Like a bucket of ice water pitched on them, Josie's words made him feel stone-cold sober. Crackpot idea, right? Some calm, internally-focused part of him thought it might work – not knowing. Once they knew who the dad was it would shift everything, make him and Dylan competitors, not collaborators.
"I like it." Laura's voice was small but strong. "If they both want to be her dad, I'm fine with it."
Josie looked at them all as if they were aliens. "But you have to know!"
How had they gone from just learned about the existence of this tiny being to having a fight about her already?
"Maybe we can both go on the birth certificate?" Dylan asked.
"What – like you each contributed half a sperm? Biology doesn't work that way," Josie wisecracked.
"I know how – "
Buh bum buh bum buh bum. They all turned to look at the monitor. A large wet spot grew around Laura's eye on the pillow, her chin quivering and chest shaking a bit.
"Out!" Josie ordered. "All of us! We can come back and fight another time when Laura's stronger."
Shit. She was right, as much as Mike was loathe to admit it. He looked at the clock; was it really not even 7:30 a.m.? Man. He'd lived five lifetimes in four hours. He walked to the head of the bed and bent down, stretching to give Laura a kiss on the temple.
"You have nothing to be sorry about. I'm the one who is so, so sorry, Laura. We should have told you."
"I should have told you," she whispered back, reaching for his hand. The joy of this moment made his own heart grow, and his fingers reached down to stroke the baby.
"We'll be back later. We're here for you." He knew he shouldn't speak for Dylan – that was a bridge he still needed to cross – but the words were reflexive, born of years of knowing he could speak for two.
Dylan came from the other side of the bed and kissed her cheek. "Me too. I'm sorry, Laura, for letting you down."
A smile. "It's all good." Yawn. The baby's heart rate settled back down.
Click. The door opened and Mike saw Josie leading the way. By the time he and Dylan had stepped out, Laura was snoozing, as it should be.
Buh bum buh bum buh bum.
A dad. Daddy. Dylan fumbled with the idea that he might be someone's daddy. Images of his own father, still strong and hearty at seventy, flipped through his mind. Fishing and hiking and swimming and camping. He knew how to parent a boy, all rough and tumble and energy.
A little girl? He wasn't exactly the princess tea party type. A lump in his throat seemed to push on his tear ducts and make his eyes leak a bit as he and Mike and Josie left Laura's room.
"You're covered in soot," Josie marveled. He looked down at his forearms. Yep. Nothing new. After a year on the force he had found that his cuticles always had a few flecks of black in them. Professional hazard. "You literally carried her out and saved her life." Hair wild and eyes tired, she smiled at him, a genuine, earnest look that made her quite beautiful, transformed. "Thank you. You saved them both."
Both. A baby girl. He washed his face with his hands, kneading the skin, willing his brain to focus, as if he could massage it into place. "What are we gonna do?" Open-ended question. One that no one had an answer to, but he had to ask it anyway.
"This is a start." For the first time, he got a good look at Josie. SpongeBob pajamas and sockless, with flip flops. What a fashion plate. Then he remembered – 3 a.m. She had sprinted like they had, and he felt a combination of extreme fatigue and gratitude. Too bad he'd been too stupid to take Josie's advice when she'd flung it at him that night at Jeddy's. Thank God Laura had a good friend through all this.
A look at Mike, who was looking at him. A shared smile. Maybe this would be OK, he thought.
How were they going to raise a child? Nausea settled in. Or maybe that was just hunger. Josie rubbed her eyes and took a good look at herself, head tipped down. Chin on chest, she started laughing, a coarse, harsh sound.
“Man, I gotta get home and make sure those cats haven't destroyed everything. And I need to sleep. My shift starts at three.”
“You work in a factory?” Dylan asked. She had a hard look to her, like someone who was streetwise. Yet when she softened and smiled, she seemed delicate and intellectual. What a chameleon.
“I'm a nurse,” she said flatly, as if she were offended he thought her working class.
“Cool. I'm a paramedic.”
“No – you're a billionaire,” she said slowly, as if speaking to a child.
Deadly stare. “And you're a – ” The rest of his sentence was cut off by Mike, who wrapped an arm around his shoulders and steered him away from Josie.
“We'll be back in a few hours to check on Laura and talk about our daughter,” he said, soothing the simmer that threatened to bubble over in Dylan. Another hand on his shoulder, then a matching one on Mike's.
“Hey.” Josie's voice was clipped and edgy. “You two blew it, and if she lets you back in, let me make one thing perfectly clear.” Dylan's temper rose somewhere in his throat, floating like bile.
One long fingernail pointed at their crotches, one by one. “The warlock waitress will be wearing very real balls if you mindfuck her again. And that baby, too.”
Holy shit. “You really have some nerve,” he nearly shouted, letting his voice rise, feeling it like an old friend. The nurse, Diana, looked at them from behind a large desk, eyeing them warily.
“Me? I'm not the one who – oh, f**k this. I'm done trying to help you two.”
“Offering to chop off our balls isn't my idea of help,” Mike added, his voice flat and dry.
“It's 7:30 a.m. My best friend and her baby nearly died in a fire. Now I have to help her not feel guilty after I've spent the past three months trying to convince her to tell you two a**holes.”
She what?
“You two lied badly enough – twice – to crush my best friend's heart. The best friend I've been with now through the first half of a pregnancy.” Her voice rose. “Were you there when she cried her eyes out over you two? When she started to get morning sickness? How about when I went out to get the tests and we went through them, one by one, and they all read positive – where were you?”
“We didn't know – ”
“I know you didn't know, Dylan. Why do you think you didn't know?” Nostrils flaring, hands on hips, she looked like a miniature Joan Jett doing a SpongeBob imitation, all yellow fury. “Because she thought you didn't tell her about your money because you didn't trust her. She was f**king overwhelmed and confused. And by the way – use a damn rubber sometimes, you two!”
OK, she had him there. He should have. Mike didn't? A side glance at Mike, who imperceptibly shook his head. So it really could be either of them.
“Forgive me,” she said bitterly, as if asking for anything but forgiveness, “if I seem overly protective. Someone has to be, though, because the greatest threat to Laura – and her baby – so far has been fire, and you.”
Wham. As if struck between the eyes by a hot ball of lead, Dylan nearly sank to the floor. Fuck all. He resented the hell out of what Josie was saying but he had to admit she was right. The wince on Mike's face said she'd struck his target, too. Bullseye.
Double bullseye. She walked off, fast and efficient, just like a nurse. Except they weren't her patients. Quite the opposite. They were her wounded, her words meant to hurt, to get the point driven home.
And she had succeeded.
Shoulders slumped, he sighed. Ah, man, he had to get back to the station to do reports and go through debriefings. Mike looked at him and pointed to the hallway toward the parking garage. A slow walk to the elevators was rote enough that he just kept moving forward, brain turned to mush.
“What now?” Mike asked as they waited for the elevator.
“You'll drive me back to my place?” They'd left Dylan's car in the apartment garage and come in the Jeep.
“I'll drive us back to our place.” Dylan closed his eyes and leaned against Mike, nodding.
Sometimes it didn't have to be so complicated.
Thank God.
Chapter Nine
Mike held the smartphone's camera up and surveyed the soot-covered room slowly. Laura's apartment building had just been opened for him and Dylan to come down, the fire investigation completed enough that they permitted residents to remove vital items. The conclusion: an electrical fire that started in the breaker box in the basement, directly under Laura's place.
She was damn lucky. A few more minutes and...well, he wouldn't be holding a camera streaming live video to her on her smart phone, her sweet face asking questions and giving directions as she rested under a down throw on his couch, looking relaxed and healing nicely.
His couch. At the cabin. When the fire investigators told her she wouldn't be able to go back to her apartment for weeks, if not months, the structural damage too great for people to live there, the news had seemed to crush her. Quick to offer help, he and Dylan had both tried to get her to move in. Cabin vs. apartment?
She'd chosen the cabin. Who knew why, and he didn't care. Josie was with her, helping to acclimate her, and now he and Dylan were on a mission to bring back whatever she wanted. Life as he knew it was over. Not just the past four painful, grueling months, but the time before that as well. He and Dylan would never be the same again. It was less about hiding the truth from Laura (twice) and more about what seemed to be a strange role reversal, with Dylan calmer, more reserved, more mature and Mike more emotive, charismatic, and, well –
Alpha.
“Not my circle chair!” Laura groaned as Mike pointed his phone at it. Black. “That used to be a really nice mauve.”
“It's toast now,” Mike muttered.
“Laura, a restoration and cleaning company should really get in here before you take anything home,” Dylan interjected, arms crossed, brow furrowed, voice uncharacteristically stern and bureaucratic. “You shouldn't inhale any of the soot from the fire.”
“Mike said he'd wash everything three times before I wear it,” she answered, voice echoing from the tinny speaker. Dylan shot him a look of pure evil. Mike's saucy grin was his only answer.
“Suck up,” Dylan hissed.
Mike thought that over for a second. “I'll own that.” Deeper grin. Dylan's eyeroll felt like a victory.
Two hours later he and Dylan were straining to carry out a slew of choices Laura had made, from clothing to heirlooms to the cat beds, although he had repeatedly offered to buy her whatever she needed.
“Why does she want all this?” he asked Dylan as they crammed it into the back of the jeep. “Her coconut shampoo? Seriously?”
“It's comfort. Control. Fire victims need it, so it's good to do this for her. I've seen people cry over a dirty seventy-nine cent can opener. When your house catches fire and you survive, things take on more meaning.” Mike eyed a hand-knitted lap throw Laura had screamed about when found intact. Her grandma had made it. She wanted it for the baby's crib.
“Her things, you mean.”
“Right. It's not the same if you swoop in and just replace it all with a four-figure trip to Target.” Surveying the load, Mike started to understand. Laura hadn't asked for appliances or expensive electronics. She wanted photo albums and video cartridges and clothing. Personal stuff you couldn't really replace easily.