Pieces of Us (Confessions of the Heart 3)

One

Mack

Do you ever wonder if you’re being framed? Set up for disaster? Jumping on a freeway that you can never exit from?

You don’t even realize you’re barreling down the wrong direction until it’s too late.

A collision waiting to annihilate you up ahead.

Invisible to the naked eye. A trap.

Or maybe, it was just the direction I was supposed to be traveling all along.

Standing there, I had no idea what I was heading toward.

I reached up and grabbed the oversized box.

“Got it. One size small box of diapers, my friend. Mission accomplished. And you said I was good for nothing.” It was all a rough tease into the phone that I had pressed between my ear and shoulder.

Nothing more badass than going on a diaper run. But it was man up time. Be there for your crew when they needed you most.

And when my best friend, Ian, had sent out an SOS call, I’d dropped everything and come running.

Of course, I did. Would anyone have expected less of me?

I’d had Ian’s back so many times I’d long since lost count. Maybe as many as he’d had mine.

We didn’t keep score.

We just did whatever the hell the other needed, and did it without questions.

Of course, this commission was a whole ton cleaner than some of the filthy shit the two of us had been involved in back in the day.

Something that wouldn’t get my hands dirty because I’d given up dishonest deeds a long time ago.

Ian blew out a relieved breath around the cries of his newborn son. “Thank you, man. Take it all back. Pretty sure I’m going to regret saying this, but you’re basically my favorite person right now. You need to get here and get here fast. Grace will be back from her writing workshop in like . . .”

I could sense him checking the clock.

“Shit,” he whispered. “Less than an hour. I can’t mess this up . . . and dude, I am seriously messing this up. It’s a fucking disaster over here.”

His voice dropped on the last, keeping it low from the kids.

He might not think so, but I was convinced the asshole deserved a father-of-the-year award. And that wasn’t me being sarcastic.

It was mad crazy at their house. Straight mayhem. The good kind you’d do anything to protect, commit your whole life to, but it would still have you laid flat out on your ass at the end of the day.

The guy had become daddy to four in the period of a year. That took some serious man balls, and I was honestly proud of him.

Didn’t mean I wasn’t gonna give him shit.

“Sorry to break it to you, brother, but in case you’ve forgotten, you’ve been messing things up with that amazing girl since the day you met her, and somehow, your ugly ass got lucky enough that she still wants to crawl into bed with you every night. Think you’ll be just fine.”

A huge crash of shattering glass and splintering wood reverberated through the line. The magnitude of it had me wincing for the poor sucker, the disaster he’d just been talking about clearly coming to fruition.

“Oh, shit,” he muttered in abject horror before his voice twisted in defeat. “Sophie Marie, sweetheart. What did you do?”

“I bwoke it, Daddy.” Sophie Marie was clearly working up to a meltdown, the way she did best, hiccupping through the words and sucking for air. Two seconds later, a loud, mortified cry came wailing out of her little body.

At three, she was nothing but a tiny ball of energy, all white, wild hair.

A demolisher with an angel face.

Couldn’t ever get frustrated at her since she was the sweetest little thing, all crazy smiles and wide blue eyes.

Oh, but the kid could belt it out. Her cries coming through the phone were so loud, I was pretty sure the entire store was being subjected to it from across the distance.

It only made Baby Collin cry louder, and if it were possible, Sophie started to do the same.

A terrible case of sibling rivalry.

A battle to see who could bring the walls down first.

“You did, didn’t you?” Ian mumbled his encouragement through the disorder. “You really, really did. It’s okay. It’s okay. Come here, sweetheart. You’re not in trouble. It’s okay.”

I could almost see him trying to wrangle the weeping toddler into one arm while he balanced his screaming infant in the other.

No doubt, Collin was flailing his little fists all over the place.

Like I said, father-of-the-year.

Don’t tell his brother Jace I said that, either. I wasn’t picking favorites. It was four to two. A simple mathematical equation, and not that shit they tried to teach in school these days.

Cringing for my best friend, I booked it up to the registers, picking up the pace.

Because let’s be real. Dude was totally messing it up.