You started her corruption a year ago, pointed out a voice.
Maggie’s head was bent towards the baby, her hand cradling his head. Something about the image made an ache form in Nikos’s chest. He didn’t even realise he was so fixated until she lifted the baby up and placed him on her shoulder, patting his back.
Daniel emitted a loud burp and Nikos frowned. ‘Is he okay?’
Maggie smiled. ‘Totally normal. He needs to be winded after he feeds so that air doesn’t get trapped in his belly.’
He saw that Daniel had a little bald patch on the back of his head—presumably from where he lay on it. The baby simultaneously terrified him and intrigued him. He had no frame of reference as to how to feel about a baby, a child. His half-brothers were single, like him. Every time he looked at Daniel he felt a curious mix of terror, protectiveness, and some emotion he couldn’t name.
Maggie had done herself up again and stood up, Daniel cradled in her arms. She saw him looking at Daniel. ‘You should hold him,’ she said.
Nikos looked at her in horror. Hold him? This tiny vulnerable thing? He wanted to turn and run in the other direction but knew he was being ridiculous. It was a baby. Not a bomb.
The innate confidence that Nikos had taken for granted most of his life was suddenly in short supply. Maggie was looking at him with those big eyes, seeing his vacillation. He couldn’t not hold his baby—how hard could it be?
‘How do I...?’
Maggie came closer. Her scent tickled his nostrils, but not even that could distract him right now.
‘Here, crook your arm...make sure his head is supported.’
She placed Daniel onto his arm and his other hand came up instinctively, to hold him from the bottom. The first thing that impacted on him was the solid weight of his son. He hadn’t expected him to be so heavy.
Daniel looked up at him with steady, dark long-lashed eyes. Totally guileless. Totally trusting. And just like that, before he could stop it, Nikos felt a sharp pain near his heart, as if it was expanding and cracking apart. For the first time in his life he had the sense that he was utterly insignificant. That this baby was literally the most important thing in the world. And he would do anything to prevent any harm coming to a hair on his head.
Daniel moved then, and Nikos’s heart stopped as he instinctively tightened his hold on him. He realised how fragile he was. How easily he could be hurt. And Nikos felt fear.
The tendrils of that disturbing memory snaked around him again. Surely his father had had a moment like this? Holding Nikos in his arms? Feeling the same things? And yet he’d still abandoned his son. As had his mother.
It was as if Daniel could see all the way into his soul, to where Nikos had always felt so hollow. To where he’d been abandoned by his own parents because he hadn’t been good enough...lovable enough. How could he give this child something he’d never experienced himself?
Cold sweat pickled over his skin and Nikos handed Daniel back into Maggie’s safe arms.
He barely heard her say, ‘That was really good...you’re a natural...’
He had to get out now.
He left the room and went straight to the bath
room and locked himself inside. It took extreme effort and willpower not to be sick. He looked at himself in the mirror, but didn’t really notice how wild he looked, his skin pale and clammy.
Eventually the nausea subsided and his chest felt less tight. Theos. He couldn’t even hold his own baby without almost having a panic attack. And he hadn’t had one of those since he’d gone to boarding school, where they’d been beaten out of him by the older boys.
After a few minutes there was a light knock on the door.
‘Nikos? Are you okay?’
CHAPTER SEVEN
NIKOS’S HANDS TIGHTENED on the sink. He took a deep breath. The door opened behind him.
‘Nikos?’
He lifted his head, saw Maggie reflected behind him in the mirror. Her hair was a vivid splash of red and gold against the white marble of the bathroom. He turned around. He still felt shaky, as if a layer of skin had been peeled away.
Maggie came further in and Nikos wanted to tell her not to come any closer. Because he knew what he needed right now, to eclipse this pervading spread of vulnerability, and it was something only she could give him.
Even that unsettling revelation wasn’t enough to jolt him out of this mood, so he said nothing. He let her keep coming. Closer. Like Red Riding Hood approaching the big bad wolf.