Queen of Quarantine (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep #4) - Caroline Peckham Page 0,263

freaking trip until his smugness forced him to admit to it ten minutes after Caesar was born.

Blake had punched him, and Nash had cursed him but I'd just laughed.

I didn’t even care. It was so fucking Saint of him and too fucking funny. Of course he'd known Tatum's menstrual cycle better than she had. The rest of us had just had a perfectly normal, ‘shall we stop using contraception and try for a baby’ conversation and had been content to let nature take its course from there. He’d been charting periods and working out dates until he knew the exact time she’d release a freaking egg. Asshole.

In reality, I knew that none of us gave a shit who shared DNA with the little creature who had just become the centre of our universe. It didn't make a blind bit of difference. We would love him just the same. That was how it was in our family.

"He looks happy with you," I told Tatum slowly, closing my sketchbook and laying it down on the little table beside me.

"He wants a cuddle with his daddy," she insisted, seeing right through me as always and I pushed my tongue into my cheek as I looked at the tiny little thing in her arms, both aching to pick him up and afraid of fucking it up if I did.

"I'm pretty sure I'm his daddy," Blake teased, leaning down over Tatum's shoulder and kissing the tiny human on the top of his soft, dark hair.

"How do you figure that out?" Nash asked.

"Because I'm clearly the fun one. So I get to be Daddy, you're Dad, Nash. Kyan is Pa and Saint is... Father."

I snorted a laugh as Saint scowled, folding his arms. "Why do I have to be the formal one?" he asked with that rich boy lilt to his tone which clearly answered his damn question for him.

"Watch out, Father's in a mood again," I hissed, cupping my hand around my mouth as if I was trying to make sure Saint didn't hear, even though he clearly could.

"Fuck off," he muttered, his brow pinching in a way that actually made me feel a little bad. I knew that the last thing he wanted to be was a figure of fear for our son and that he worried about having too much of his father in him to stop that from happening.

"Alright," I said, standing up and clapping my hand down on his shoulder, leaving charcoal marks on his skin. "How about you can be Papa? That's cute. Big old papa bear."

I nudged his arm and a smile touched his lips.

"I don't hate that," he admitted, and Tatum beamed at me. Maybe I had this dad stuff down already - I was breaking up fights and making Saint happy, a kid couldn't be harder to manage than him...right?

I shifted closer to the bed and Tatum adjusted her hold on the little fella, moving him towards me in his snuggly blue blanket - Saint had packed two entire bags for the baby, one for if it was a boy, the other for if it was a girl. Not that I'd be letting him toss that pink blanket. Caesar was comfortable enough with his masculinity to pull off pink.

I reached out to brush my fingers over the baby's head, but Saint caught my elbow before I could do it.

"Wash your hands," he ground out and I might have taken offence if my fingers weren't stained black from the sketches I'd been doing, so I just rolled my eyes and crossed the room to do as he instructed.

I turned back towards the bed and found Blake in my way, grabbing the hem of my shirt and tugging. "You need to hold him skin to skin," he said. "For the bonding and shit."

Apparently he'd swallowed the fucking guidebook we'd been given during those antenatal classes and was going to micromanage everything we did with Caesar now to make sure we all got the full baby experience so he got the best possible start in life. I couldn't really voice any complaints about that, so I just tugged my shirt over my head and tossed it down on the chair I'd been sitting in before approaching Tatum in the bed again.

"Why is it that even after all of the things we've survived, I feel totally out of my depths with this tiny little person?" I muttered as I came to stand over her, stroking my fingers through her hair and