The afterbirth.
That would be something I would be doing without him. I was pretty sure cutting the cord was something that I could accomplish.
“Can you…” I pointed at the baby. “Can you take my pants and wrap him up?”
He ignored my suggestion about the pants and ripped off his shirt.
Then he wrapped it around my baby.
“Good?” he asked.
I swallowed hard, trying not to look at the man in his bare-chested state.
He wasn’t the most ripped guy in the world.
In fact, for a man that was doing CrossFit five times a week and doing such a physically demanding job, I would’ve expected him not to have a little bit of chunkiness to him at all.
But, when I looked at him, took in his hairy chest and his chiseled jaw, as well as his non-defined abdominal muscles, I realized that I was highly attracted to him, nonetheless.
“What are you staring at?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
I shrugged. “Nothing.”
I wasn’t dead. I may have just had a baby, like literally minutes ago, but I wasn’t dead.
“You need to sit here and let me ride into town and call an ambulance,” he muttered darkly.
I sighed and leaned my head into the seat I was leaning against. “Just go get me a spare so we can drive in. I don’t want to leave my car here. And your place is five minutes instead of the ten it would take to drive into town and call someone.”
There’d been a petition going around town for about a year now to get the cell phone signal booster that would help out those that lived outside of town on the north side. Pretty much, if you didn’t have a home phone—which nobody had anymore—then you had to hope that the cell phone tower wasn’t being a total dick and doing its job—which ninety-five percent of the time it wasn’t.
“You think I just carry spares like yours around with me?” He rolled his eyes.
“I think you have a truck five minutes away, and I would rather drive into town in yours, than pay thousands of dollars to the county for their transport to a hospital for something that I don’t need any longer.”
“You want to just go home?” he wondered, looking alarmed.
Now that he said it, I thought—well, why the hell not? The hard part was all done.
“Sure do,” I said.
He opened his mouth, and then closed it.
“We can’t…” he shook his head. “We can’t do that.”
I shrugged. “Nobody is asking you to do anything but take me home, man.”
Murphy looked down at the little boy that was fast asleep in his arms and said, “Your fucking mother is crazy.”
With that he transferred him over, got on his bike, and rode away.
While he was gone, I dealt with the afterbirth, wrapped it up in a trash bag, and then cleaned up my mess as best as I could while my son slept on the seat cocooned in Murphy’s large shirt.
When I was cleaned up, I took the rest of the time to study my son.
He looked nothing like the asshole who’d helped make him.
He looked like me, and nobody else.
Which made me irrationally fucking happy.
When Bayne Green came back to Paris, Texas—which I knew he would—he would never know what he’d signed away.
But I would.
And I would forever be happy in the knowledge that my son was mine, and nobody else’s.
“You’re the most beautiful thing in the world, Vladimir Alessio Pope.” I paused. “And don’t tell that man that you’re named after him, or he’ll find a reason to be mad at me about it.”
Speaking of the grumpy guy.
He rolled up in his truck ten minutes to the dot from when he left, glared daggers at me as he helped me into his truck, and then didn’t say a single word as he drove me home.
He also didn’t leave until my sister arrived twenty minutes after she was done with work.
The next morning I woke up with my car in its spot, a new tire on not one, but four rims, and a note saying, “Don’t do anything stupid like this ever again. Also, you got a cute kid to rely on you now. Don’t be dumb.”
CHAPTER 7
I don’t like running, wallballs, box jumps, thrusters, burpees and definitely not the assault bike. But I love CrossFit.
-Mavis to Murphy
MAVIS
Two weeks later
I had no idea what I was supposed to do.
My sister was currently at home, throwing up her guts, and there was no way in hell that she could watch Vlad. Then again, with her being sick, I most assuredly didn’t want her near my newborn.
But today, not having a babysitter wasn’t an option.
Not with school so close to being done.
I literally had one clinical left to do and one day left to do it in because I’d used up all the rest of my days having my baby.
I stared at the shop that was housing the man that made my heart go pitter patter and wondered if he’d agree.
I hoped he would, because I was literally out of options.
Options that I trusted, anyway.
Getting out of the van, I rushed toward the front doors, hoping beyond hope that I wouldn’t get soaked.
There was no hope, though.
This year it’d been exceptionally wet.
There was literally rain coming down every single day.
And every single time I got out in it, it was pouring.
Like today.
Like I needed more shit to worry about.
But whatever.
When I arrived under the cover of his shop, he was already waiting for me.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, his eyes taking my soaked attire in.
I licked my lips and bit my lip.
“I…” I hesitated. “I need you to watch my son tonight.”
“I’m sorry, but I think that the wind is making me hear things.” He paused. “You need me to do what?”
“You heard me, dammit!” I cried out, waving my hands in the air as if by doing it it would help me not lose my shit. “I’m sorry, okay? I don’t have anyone else. Not anyone that I trust, anyway. I have one more clinical. One! Then I’m done. I need help. I need you.”
He looked like he was about to say no, but then I kept talking.
“You can even take him to the gym with you,” I pleaded. “I won’t complain at all. Just don’t let anyone touch him but you, okay?”
Murphy sighed. “What about my mom?”
“She’s okay,” I promised instantly.
“Fine,” he grumbled. “But leave your phone on. I’ve never watched a baby before.”
I jumped up and down in excitement. “It’ll be okay. I promise. The shift is from six tonight to six tomorrow morning. I might even be back before he wakes up for good.”
“Just how many times does he wake up in the night?” he wondered.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him.
• • •
MURPHY
“Just you and me tonight, I guess,” I said to the little baby that hadn’t stopped sleeping since his mother had handed him off to me.
That’d been an hour ago, and now I was driving a goddamn minivan back to Mavis’s place, wondering what in the hell I’d just gotten myself in to.