I need her more than that dumb bastard ever could. Rich fucks like him get everything in this world. The nice house. The college fund. The whole golden-boy life handed to them on a silver platter.
I wasn’t about to let him have Harper, too.
So I did what any real man would do.
I manned the fuck up and took her away from him.
Which was no easy thing to do.
The crying gets louder. More insistent.
I rock the bouncer with my foot—harder than I probably should—without looking away from the monitor. Sometimes the motion distracts the little bastard and he’ll go back to sleep. Maybe long enough so I can finish this one raid. Just this one.
The bouncer’s squeaky spring adds to the noise.Creak-creak-creak.A metronome adding to my irritation.
“Z, you there?” Malik’s voice crackles through the headset. “We’re starting invites.”
“Yeah, I’m here.” I lean forward, accepting the party invite. My eyes flick to the bouncer in my peripheral vision—the baby’s still crying, but not screaming yet. “Ready when you are.”
The studio apartment is already too small. But it feels miniature with a Goddamned baby in it. The baby shit takes up half the floor space in our “living room”—which is really just the corner by the kitchenette where we shoved the couch.
There are bottles on the counter. Diapers stacked in a corner because there’s nowhere else to put them. The Pack ’N Play where he sleeps takes up the only spot that used to be clear on the floor.
But I mean, thankfuckI’d already started putting my plan in action before she found out about the pregnancy.
I knew it would help Harper be more comfortable moving our relationship from platonic to intimate if shethoughtwe’d already taken that step. She just needed a nudge. She had a made-up barrier in her mind—this idea that we were “just friends” even though I’d been there for her througheverything.
So that third night in the hotel after I got her away from Dallas, I put a little something in the Jack to help her sleep, then poured the rest down the sink. She deserved a good night’s rest, anyway.
I just told her a little fiction the next morning.
No harm, no foul.
I didn’t, like,attackher or anything. Other than undressing her… and sure, there was that little hickey to make the fiction seem more real.
But other than that, I didn’t touch herat all. I mean, not really.
It might’ve been too soon.
I see that in hindsight.
Or maybe it was just in time, considering the pregnancy. Because thank fuck I had plausible deniability about it not being Caleb’s.
Just proves how I gotta trust my instincts more.
People whine about right and wrong like idiots.
They didn’t grow up how I did.
The only way Iatewas totakefood.
On screen, the raid starts. The pull timer is counting down. I’m watching my rotation, my cooldowns, and I got everything perfectly optimized.
I control my fuckin’ destiny. Online and off.
We launch the raid and I amonfuckingpoint.
Then the baby’s cry cuts through my headset volume like nails on a chalkboard.