Page 192 of Wait for Him

The walk, and I use that word generously, to the service elevator is excruciatingly slow, but we make it inside. The second the doors close, we both collapse onto the couch itself and lie there sucking in air like we've completed some kind of heroic expedition instead of moving one overpriced piece of furniture.

When the doors open, Joe is standing there waiting.

"Hey there, gentlemen. Nap time?"

"Fuck off, Joseph." Bennet peels himself off the cushions, and I can't entirely blame his reluctance. It is, objectively, a comfy fucking couch. Then he points at me. "You sent for backup, didn't you?"

"Clearly."

"Coward."

"Unhinged asstwat."

The name-calling continues without pause as we maneuver the couch out of the elevator and down the hallway. Furniture tyrant. Spineless snitch. Beige-obsessed lunatic. It's still heavy as fuck, but a third set of hands makes it almost survivable, and I mentally pat myself on the back for the call because physically patting anything is no longer within my current range of motion.

We finally get the couch into Bennet's place and wrestle it into the guest room, which has somehow been completely transformed into a nursery in the single week since he found out he's going to be a father.

The walls are pastel pink with massive plaster flowers in a deeper rose scattered across them in different sizes. There's a white rug over the dark hardwood, soft lighting, little shelves already lined with books and stuffed animals. The whole room looks finished enough that I half expect a magazine photographer to step out of the closet.

"How the hell did you do all this in a week?"

Blaire appears in the doorway. "Because your best friend has been a hyperfocused robot twenty-four hours a day for seven straight days."

"I can believe it."

"How do you like it?" she asks.

"It's beautiful."

Bennet is standing in the corner with his arms folded, staring at me with a weird smile.

A creepy fucking smile.

I keep one eye on him. "What?"

"What about the walls?" he asks. "Do you like the walls, Jackson?"

Joe wanders over beside him wearing the exact same unsettling grin. "Yeah, what about the walls?"

What the actual fuck is wrong with these people? It's not even nine in the morning.

I look around again because everyone is staring at me now, waiting on my official architectural review of a nursery wall.

Fine. I turn slowly in the center of the room for dramatic effect.

"Pink. Beautiful." I raise my hands. "Flowers. Gorgeous. Rug. Plush. Name. Bea—"

Wait. I turn back.

Jaxon Rose Sullivan.

The letters are mounted above the crib in soft gold script.

I read them once. Then again. Then my brain finally catches up.

"Jaxon?"

I look at Bennet. Then Blaire. Then point at myself because I've suddenly become incapable of forming a complete question.