Page 2 of I Found You (Wilder #1)

Wyatt

My stomach was wet. Why was my stomach wet? And why did it feel like I had a bowling ball on my chest? My eyes flew open, and I stared at the actual reason I was woken up. The miniature-sized person was screaming again.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I ran my hand down my face, my other hand still holding the baby close to me.

Did I seriously take a baby home with me yesterday? What the fuck was wrong with me?

I didn’t have a single clue about what to do with a baby. Clearly, including changing a diaper since that must have failed, according to the piss all over my shirt. I rolled Baby Girl and myself off the couch, my head still spinning from last night, and tried to calm her down.

“Hey, Baby Girl. Shh. I’m already awake—you don’t need to scream anymore,” I said. “Last-night Wyatt was real dumb, and now you and I are in this together, okay?”

She didn’t seem to give two shits that I was talking to her. I brought her with me into the kitchen. My house was a remodeled cottage-style home. The previous owners had taken down the wall between the kitchen and the living room to make an open-concept floor plan.

“At least last-night Wyatt washed the bottle, but what the fuck do you eat? I’m not going to be quite as helpful as your mama would be where the food source is concerned.”

Opening the fridge, I took out the milk, looking between the milk in one hand, the bottle on the kitchen counter, and the baby cradled in my arm. “Can you drink regular milk? Is that allowed?” I asked her.

She just cried more. It was the saddest little cry I had ever heard.

It was like she knew she was screwed being here with me instead of with a fully capable adult.

I poured a small amount of milk into the bottle and screwed the lid back on.

Was it supposed to be warm? Didn’t people have to put milk in the microwave, or was that just on TV?

I didn’t know jack shit about babies. I tried to google the answer, but it was like every search result said something different.

I tried to warm it up with my hand for a minute, but I figured cold milk was better than nothing, and this kid was clearly hungry.

I popped the bottle in her mouth and watched as she circled around the nipple, trying to find it before she latched on.

She didn’t seem to mind the cow’s milk, so I guessed it was good enough for now.

Her big dark blue eyes were staring up at me, wide-awake, even though the sun was still struggling to make an appearance.

Glancing at the clock on my microwave, it showed it was 4:45 a.m. I must have got home last night at 1:30 a.m. or so, so that was maybe three hours of sleep.

I sat down on one of the kitchen island stools and sighed. What the fuck was I supposed to do now?

She still had her wet diaper on, and I was still in my piss- soaked shirt, so when she seemed like she was done with her bottle, I took her into the bathroom with me.

I stripped her out of her wet clothes and diaper and tried to put her down in the bathroom sink so I could clean myself up and do my business.

She didn’t look very comfortable, and I didn’t like the way her neck was bent, so I moved her to the empty bathtub and laid her down in there.

Knowing she wasn’t about to get up and walk away, and there was no water anywhere near her, I left her there while I went in search of my phone. I grabbed it from the kitchen counter, my clammy hands almost making me drop it. Back in the bathroom, I looked at the little girl and called for backup.

“Fuck, Wy, don’t tell me you’re just getting home now,” Wesley answered.

I could hear the humor in his voice, although most people would think he was being gruff.

He liked to work out every morning around five o’clock, so I figured he would be awake.

And if not, I would only be waking him up a little sooner than he would have gotten up anyway.

“Umm. No, I made it home a few hours ago. I, ugh, have a problem though. I need you to come to my house,” I said. He must have heard the strain in my voice. When he responded, he had lost all of his previous humor.

“What the fuck, Wy? It sounds like you need me to help you bury a body or something. What’s going on?”

“No. But I do need you here. It’s not really something that will make sense over the phone. You kind of have to see it.”

“Give me ten. I’ll be right there. Don’t do anything stupid.”

Too late for that.

* * *

The knock on my front door sounded more like pounding, but I wasn’t sure if that was just because every noise was still making my head pound.

I put Baby Girl back down in the bathtub.

We hadn’t left the bathroom since I brought her in here to clean us up, but I’d picked her up and laid her across my lap while we waited for backup.

I unlocked the front door and swung it open.

“Okay, I’m here. What happened last night?

And you look like shit,” Wes started as he strolled past me into my living room.

For someone who’d left the bar about five hours ago, he was way too awake and coherent.

My muddled brain was still processing everything that had happened and trying to piece together how I got into this mess.

I walked to the bathroom. “Follow me.”

“Hey, birthday boy, if you need help in there, I’m sure you can find someone who is more than willing to assist,” he half joked with a skeptical raised eyebrow while he walked behind me anyway.

“Fuck off. Just tell me what I am supposed to do with this,” I said, pointing to the baby in the bathtub.

Wes looked over my shoulder and took an immediate step backward, like he was afraid of the little thing.

“What the fuck is that?” he hissed.

“She’s a fucking baby. What did you think she was?”

“Why do you have a baby though? Where did you find it? And why is—” He took a half step forward to look at her. “—it naked?”

I recounted what I could recall from last night. The noise I heard, looking through the brush, trying to find anyone else who might have been around. And apparently, walking home with a baby in my arms .

“And she’s not an it, she’s a she,” I said, picking her up and holding her against my chest. I liked having her there. It was like having a weighted blanket. “She needs diapers and milk and clothes,” I told him. “Where do I get those things? Do you think the convenience store would have them?”

“What. Are. You. Talking. About?” Wes whisper-hissed. “You are talking like you think you can keep her. You can’t keep her. She’s not a fucking stray animal. You have to call the cops and report this.” Wes was rubbing his hands down his face, clearly not liking me involving him in this.

“Oh, shit. You think I should have done that when I found her?” He didn’t need to answer me. His face said that I was a real dumb fuck. He didn’t always get my sarcasm, but I loved him like a brother anyway. And luckily for me, I had other brothers. Biological ones, and one of them was a cop.

“Here, hold her so I can call Luke,” I sighed.

“No way. Don’t hand her off to me. This has nothing to do with me. You brought home a stray baby, you hold her. Or just put her back in the bathtub,” Wes panicked.

“Dude, she likes to be held. She gets a little fussy when I put her down.”

“She’s naked. She’s probably going to pee on me.” He frowned.

“Yeah, probably,” I answered, not really worried about Wes getting pissed on. Welcome to the club, man. I handed Baby Girl off to him and took a deep breath. I felt like I had been doing a lot of deep breathing in the past four hours. Time to make the call.

My brother Luke had been on the Calla Bay Police Department for five years.

He wanted to join the CBPD right out of high school, but our mother made him promise to get a degree first, and when you make your dying mother a promise, you better damn well hold to it.

So he did. It wasn’t that Mom didn’t like the idea of Luke becoming a police officer; it was just that she thought he was too young to put his life on the line.

Luke was a serious kind of guy. He wasn’t always like that, but somewhere along the way, he just stopped remembering how to let loose and have fun. It was probably great for his career but fucking frustrating as his brother.

He answered on the third ring. His voice was groggy and hoarse.

“What’s up?”

“It’s 5:30 in the fucking morning. Did you think I was calling to chat?” Probably not the best opening line since I was about to lay a bunch of shit on him. Oh well. “Get up. I need you at my house.”

“I’m on my way.” I could hear him moving around over the phone line. He wouldn’t waste any time getting here. “Did something happen last night at the bar? Celebrate your birthday a bit too hard in your old age, brother?” he tried to joke, but I could tell he was worried.

“Door’s unlocked. Just walk in when you get here,” I told him before ending the call.

Living in a small town could be a huge pain in the ass sometimes.

Everyone seemed to know your business and, even worse, knew your parents and how to get in touch with them to tell them your business.

The number of times my father found out about my juvenile antics before I even walked in the door could fill a book.

But the good thing about small towns was that it never took more than ten minutes to get from point A to point B .

Wes and I were still in the bathroom with Baby Girl when Luke walked into a shitshow.

“Fuck, Wy. That’s disgusting. How is that rancid smell coming from such a small person?” Wes said, holding his shirt over his mouth.

“Just help me wash it off. I can’t hold her and clean this up at the same time.”

“Absolutely not. I’m not touching you or her. Not until she’s clean again.”

“Stop looking at her like that. You’re scaring her. That’s why she’s crying,” I told him, trying to keep her little butt over the bathroom sink and away from my hands as the most offensive-smelling shit exploded from her body.

“What in the ever-loving fuck is happening right now?” bellowed Luke.

“Oh, thank God you’re here. Grab a washcloth and help me clean her,” I told him.

“Who is she? Where are her parents, and why did they leave you in charge of her?” Luke asked as he wet a washcloth and tried to hand it to me.

“Ah, my hands are a little full right now, brother,” I said as I held the baby in both hands away from my body while cradling her head. Good thing I had big hands. “I need you to clean her up.”

Luke put the washcloth on the bathroom counter and took Baby Girl from me, holding her in the same position. “Not happening, but I’ll hold her while you clean her up. And talk. Lots of talking needs to be happening right now.” He gave me that look, the Serious Luke glare.

“I was just holding her, and she just started taking a dump right on me. Is it normal for baby poop to be this green?” I looked between him and Wes.

Neither bothered to answer me.

“What do you know about this?” Luke asked, turning to Wes.

“You need to ask your brother.” Wes was now leaning up against the wall by the shower, back to his stoic self, pretending that he wasn’t just having a hissy fit over baby shit.

He and Luke often didn’t see eye to eye.

Luke was a straight-laced kind of guy. Fun when he could be.

Serious when he had to be. And always followed the rules.

Wes, not so much. He’d started a private investigation agency a few years back, and as it turned out, police were not huge fans of private citizens investigating things.

Luke was my brother, and I loved him. Wes had been like a brother to me since we were in grade school, and I loved that fucker too.

They’d learned to play nice around each other, most of the time.

I finished cleaning the baby up and took her back from Luke. “I have to go change my shirt again. Give me five minutes,” I told him.

“Don’t bother putting it in the laundry. Just burn it,” Wes called after me.

Five minutes later, I found Luke sitting in my recliner in my living room and Wes making a pot of coffee in the kitchen.

I went to the kitchen first. Coffee was going to be a necessity to get through this conversation with Luke.

He was going to flip. Baby Girl was still a little fussy, even after that explosion, but I held her on my chest and shoulder and gently patted her little bare butt. It seemed to help calm her.

With my coffee in one hand and the baby in the other, I made my way over to the couch, giving my coffee to Luke to hold while I sat down with her. I told Wes that he could take off, knowing he had an interview this morning to fill a role at his agency.

“I’m not going anywhere. Shit’s about to hit the fan, Wy. I still have time, and if I have to reschedule it, I will. Hell, it’s the day after the Fourth of July. The kid would probably be happy to have it rescheduled.”

I repeated the story from the beginning for Luke.

He sat silently, listening as I told him everything I could remember, although there were parts of the night that were still blurry.

When I finished, Luke got up and walked out, not saying a word.

I turned and looked at Wes, both of us sporting very confused looks.

Luke wasn’t gone longer than two minutes, returning with a notebook and pen.

“A team is on their way here now. I’m going to need you to retell that again, and probably a few more times after that.

But before we get to it, I just have to ask…

” Luke paused, no expression on his face, and he leaned forward with his forearms on his legs.

“What. The Fuck . Is wrong with you?” He dropped his head and sighed.

I got it. I’d been sighing a lot too. Must be a family trait.

“What do you mean a team of people are on their way here? Now?” I asked.

“Yes, Wyatt. As it turns out, you cannot find an abandoned baby on the side of the street and just take it home with you. You don’t even have any diapers or clothes or formula, for Christ’s sake. What do you plan on feeding this thing?”

Glaring at him, I responded defensively, “I already fed her this morning. She had milk.” It wasn’t that I expected to just keep the baby and go about my life.

I didn’t even want to keep her. I was not father material.

But I didn’t like the idea of handing her off to someone else who might not be able to take care of her either.

“Please tell me you didn’t give her, like, whole milk or something.”

“Yeah, that’s all I had. She needed to eat.”

“Babies can’t drink cow’s milk, you fucking idiot!” Luke scolded.

I looked at the little girl snuggling on my chest, still awake after the fiasco in the bathroom, and made a promise to her that she was going to be okay. I would make sure of it.