my mind that Zombie Clash released today. “Please, dude, help yourself,” I scoff.
“To anything?” He raises his eyebrows up and down at Naomi, and she chuckles while shaking her head.
Hatch toddles over to Jude and grabs his pantleg, grinning up at him. Jude picks him up. “Hatchet! What you got going on here?” He tugs on the ear of Hatch’s hat.
“Hee haw,” is Hatch’s matter of fact answer.
Hatch likes all the Tragic guys—hell, he likes everyone—but he seems to have a soft spot for Jude, who likes to brag that Hatch likes him best. He and Elliot spend a few minutes playing with him before Naomi takes him to the sunroom to play.
“Alright, assholes, the console is under the cabinet. Hook it up while I grab some beers.”
The next few hours feel like we stepped back in time a bit, before the band took off, before kids or wives took priority over our time. We used to get together like this a lot, for games or drinking at some random bar.
“I’m starving,” Jude remarks, as Dani walks into the room. He regards her. “You’re just in time to feed me!”
“To what? My vote is alligator. They like to play with their food first,” Dani replies, heading into the kitchen.
“Ouch. Maybe we’d better order pizza.”
Elliot laughs then yells, “Jude! You let him eat my brain! Pay attention!”
Jude passes me the controller. “Here, save his whiney ass.”
“Jude.” My voice holds a warning as he heads toward the kitchen. Dani will tolerate him but even there the line is thin. They had a one night stand last year and he hasn’t been her favorite person since. He’s lucky I didn’t kick his ass for fucking my sister.
“I’m just looking for Pop-Tarts!” he shouts, disappearing through the doorway.
The game ends when both of us get overwhelmed by zombies. “Fuck,” Elliot laughs.
Jude flops down on the couch, eating a granola bar. Dani heads down the hall just as Naomi enters the living room.
“Caden’s asleep. I gave up trying to get the donkey hat off of him.” She holds up her phone showing a picture of him curled up in the crib with his hat on.
We spend a few minutes talking while Elliot disconnects the game. The TV switches back to cable. I pick up the remote when the SLY Report comes on. They’re the most invasive assholes of the entertainment news world.
“What the fuck?” Naomi exclaims. “Turn it up.”
Dani’s eyes are wide as saucers, and I have no idea what they’re seeing that I’m not until the banner below the blond woman they’re interviewing clears it up.
Paige Gray, Former Friend of Naomi Wells.
I’ve never met Paige. I know she helped Naomi get her job here and that she lost her job because of it. Naomi said she hasn’t heard from her since she returned. What the hell could she have to say?
The look of utter terror on Naomi’s face says it could be plenty.
The room falls silent as all eyes are on the television. The first minute of the interview introduces Paige as a former friend of Naomi who “has all the gossip on the relationship between Axton Todd and his nanny.”
“Are you saying that there’s a romantic relationship between Naomi and Axton?” the interviewer asks.
The grin Paige throws to the camera shows how much she’s enjoying this. “I wouldn’t say a relationship necessarily, but their connection is far from platonic.”
The studio audience oohs. “And how do you know this?”
“She told me…in graphic detail. Naomi was very happy to fill me in. After all, she’d been planning this for a long time.”
The interviewer leans forward. “Planning what?”
“Taking her sister’s place as the mother of Axton Todd’s baby.”
This time the audience explodes in exclamations and murmurs.
Fuck.
They go to commercial with the promise of more drama to come, and I grab my phone to call Milo. He picks up on the first ring. “I know. I’m on it. PR and legal are getting involved. Don’t say or do anything.” With that, he hangs up.
That was one fact that never got out, Naomi’s relation to Hatch. I know that isn’t the big thing Milo and the label are worried about though. It’s that the public will now know who his mother is. One simple search will show she was a prostitute.
I’m slammed by so much at once, I don’t know what to think or feel. I want to be pissed that Naomi told Paige about us, but I have no idea if that’s even true. Or when she might’ve done it. It’s everything I can do not to lash out at her, but one glance at the devastated expression on her face and the impulse fades.
She looks at Dani and whispers, “Why would she do this?”
It’s Elliot who replies with one simple word. “Money”
Jude is looking back and forth between Naomi and me. He raises his eyebrows at me, and I give a small nod. Fuck it. Secret’s out either way. I’m not going to deny it. The betrayal from her friend is hurting her enough.
Arms crossed against her stomach, she leans against the wall and watches as the show resumes.
“Before the commercial break, you dropped a bombshell. You’re saying that the mother of the baby is Naomi’s sister? Baby Caden is her nephew?”
The sound of my son’s name in that vapid bitch’s mouth infuriates me. It’s bad enough my life is fodder for gossip, but he should be off limits.
“Yes, Deidre was the baby’s mother. You know how sibling rivalry can get. Naomi always thought she was better than her sister, what with Deidre being a prostitute and everything. I’m sure knowing her sister had a baby with Axton Todd was hard to swallow.”
And the other shoe has dropped.
The gasp from the crowd is echoed in my living room. The guys know about my sexual proclivities, but I sure as hell didn’t tell Dani. Or Naomi. She never knew what her sister did for a living.
“The mother of Axton’s child was a prostitute,” the interviewer repeats.
“That lying bitch!” Naomi exclaims, shaking her head. “Can they do this? Just say these things?” She’s not asking anyone in particular.
Paige continues. “Yeah, it was sad. She had a drug problem. Died of an overdose, and the baby went to Axton. It didn’t take Naomi long to see an opportunity to slide into Deidre’s place. I admit I helped her get the job. I felt sorry for her. She had no other family and swore she only wanted to be closer to Caden. I didn’t know she was after a nanny with benefits position.”
The crowd erupts in laughter and the banner at the bottom of the screen changes to read: Nanny with Benefits, Naomi Wells, pursued Axton after death of her sister.