A soft light clicks on, illuminating all of us.
My mom, my sister, Sunny Darling, Annika, and Waverly all gape at us.
And I’m pretty sure it’s not because Judson’s crouched like a tiger about six inches away from my pool chair with a pet pig crouched next to him.
Not entirely, anyway.
“Why are men with babies so hot?” Tillie Jean whispers.
“TJ, I’ve told you, I’m not interested in brother-sister stuff,” I say. “Sorry, Waverly. I told you she was weird.”
I think I’m safe.
I’m holding a baby.
Max is holding a baby.
He’s not gonna slug me.
TJ won’t slug me.
Grady won’t even slug me on TJ’s behalf.
But Miles—
Oh. My. God.
My sweet little nephew, who weighs like maybe twelve pounds, goes full and total exorcist with whatever it is Annika fed him a little bit ago. He opens his mouth, flops his head to look straight at me, and then his mouth morphs into a firehose of you don’t want to know. It’s on my chin. Down my neck. Sliding under my shirt.
And I can only sit there gaping at him.
While it just. Keeps. Coming.
Annika cracks up. So does my mom.
And Judson.
Grady’s laughing so hard he’s hyperventilating. I haven’t heard him hyena-laugh like that since high school.
“Aw, man, Sarah, that takes me back,” Beck says from the doorway into the house. He takes a massive bite off a fried chicken breast and keeps talking. “Remember that time I handed you a baby right as she had that massive—”
A noise coming from Miles’s mid-section cuts him off, and a moment later, what was formerly only coming out of Miles’s mouth is now also leaking out of somewhere decidedly south of there.
Grady falls off his chair.
Sarah squeaks. “Oh, god, Cooper, I havebeen there. Do you need—”
I rise, carrying the soiled demon child with me. “I—”
Miles makes another noise, twists in my arms, lets out a noise from his diaper region, and then there’s more carnage coming out of his pants.
Annika’s trying to muffle her laughter, but she, too, sounds like a hyena.
Tillie Jean’s crying through her hysterical laughter.
So’s my mom.
Sunny Darling.
