“I gotta go.”
“Xander—”
“Nah.” He shook his head slowly, eyes still on hers. “I can’t stay here while youthinkaboutnothaving my baby, Rylee.”
He scoffed then inhaled an audible breath, turning toward his sneakers and pushing his socked feet into them.
“Xander, you don’t have to go.”
“Yeah, I do,” he said, not looking her way as he pulled open her front door without a second thought.
And before she could call his name again, or say anything…
He walked out, closing her door behind him.
eleven
XANDER
Xander leanedback in the driver’s seat after putting his truck in park. His eyes climbed the stairs of his mother’s daycare, the glass front door sparkling as always, visibly displaying the daycare’s name in colorful letter blocks.Future Seeds Daycare.
He had no plans to stop by here today.
At that hour, Rylee should’ve been beside him in the passenger seat, the two of them singing off-key to 90s R&B on their way to lunch like he’d planned.
He also had no plans to hear that she was pregnant.
And of course, not that she had no plans to keep it.
The mental recap of everything that happened over the past eight minutes had him dropping his head to his steering wheel. He was experiencing so many emotions at once. Too many. He had no idea how to sort through them.
He was going to be a father… or was he?
“Shit,” he sighed, scratching the top of his locs before unhooking his seatbelt to step out.
He could think of no other place to go.
This wasn’t something he could talk to with his friends.
Xander needed his mama.
As he climbed the steps to the front door, he did a quick scan of the front yard, like always.
From the time he was a teenager working with his mother at the daycare whenever school let out, Xander had been just as responsible forFuture Seedsas his mother, Michelle.
She never asked him to be… he just was.
Xander was a man of service. Couldn’t help it.
Plus, it brought him so much joy, helping his mother and being around children.
To him, a child’s life was fragile and one of the most important things in the world. They were the future, every last one of them, with each experience shaping who they’d become. So Xander made it his mission to make every interaction with a child a phenomenal one, knowing it could leave a lasting mark. One they might carry forward, and one day, pay forward too.
He peeked over the brownstone’s railing at the glass koi pond, ensuring all the fish were still swimming happily, which they were.
The moment Xander pushed open the brownstone’s doors, his sound space became filled with the symphony ofFuture Seeds Daycare.
There was crying.
