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She straightened, her hand going to her lower back, her large belly protruding with a size that unnerved me. Not the actual shape of her. I thought she looked ethereal while pregnant, like the true picture of soft femininity that I’d never embody nor fully grasp. Nor the prospect that there was a fully grown baby in there, waiting to come out at any moment.
Not without considerable pain on Nora’s part. Not for the first time, I thought about how truly powerful women were and how it was the greatest trick mankind ever pulled to subjugate them.
“I’m sure.” She winked at me. “It’s just been a long day, and I still have to deliver this.” She nodded to the cake. “And hopefully this soon.” She motioned to her stomach.
“I’ll do it,” I quickly offered. “Not the childbirth part, fuck no. You couldn’t pay me to go through that.” I shuddered. “I’ll deliver the cake, though.” If only to get her home to people more qualified than me to deal with potential labor and to ensure that I didn’t get yelled at by my brother.
She squinted at me in response to my uncharacteristic offer. I’d been known to offer to babysit both pregnant women and children alike, but giving and being charitable with my time were not things people considered when they thought about me.
“I can’t deal with the tongue-lashing I’ll get from my brother if you have to give birth on the side of the road … or have your water breaking here.” I wasn’t joking with that, since Nora’s water had broken here in the kitchen. My brother had been there then. Though I had found out with great glee that he didn’t keep his cool in the slightest.
“I don’t want to impose.” She bit her lip.
“If you were imposing, I wouldn’t offer,” I smirked. “And you’re family. I do nice shit for family once in a while.”
I didn’t add that I had an ulterior motive.
She didn’t need to know that.
The house was in one of the older, more established neighborhoods in Jupiter, away from the houses on the coastline. A little more modest, but the streets were tree-lined, people’s lawns were mowed, flowers carefully tended to. There was character. Yet again, Jupiter seemed to find a way to stay away from the scourge of suburbia, with trees being bulldozed inorder to shove fifty ugly cookie-cutter houses in to accommodate growing populations.
The house I pulled up to was no different. Although it didn’t have a floral wreath at the door and no flowers were planted in the garden—just a couple of bright pots which were wilting in the sun—the lawn was neatly mowed.
A pickup truck was parked in the driveway, a car seat strapped in the back. My eyes stung, looking at that car seat, making Clara Shaw—four-year-old leukemia patient—all the more real, and that reality all the more fucking horrifying.
I contemplated leaving the cake on the doorstep, ringing the bell then running away. But their doorbell had a camera, and I didn’t want to be caught on video being a coward.
It was a stupid fucking idea, being there in the first place. But I’d committed to it, and I tended to stick to my stupid fucking ideas. Which was the reason my life was in chaos.
At least this idea wouldn’t get anyone killed.
Hopefully.
It only took a handful of seconds for the door to open once I rang the bell, confirming that it was the right idea not to try to run. Especially in heels.
The man who opened it seemed personally offended that his bell was ringing, a grimace already prepared for whoever had committed the offense. He was tall, taking up a lot of the doorframe. His hair was a dirty-blond mess, a beard covering much of his face. Though there were more creases in his skin, and his didn’t twinkle when he smiled, I didn’t miss the stormy-grey eyes that showed who he was related to.
Wearing jeans, his biceps were stretching the sleeves of his gray tee. He was pretty jacked—more jacked than Elliot who was much leaner. This guy should’ve been more my type—the grumpy-looking, swole asshole, not the smiling, curly haired fisherman.
The man had been doing the same once-over of me that I had of him, and he didn’t appear to be impressed with what he saw. I was back in my uniform—red heels, red slacks and a silk blouse, my hair pulled back into a severe bun. I wondered if the scowl on his face meant he’d assumed that I was a lawyer like his brother had.
“I’m Calliope,” I told the older, more rumpled and generally more cynical version of Elliot.
“I know who you are.” Though he spoke without warmth, there wasn’t any malice either.
I couldn’t get a read on him. He appeared to be cold, jaded, but one tended to become jaded when their helpless child was besieged with an illness he or she doesn’t deserve.
I held up the pink box. “I know that there isn’t much that can help right now, but sugar will do its damn best. Especially when Nora baked it.”
The way he looked from the cake to me, I thought he might just take it and shut the door in my face. Most of me hoped for that. That way I could just do my good deed and be gone. I didn’t do small talk—especially not with the brother of the man I’d fucked then ghosted. Especially not with a man going through an ordeal I wasn’t physically capable of witnessing up close, offering empathy for.
Staying far away from every member of the Shaw family was the best course of action. Which begged the question as to why I was even there in the first place.
“Daddy?” a small voice said from behind him.
And that’s when the man in front of me disappeared so quickly, I thought I might have imagined him. Everything about him softened, seeming to drop years from his face as he turned to smile—tobeam—at the little girl who had spoken.
She was small. Tiny. I wasn’t exactly an expert at guessing children’s ages, but I had enough nieces and nephews to decipher that she was exceptionally small and petite for four.