“Do you think it’s coming from next door?” Claudia asks as the incessant wailing increases to an impressive ear-piercing pitch.
“Fuck knows,” I mutter as she throws back the covers and climbs out of bed.
She pads across the bedroom and opens the door.
The noise intensifies.
I wrench my head off my pillow, cursing at the liquor-induced fog taking up residence in my brain, and make my way out of the room after her.
I find her in the hallway, hovering by the front door.
“Sullivan.” She turns to me, eyes wide as the squawking pushes its way through the door, so loud and insistent that I’m surprised the door isn’t rattling in the frame.
“What the hell?” I grumble, gently maneuvering her behind me so I can open the door.
The sound pauses momentarily as I stare down at the source.
It blinks back at me.
Then it opens its mouth and wails louder than ever.
“Whose baby is that?” Claudia gasps, leaning past me to search up and down the deserted hallway.
Tiny balled up fists shake in anger as its face grows redder. It’s kicked off a blanket covered in tiny teddy bears.
I reach down and slide the envelope with my name on from inside the cardboard box it’s lying inside. Its body turns rigid with each outraged cry as I turn the envelope over and lift the unsealed flap, pulling the thin piece of paper out.
“What is it?” Claudia’s gaze bounces between my face and the baby. The paper creases inside my grip and nausea claws its way up my windpipe. “What does it say?” she asks.
She reaches for the paper, but I shove it inside the envelope and stuff it into the pocket of my sleep shorts.
“It says her name’s Molly,” I croak in a voice that doesn’t sound like mine.
“What?” Claudia reels back, her eyes snapping back to the baby, still crying in the box.
I clear my throat as I stare at the baby.
“She’s mine.”
Claudia scoffs as if I’ve made a joke, but the color drains from her face as she takes in my grim expression. “Sullivan… you can’t be serious?”
“She’s my daughter,” I confirm, the paper in my pocket feeling like a live grenade. I curl my fingers around it, crushing it into a crumpled lump.
The baby pauses its wailing for a micro second. Long enough to blink at me with wide eyes the exact shade of blue as my own.
Fuck.
1
TATE
PRESENT DAY
“I’m here, I’m here!”I call, racing through the door into Caffeine Couture and maneuvering past the growing line of the morning clientele in their dark suits.
“Chill, babe, it’s all good,” my friend and boss, Ashley, trills, as she winks at a businessman and hands him his coffee.
He throws back a suggestive arch of a brow and tosses a generous tip into the jar.
