Semua Bab My Brother's Best Friend's Secret Baby: Bab 21 - Bab 30

Aiden's POV I sat in my car for a long time after they left. I'd parked on the street about fifty yards from the entrance to the park. From where I sat, I could see the gate. I watched them walk through it and turn left onto the sidewalk without looking back. Lucy was skipping. Not the little two-footed hops of a toddler. The one-footed, bouncing stride of a child who had discovered a more efficient way to dance. Her brown curls bounced with every step. Rosie was holding her hand and saying something to her, and Lucy was answering with the same wholehearted enthusiasm she brought to everything. Then they turned the corner and disappeared. I didn't start the car. I sat there with both hands on the steering wheel, the engine off, and breathed. It was the salute that broke me. I'd handled everything else. The way she'd run across the playground without once looking back to make sure I was following, trusting me for no particular reason. The way she'd explained the climbi

Rosalie's POV I found it wedged beneath my apartment door. I got home from my hotel shift a little after two in the afternoon, still in uniform, carrying my bag and exhausted from four hours of housekeeping after a full morning at school. My feet hurt, and my lower back was throbbing. I was trying to remember whether there was enough soup left from Thursday to heat up for lunch or if I was going to have to cook something, which I absolutely did not have the energy for. I almost walked right past the envelope without picking it up. The document was from the building management company. It was the official letterhead, with my name printed across the front. I picked it up, stood in the hallway, and opened it, already running through the possibilities. A maintenance notice. An inspection. Something about the elevator that had been broken for two months and that management had been promising to repair since the beginning of the year. It was a rent statement. I read it once and

Rosalie's POV The visits had settled into the rhythm of the week, like everything else. Wednesday afternoons and Saturday mornings were marked on the refrigerator calendar with the same blue pen I used for Lucy's dentist appointments, school picture day, and library book return dates. The first few outings had been to the park. Then Aiden suggested the children's museum one Saturday, and I agreed because Lucy had been asking to go for two months. I'd been putting it off because admission was seventeen dollars per person, and when money was that tight, even seventeen dollars felt like a luxury. So we went. Lucy spent forty-five minutes in the science section conducting an experiment involving water and tubes. She ended up slightly soaked and completely satisfied. Aiden paid for admission and lunch at the museum café without making a thing of it, and I let him. After the rent situation, I'd decided some battles cost more energy than they were worth. That was what I told m

Aiden's POV Marcus called on a Tuesday morning while I was signing a lease. I let it ring. He called again while I was carrying the first box from a delivery up to the third floor of the building on Addison Street. I ignored that one too. By the time the movers had finally brought up the rest of it, a bed frame, a decent couch, a kitchen table that would do the job, I had four missed calls and a text message that read: [I know you're still in that city. You've been there for six weeks. We have a defense contract review meeting in eleven days, and two clients are asking where you are. Call me back or I'm getting on a plane.] I called him. Marcus Chase had been my business partner for four years. We'd met during a period when I was transitioning my investments into more structured ventures. He possessed the practicality I lacked, and I had the military connections he needed. The arrangement worked so well that neither of us had ever felt the need to formalize it beyond a ha

Rosalie's POV The number came up as Unknown on a Thursday evening. I almost let it go to voicemail. Over the years, I'd gotten into the habit of not answering unknown calls. Partly out of caution, the kind that comes from spending seven years making yourself difficult to find. Partly because unknown numbers were usually either wrong numbers or sales calls, and I didn't have the energy for either. I answered on the fourth ring because something made me. I couldn't have said what. It was an instinct that had nothing to do with logic. "Rosie." As I heard that voice, my world tilted. I sat down, not by choice. My legs made that decision for me, and suddenly I was in a kitchen chair with the phone pressed to my ear, every nerve in my body humming with something I couldn't name. It was my brother's voice. Seven years… It had been seven years since I'd heard it in real time. I’d only spoken to my dad once, briefly, maybe eighteen months after I'd left. A call from a payphone