“It’s easy. You shove the nipple end into his mouth. I know you know what a nipple looks like. I remember your high school years,” she said with a no-nonsense practicality he remembered but hadn’t seen from her since he’d gotten home. Angie had been his closest sister and the one who always let him know when he was being a moron. Now she was one of the ones who cried a lot because she didn’t know what to do with him. “Honestly, get it anywhere close and he’ll take care of things.”
She passed him over so quickly he had no choice but to hold the kid. Or he would drop him, and he couldn’t do that. Damn. She pressed the bottle into his hand and stepped back.
He couldn’t do this. What the hell? “Angie, I need some space.”
He used his magic, get-out-of-jail-free-card words.
His sister put her hands on her hips and looked so much like their mom he almost laughed. “And I need to get Grandma’s cake fixed because some dumbass didn’t keep the box flat and now I’ve got icing roses that look like they exploded. Do you want to fix that? Or sit there and feed a hungry baby? I will warn you that Janine took a class at the hobby store and thinks she knows how to fix things. She won’t touch the cake herself because she doesn’t want to take the blame. But she has no problem bossing me around. Which one, Deke? Which one sounds like more fun?”
They both sounded terrible, and since when did he have to make choices? He thought the whole got-tortured-by-jihadist thing would have bought him more time, but his sister looked serious.
“Baby.” Dealing with Janine when she thought she knew how to do something was awful. She used to tell him he was throwing the football wrong when she’d never played. Not once. “I’ll hold the baby.”
Angie nodded and strode away.
He looked down at the kid. It happened so fast. Surely there was someone who would take him.
He was at a family function. Everyone held babies at these things. They passed them around like candy.
He glanced around but no one was close. They were all in little clusters, all talking and having a great time.
A short cry grabbed his attention.
He looked down and Nicky was staring up at him with big wide eyes and a trembling mouth that let him know he could do much worse than that little cry if he didn’t get what he needed.
“I thought your mom was breastfeeding.”
Like the baby would answer him.
Damn it. He winced as the answer hit him. “She probably pumped and now it’s in the bottle, and I know I’m supposed to be cool with everything, but it’s gross, kid. She’s my sister. Nothing is supposed to come out of her boobs. It’s like she doesn’t have boobs.”
That mouth opened again, and he’d been right. Nicky could amp it up when he wanted to.
Still no one came to his rescue.
Deke had that ick-came-out-of-his-sister’s-boobs bottle in his nephew’s mouth as fast as he could.
Someone would save him. No one was going to leave him sitting here with a baby. He was fucked up. He wasn’t supposed to hold sweet little helpless babies.
He’d been helpless. Like this baby.
Nicky’s chubby hands came up and over Deke’s as though he wanted to make sure the bottle stayed right where it was. As if he wanted his uncle to stay right where he was.
Here. With his family.
He had been helpless. He’d been a baby, and his father had held him and fed him and changed him. His mother hadn’t cared that he couldn’t fight, couldn’t take care of himself.
He was a grown man, but did that matter?
Something loosened inside him in that moment, something that previously made his chest tight. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it didn’t matter.
He sat there, staring into his nephew’s eyes. He hadn’t really looked at the kid before. He had Angie’s eyes.
The future was right there. Right in his hands.
“Hey, do you want me to take him?” His father was there. “Nicky can be a handful.”
Deke stared down at his nephew, who was managing to grin around the nipple. The kid was cute. “Nah. I’m good. I could use some water though.”
He might try the pills. What could it hurt? It would make his parents feel better. It wouldn’t be for him. It was for them.
His father jogged off, obviously eager to help.
Deke sat back, a weird peace coming over him.
He still wished he could have seen Maddie, but maybe it was all for the best.
When his sister Ashley exchanged Nicky for her daughter, he grumbled.
But he fed that one, too.
Chapter One
Fourteen years later
Dallas, TX
Madeline Hill stood outside the upscale apartment building and stared up.
Deke was in that building. He lived right here according to all her research. Fourteenth floor. All she had to do was walk in, find the elevator, search for 14B, and knock on his door. He would open it and she would see him.