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He chuckles softly. “Great. I’ll be by to get you in a half hour.”
I take a quick shower and do my best to look presentable, and he shows up right on time, knocking quietly on the front door so as not to wake my roommate.
I open it, and he stands there looking absolutely freaking delicious in jeans and a red Aces T-shirt. He’s wearing a backwards hat again, and my God, he’s hot.
“Did you eat?” I ask after I pick up my jaw off the ground.
“I figured I’d just grab something at the hospital, but I wouldn’t say no to a cup of coffee.”
“Come on in,” I say, opening the door a little wider to allow him in. I offer him a bagel while his Keurig brews, and he takes me up on it. We’re in the car ten minutes later on our way toward the hospital.
“So this is your first niece, huh?” I ask.
“By blood, yeah, but Beck’s kids are like nieces to me, too. What’s it like having one?” he asks.
It strikes me that the kids he considers nieces already are my actual nieces. “It’s pretty cool getting to know kids who are made from one of your siblings. Everleigh is eight now, and she’s so calm and cool like Beck, and then Isla is almost five, and she’s a firecracker like her mama.”
He chuckles. “Yeah, firecracker is one way to describe Rachel.”
My sister-in-law fell for my brother when they were in college. She chased him for three years while he was busy focusing on his studies, but eventually he put it together that she wanted him. He always knew he wanted to be a lawyer, and she was in school to become a teacher. She decided she didn’t want to do that anymore, so she jumped to being a journalism major. She hated her professor, so she switched tracks to biology, and it took a semester for her to realize she hated science.
She ended up graduating with a degree in business, and she’s been working as Beck’s assistant for the last nine years.
“She’s the best, though,” I say softly. And she is. She’d tell me to just go for it with Grayson. She doesn’t care what anybody else thinks, and that’s one of the things I admire most about her. It’s also one of the things Beck fell hardest for when he finally saw what was right in front of him.
An awkward beat of quiet passes between us, and then I ask, “Did you get anything for the baby?”
“Get anything?” he repeats. “She’s a newborn. What am I supposed to get?”
I laugh. “You’re such a man. Maybe flowers for your sister-in-law, or a balloon, or…something so you’re not walking in empty-handed?”
“No. I didn’t get anything. I honestly thought stopping by to visit and spending the day there was going to be my big grand gesture.” He pulls into the parking lot of the hospital and starts the search for a space. It’s not too crowded yet this early.
“They’ll have a gift shop. We can stop and grab something,” I suggest. “And diapers are always a good idea. Or a cute stuffed animal that can sit on a shelf until she’s old enough to play with it. Wouldn’t that be sweet? She could snuggle her favorite stuffy from Uncle Gray.”
“Yeah. Sweet,” he mutters.
“Have you asked to make sure they even want visitors?” I ask.
“My brother texted me at three in the morning to let me know he’s a dad, and he told me to come by to see her. I think it’s safe to say he wants to show off the baby,” he says.
He pulls into a space, and we walk toward the hospital entrance.
We detour to the gift shop first, and he finds a little balloon proclaiming that It’s a Girl! We swing by the stuffed animals, and he picks a stuffed bunny up off the shelf.
“Perfect,” he mutters more to himself than to me, and my heart lifts up a few pegs.
He wants this. I want this.
Now the challenge is getting him to see that maybe we could make it work after all.
Chapter 37: Grayson Nash
Gray Brought a Date
A stuffed fucking bunny.
Nothing felt more right when this should all feel so wrong. I got it for her, but I’m giving it to my niece, which is probably extra stupid on my part since every goddamn time I look at the dumb thing, I’ll be reminded of Ava and how I royally fuck up all that’s good since I’m never going to be able to actually make the move I want to make.
