used to justify to herself leaving me with my grandfather immediately after my birth didn’t hold any value anymore. It had been her choice to walk away, and back then, it would have been my choice to let her back in.
So I could give Mo that opportunity. Grandpa would have offered the same for me if she had tried to come back; I just knew it. So, yeah, if Jonah Collins wanted to be around… he could.
And if that made my head pound, nobody had told me to have some deadbeat, immature asshole’s baby, did they?
I’d been so wrong about him; it made my throat ache with bitterness for a moment.
My best friend, Luna, had told me that when something was really bothering her and she knew there was no point in raging over it, or even thinking about it any longer than she needed to, that she would imagine balling it like a piece of paper and throwing it away. That was what I did right then: I threw it away.
Mo was here, and even though I had never, ever seen myself as a mom… and I had no idea what the hell I was doing seven-eighths of the time and was terrified because I didn’t, she was mine. And I wasn’t going to fuck up. I’d had the best example of a parent figure growing up, and I wasn’t about to let her down.
Walking through the main gym first, I looked around at all the equipment to make sure things were up to standard. It was the middle of the week, and things were slow, but that was normal for the time of day. There were two personal trainers with their clients, and more random people spread around the floor doing various forms of exercise.
I took my sweet time using the covered path that led from one building to the other and wasn’t at all surprised when I opened that door to the scene going on: a handful of guys training. Peter was there in the middle of it, along with two other assistant coaches.
Peter looked right over at me, and I didn’t waste any time raising my hand and giving him a thumbs-down.
From the grimace he made, he knew what the hell that was for.
We’d talk about it later.
Or we wouldn’t if Grandpa Gus came barging in like I expected him to.
He had never let me down, and he wasn’t about to start now.
Twenty minutes later, while I was responding to an email from a small production company that wanted to film some scenes at Maio House, I heard the commotion outside that only happened when the old man dropped by. And five minutes later, when the “silver fox,” like I’d overheard some blind women call my grandpa, headed straight into the office like he owned it—which he did—with Mo strapped to his chest, one of her diaper backpacks thrown over his shoulder, I wasn’t even a little shocked.
“Is he here?” Grandpa Gus demanded as his hands went to Madeline—or as we all called her, Mo—to take her out of the carrier.
“Hey, Grandpa. I missed you too. Thanks.” I got up and headed right over to put out the playpen I had stashed in a corner. “No. Did you see anyone out there that you don’t know? And didn’t I just tell you to leave it alone?”
The look he shot me literally said and since when do I leave anything alone?
Never, that was when, and we both knew it.
I groaned as Grandpa Gus handed the wide-awake baby over to me, brushing a kiss over the back of her head like he was rubbing it in that she was getting one and I wasn’t.
There was a reason why I’d never wondered where I got my pettiness from.
I’m doing this for you, I thought as I took her weight and decided not to put her in the playpen yet. Bringing Mo up against my chest, I settled her there, backing up so I could sit in my chair and keep talking to Count Dracula while keeping an eye on him at the same time. It didn’t look like he was carrying around pepper spray in his pockets, and a peek at his knuckles told me he hadn’t busted out brass knuckles. I wouldn’t put it past him, even though that wasn’t really his style.
I should have been looking for a baseball bat, if anything. There was that one time he’d—
I stopped thinking about it. I wasn’t even supposed to