Lark (First & Forever 5)

After the two men said hello, Dylan told us, “I’ll be right back. I’m going to bring Logan a towel.”

While Dylan hurried upstairs, I guided my brother into the living room and asked, “Did you have a fight with Mom and Dad?”

“Not exactly. I just couldn’t stay there another minute.”

“Honestly, I’m surprised you lasted as long as you did.”

“I thought I could stick it out until I finished college. As long as they never found out I was bisexual, I figured I’d be okay. But everything changed when Owen came into my life.” The part about his sexuality was news to me, but it wasn’t like Logan told me much of anything.

“Is Owen your boyfriend?”

My brother looked confused. “What? No.” My breath caught when he lifted the rain coat off the bundle on his chest, revealing a gorgeous, sleeping baby in a blue carrier. “Owen is my son.”

Dylan returned with the towel just in time to exchange looks of surprise with me. Then I blurted, “You have a child, and you didn’t tell me?”

Logan starting crying as he carefully wrapped his arms around the infant. “I didn’t know. Remember when I told you about Kathy, the girl I dated when I worked at that fast food restaurant?”

“Vaguely. Didn’t you break up about two years ago?”

“More like a year and a half. She moved to Fresno with her new boyfriend a couple of months after she dumped me, and I never heard from her again—until she showed up at my house three days ago, told me she couldn’t handle parenthood anymore, and handed me my son. She also gave me a bag with nothing in it but three diapers, a dirty bottle, a half-empty can of formula, and Owen’s wrinkled up birth certificate with my name on it.

“Then she just left! Who does that? Who abandons a baby like that? I knew she was cold and selfish, but this is just so far above and beyond. She never even bothered telling me she was pregnant, or that she gave birth to our son. He’s almost ten months old, and she never told me any of it! I only mattered when she needed someplace to dump him.”

I whispered, “Wow,” as Dylan sat down on the arm of the couch. He still looked stunned, and I was sure I did, too.

Logan took a breath and continued, “Anyway, I lasted two and a half days with Mom and Dad after the baby arrived. They were horrible. They kept yelling at me, and it was upsetting Owen. Instead of trying to help me, they kept asking how I could do such a thing, and telling me I was a huge disappointment for having a baby out of wedlock, and so on.

“Meanwhile, there I was, just trying to wrap my head around the fact that I have a kid—a tiny person who’s depending on me for everything! I couldn’t deal with our parents on top of that, so I got in my car and drove here. Thank god I made it. The car’s ancient, and I was sure we’d end up broken down on the side of the road.”

“You did the right thing by coming here,” I told him.

The baby stirred a little, and my brother gently ran a hand over his son’s downy blond hair as he said, “I didn’t just leave home because of how our parents were making me feel. I couldn’t let them treat Owen the way they always treated you and me. He deserves better.”

Logan’s short, dark hair was dripping onto his T-shirt, so I took the towel from Dylan and draped it around my brother’s shoulders as I said, “You’re right about that, too.”

There was fear in his eyes as he turned to me and whispered, “What am I going to do, Lark?”

Dylan said exactly what I’d been thinking. “You’re going to move in with us, and we’re going to help you raise that baby. We have a spare bedroom, and our landladies are going to love both of you.” When my brother looked to me for confirmation and I nodded, he began to cry.

I put my arm around him and said, “You’re going to be okay, I promise. You and Owen both.”

He met my gaze and asked, “Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

Two hours later, after Logan had a hot meal and a shower, my brother and his son both fell asleep in what was now their bedroom. Meanwhile, Dylan and I sat around the kitchen table with JoJo and Yolanda and tried to process all that had just happened.

“I’m glad we had that extra room, which you two were barely using,” JoJo said, as she refilled three glasses of wine. “Otherwise, I would’ve given them my jewelry studio, but the bedroom’s a much better space for them.”

Dylan looked up from the shopping list he was making and asked, “In addition to baby gates for the top and bottom of the stairs and baby-proof latches for the cabinets, what else do we need to make this house safe for Owen?” It was so like my boyfriend to step up and help like that, and just one of the many reasons I adored him.

“Covers for the electrical outlets,” I said, and he nodded and wrote it down.

“Way to rise to the occasion, you two,” Yolanda said. “Logan’s lucky to have you. So’s that baby.”

She and JoJo had gotten home an hour earlier and had seemed to take the whole brother-and-baby news in stride. But now that Logan was out of earshot, I had to be sure. I put down my glass of juice and asked, “Are you both really okay with my brother and his son moving in with us?”

“Of course,” Yolanda said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You and Dylan are family, and that means your brother and your nephew are, too.” Hearing her say that meant the world to me.