it, even if it was a gift he sometimes felt like he didn’t deserve. All he could really do was try, and keep on trying, to treat Nick right. Tomorrow, he’d call Dr. Murphy. Tonight, he’d vow never to touch Nick when he was angry with him. Angry sex sounded like a hot thing, in the audiobooks and movies, but it was a risk he’d never take again.
Get the angry out first. Then have the sex. That sounded like what Dr. Murphy might say. Sex with Nick was too important to taint it with anything bad. He rolled over to a more comfortable position, draped one arm over the hot, muscular dynamo that was Nick Rugo asleep in his bed, and drifted off.
Chapter 22
Nick knocked on the door of Charlie’s apartment a second time. After a moment, a call of “Come in already!” could be heard through the door.
He went in and followed the sound of Charlie’s voice to the baby’s room. Charlie glanced up at him but didn’t pause in the babble of baby talk he was using as he snapped the front of Joshie’s outfit closed. “Ooo’s an itty-bitty boy?” Charlie bent his knees, scooped the infant against his chest, and straightened, holding him carefully. “Are we all clean and dry and comfy now?”
“Dunno about you two, but I am,” Nick offered.
“You ignore Uncle Nicko.” Charlie turned and came toward him with a kind of bounce and sway to his step. “He’s not as funny as he thinks, is he, kiddo?”
Joshie opened his pink lips and made a sound like a sputtering cat.
Charlie brushed a kiss over the fine downy hair. “I knew you’d agree with me.”
“That was yes?”
Charlie said in a singsong voice, “That was ‘I’ve eaten and burped and peed and changed and I might go down for a nap if the big people don’t get me excited’ in baby-speak.”
Nick muttered, “Wouldn’t want that.” He backed up out of the doorway and Charlie brushed past him, walking a circuit through the apartment with that same swaying gait. His voice had gone low and soft, a deep murmur of sounds. Joshie gave another little squeak and then was quiet.
Nick was aware of a pang in his chest, watching his friend with the baby. There was something new and… maybe tender was the word for how Charlie held the kid and talked to him. The smile on Charlie’s face was unfamiliar and soft. It wasn’t even Charlie’s kid. If anything, Nick should have more of a connection because he was pretty damned sure Brian was the biological dad and yet, even with Lori jealously guarding him, Joshie had somehow become Charlie’s kid in a way he wasn’t Nick’s or even Brian’s.
Not that Nick wanted a baby. Of course not. His and Brian’s lives were complicated enough without a kid. Brian still got that worrisome spaced-out look, all tangled up in his Finding, when he spent too much time around Joshie. But in the last week, not wanting a kid had gone from of course not to some kind of low-key wistfulness.
“Has Lori let you tell your mom yet?” he asked, careful to keep his voice low
“Nope,” Charlie said in the same husky murmur he was giving the kid. “She still wants it to be a casual ‘my roommate had a baby’ thing, in a month or two.”
Joshie slept now, small eyes scrunched shut, fat cheeks working slightly. The thump of a truck hitting a pothole on the road outside made Charlie and Nick both wince, but the baby didn’t wake. Like a little pale angel. I bet Brian looked like that. Gonna make damned sure this kid has it easier than Brian did. He might not want to be a daddy, but he’d do anything to keep the world from hurting this kid.
Maybe he should cut Charlie out of the risky stuff completely. “Hey, Chuckie, d’you want me to go deal with the sheriff on my own, seeing as how you’re on kid duty?”
“Lori will be back in ten minutes. She barely lets me touch him when she’s here. Anyway, I think Joshie’s down for the count. I’m going to put him to bed.”
Nick sat at the kitchen table, listening with half his attention to Charlie settling the baby. After a few minutes, Charlie reappeared and placed a baby monitor on the counter. “There. Settled.” He lowered himself into the chair across from Nick. “Have you decided how much to tell Gannet?”