relax. I tried again. “Do you need something?”
There was another brief pause. “Oi. I can give you a ring at a better time.”
Oi.
I shouldn’t have started smiling at it, but I did because it was just that kind of day where he’d be the lesser shithead. I squeezed my stress ball and sighed. “No. Now is fine. Did you want to go see Mo? She’s at daycare right now. My grandpa dropped her off this morning.”
“She doesn’t have a nanny?”
I squeezed the ball in my hand tight, the smile he’d started to cause melting off. Did this bitch have any idea how much a nanny cost? “Grandpa Gus is her nanny. No one can or will take better care of her than he will,” I explained, choking the nonexistent life out of my small gift.
We hadn’t really talked much on the rest of the walk on Sunday. Plus, I hadn’t missed his comment about needing to call his manager or lawyer. I shouldn’t be surprised he hadn’t told anyone about Mo. Had he by now though, or was he still… waiting?
“Twice a week he drops her off at daycare for a few hours. Sometimes my friend’s father-in-law keeps her for part of the day too. She comes to the gym a couple times a week too. It changes. We wing it.”
“Oh.”
I blew out a breath away from the receiver before reaching up to pinch the bridge of my nose for a moment at the sudden sting there. “So did you want to go see her?”
“Yeh, but I was asking because I called about the paternity test. It isn’t much notice, but they can see us this afternoon if you can get away. Next available time they can fit us in is two weeks from now.”
“At what time?” I asked, even though I damn well knew I could leave whatever time I needed to.
“One.”
I let go of my nose. Now, or two weeks from now, or months from now? At least he wasn’t waiting. “Yeah, sure. I can get away. What’s the name of the place?”
I saw the big brown-haired man the second I pulled into the parking lot. Jonah was leaning against the wall beside the two glass doors, arms crossed over his chest, taking advantage of the shade from the building. He must have recognized my car from his visit to Grandpa’s house because he stood straight up just as I pulled into a spot.
By the time I was slamming the driver’s side door shut, he was only a few feet away.
He smiled at me.
I didn’t smile back.
And I wasn’t going to overthink what it said about him that my nonreaction didn’t do anything to his. “Glad you could come,” he said, sounding genuinely pleased.
In the time we had known each other, I hadn’t seen him in a bad mood. I wondered what got the job done. Maybe it was just injuries that made him lose his shit and turn into a dick.
Or maybe he had used his injury as an excuse for not coming back.
Okay, that was far-fetched, and I could admit it. I hated reasoning that out. He really had gone a year without posting anything on his social media accounts. From the moment he had been injured, he literally had wiped himself off the face of the planet like a missing person. There had been articles written about him just removing himself from any and every kind of spotlight, and if it hadn’t been for his agent claiming that he had heard from him, everyone might have thought he was dead. That article with his quote had hurt, but I hadn’t believed for a second after that first month that something bad had happened to him. He’d left of his own free will.
I’d stopped looking him up by the time he’d rejoined his team. I’d only known he had because of the article that had come up under news on my homepage. Like he’d been reborn out of the ashes or something.
“It’s one of the benefits of working for my grandpa,” I told him after a second, hearing my grumpiness, as I beat him to opening up the rear passenger door and ducked inside. Mo was wide awake as I unfastened all the little straps holding her in her car seat, giving her cheek and forehead a couple quick kisses in the process as she babbled away.
I smiled at her. “I don’t want to do this either, Mo Peep, but we kind of have to, okay?”
Based