Chapter Nineteen
Lennon
When I finally get to the hospital four hours later, it isn’t to a happy family scene. Instead, I find Reed and Cash standing outside the waiting room, arguing. Yelling is more accurate. Reed’s face is red, and Cash is clenching a fist at his side, probably seconds away from letting it fly.
“What the hell, you guys?”
“Oh, thank God you’re here,” Cash says, pointing at our older brother in disgust. “Maybe you can talk some sense into him.”
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Reed says from between clenched teeth.
Cash snorts.
“Cash, I swear to God I’m going to—”
“Can we please not fight on the day Daisy has her baby?” I ask. “I mean, the kid has to get used to its uncles being idiots, but maybe not on its birthday, okay?”
“Hey, I’m just trying to get him to settle down,” Cash says, pointing at Reed.
“Excuse me for not wanting to sit around with him.”
“Cash?”
“No, not Cash. Will.”
Cash rolls his eyes. “You see what an idiot he’s being? Will? Seriously, Reed?”
“And here I thought things couldn’t get worse,” I mutter. “You can’t even call him Dad anymore?”
“Dads take care of you,” he growls, his fists clenching. “Dads don’t lie to you your entire life and—”
“Yeah, we get it, Reed,” Cash says. “He was a major asshole. We’re all pissed. But Daltrey wants him here for the birth of his kid. And that’s his call.”
“Doesn’t mean I have to sit there with him.”
“But Daltrey wants you here too,” I say.
Cash mutters, “God only knows why.”
I shoot him a quick glare before turning back to Reed. “So you need to be the bigger person here and go sit in the damn waiting room.”
“Fine.” He turns on his heel, punching the wall as he goes.
“Fuck,” Cash says once Reed has gone. “He’s messed up, man.”
“He’ll get over it.”
“I don’t know, but I hope you’re right.” He turns to face me, smiling now. “So, how’d it go? You get her back?”
“We were never broken up, Cash,” I say, trying not to think about her words that afternoon. “She just needs a little time to figure stuff out.”
“Figure what out? You’re a fucking catch, man.”
I laugh. “Thanks.” I nod to the waiting room. “How’s it going? Daisy doing okay?”
“Hell if I know. Apparently having a baby takes a really long time. We’ve been sitting in here for four hours without a word. I’m bored.”
“Sorry if it’s not super exciting for you, buddy,” Daltrey says from behind us. “Maybe you’d like to switch places with Daisy?”
We turn to see him approaching from the other end of the hall. He grins at me. “You made it! Where’s Haylee?”
“She has to figure stuff out,” Cash tells him in a loud stage whisper.
Daltrey frowns. “What does that mean?”
“I have no idea,” Cash says.
“Can we focus on the important stuff here?” I ask. “How’s Daisy?”
Daltrey’s face lights up. “She’s amazing. She’s doing so well. The doctor said it won’t be much longer.”
“Shit, man.” I look at my little brother, overwhelmed by the change that’s about to happen. “This is really it, huh?”
He laughs, sounding a little shaky. “I guess so. I just came out to let everyone know she’s doing good.” I send up a silent prayer of thanks that we got Reed to behave before Daltrey arrived. “I should probably get back in there.”
“We’ll let them know.”
He nods. “Thanks.” The three of us look at each other for a minute.
“The next time we see you, you’re gonna be a dad,” Cash says, shaking his head. “That’s nuts.”
Daltrey laughs. “You’re telling me.”
“Good luck, man.” Cash pulls him into a hug, and I hide a smile. He really is coming into this emotional maturity stuff pretty well. I don’t torture Daltrey with another hug, just slap him on the back as he goes.
“We should tell the others,” Cash says. “The girls have been freaking out all day.”
We head into the waiting room, but before I can take more than two steps Paige launches herself at me. “Isn’t this amazing?” she squeals.
“Definitely amazing,” I say, patting her on the back. “We just saw Daltrey in the hall. He said everything is going well, Daisy is good. Probably won’t be much longer now.”
“Oh my God!” she cries, and I cover my ear, not entirely sure I’ll still be hearing out of it after this.
“Come sit down,” Karen calls. “You’re strangling Lennon.”
I collapse into a chair next to Levi as Cash goes over to sit with Sam. “Things seem nice and awkward in here,” I mutter, and Levi snorts. Reed is sitting alone, anger radiating off him. Dad is on the other side of the room, also by himself. The girls are sitting together, and they alone seem cheerful.
“So how’d it go?” he asks.
I rub my face. “I don’t know. I think she’s pretty scared.”
“Because you’re such a basket case?”
I shove him as he laughs. “Yes, actually. She thinks we both have too many problems to be there for each other.” I rub my face again, feeling tired. “Maybe she’s right.”
“I don’t know, man. I know I’m just an observer, but it seemed to me you guys made each other stronger.”
“We did.” I think about that night in London, the night she needed me and I couldn’t be there for her. “Until the end, at least.”
“What does that mean?”
“That night at the club, she was having a really shitty time.” I haven’t told anyone about her trip to the ER. I don’t think it’s my business to share. “Some stuff went down,” I say, hoping it will suffice. “And I wasn’t there for her because I was all in my head. And she wasn’t there for me because she was in her head. It was kind of a mess. And it made her think we couldn’t take care of each other.” I shake my head. “Like I said. Maybe she’s right.”
“At the club?” he asks, scrunching up his face in thought. “You mean that last night in London?”
“Yeah.”
“She talked to me about you.”
“What?”
“Before she left. She told me to keep an eye on you. Said you weren’t sleeping. That was the reason I went looking for you that night. I was worried.”
“She didn’t tell me that.”
He shrugs. “I’m just saying, man. Maybe she couldn’t be there for you herself. But she made sure someone else was.” He meets my eyes. “Far as I’m concerned, that’s just another way of taking care of someone.”
I nod, turning that over in my head, hoping I get the chance to tell her what he said.
Across the room, Paige approaches Reed. She places a hesitant hand on his shoulder and says something to him. He shakes her off, and even from here I can tell he snaps at her. She retreats, crestfallen, and resumes her seat next to Karen.
“Okay, that’s enough of that.” I go over to Reed and grab his shoulder. “Let’s go get some coffee.”
“I don’t want—”
“Too bad, Reed. Let’s go.”
Grumbling, he stands and follows me. He really can act like a little kid when he’s in a bad mood.
We head out of the maternity ward and down to the hospital lobby, not speaking. After a few minutes, he stops, turning to me. “Don’t tell me to forgive him, Len.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
He seems surprised. “Good. Because I won’t.”
“That’s your prerogative. But you need to stop taking it out on everyone else.”
“I’m not—”
“Things going well with Paige?”
He slumps against the wall. “Not so much.”
I lean against the wall next to him. We’re in a pretty empty hallway, an occasional nurse in scrubs passing us. “Look, Reed. I get that this sucks. Finding out what happened the way you did. But we can’t let it ruin everything else. You have a great thing with Paige. We’re all healthy. Daltrey’s having a kid. That’s a lot to be happy about, you know? If you can’t let go of this anger, you’re going to miss all of that.”
He doesn’t speak for a long time. When he does, his voice is low, almost unrecognizable. “I feel like we lost him. I feel like we lost the only parent we have.”
“Reed.” God, what can I even say to that? “We didn’t lose him. He loves us. He might have handled things wrong, but we didn’t lose him. Everything he did, he did to take care of us.”
He shakes his head, and I turn so that I’m facing him, even though he won’t look at me, his eyes glued to the floor. “You know what I remember the most? The thing I remembered first? Dad next to my hospital bed. Telling me it was going to be okay. Crying. I can’t… I can’t imagine what that was like for him. To see his kid hurt like that and know it was because…” I can’t finish the sentence. Know it was because of the woman he loved.
“I know what it feels like,” he whispers. “To see you hurt. And he knew that was happening, knew you were sick, and he didn’t tell us.”
“Because I wouldn’t let him.”
“I could have helped you.”
“He helped me. All those times when things got bad for me, I went to Dad. And he always helped me.” I pause. “Reed, you need to start thinking of me as your brother.”
“Of course I think of you as my brother—”
“No, you don’t. You think of me as someone you need to take care of. But I have a father. And whatever his faults might be, he did take care of me.”
Reed shoves his hands into his pockets, still refusing to meet my eyes.
“You’re the best big brother any kid could ever want,” I say. “You’ve taken care of all of us for years. But we’re grown up now, Reed. All we need is our brother.”
He doesn’t answer, but after a long moment he nods, once. I sigh, knowing that’s the best I’m going to get. “Okay. I’m gonna head back. I’ll see you.” I turn to go but stop when his hand comes out to grab my shoulder.
“A couple weeks ago you said I don’t respect you,” he says, his voice still strained. “That’s bullshit, Len. I don’t think there’s anyone in this world I respect more than you. You’re one of the best people I know. And I know you’re going to be okay.”
“Reed.” I don’t know how to respond to that. For a family that doesn’t deal well with emotional stuff, that’s a lot to take in.
“Haylee would be lucky to have you.” His voice is a lot more like normal, and he finally turns to look at me. His eyes are red, but his face is relaxed, smiling. “We’re all lucky to have you.”
Then he slings an arm around my shoulder, and we walk back to the waiting room together.
***
It’s two hours before Daltrey comes back out to the waiting room. It’s enough time for Daisy’s dad to arrive from Ohio and for Reed to make things up to Paige by taking several relationship quizzes in the teen magazines she finds on a rack. When Daltrey pushes through the door, everyone goes silent. He looks exhausted and terrified, and he’s grinning from ear to ear. “I have a daughter,” he announces to the room, and everyone goes crazy.
Paige is crying—even Karen looks teary—and everyone is hugging him, asking questions, slapping his back.
“Daisy’s perfect,” he tells Mr. Harris, shaking his hand. “Amazing. I can’t believe her.”
“And the baby?” our dad asks.
Daltrey just shakes his head, apparently too awed to speak.
“Come on,” he says, waving everyone to the door. “Daisy wants to introduce you.”
“All of us?” Karen asks, looking around at the crowd in the waiting room, ten of us in total. “Doesn’t she want to rest for a while first?”
Daltrey rolls his eyes. “She said, and I quote, ‘Get the family in here to meet this gorgeous child.’”
So we all follow him back to Daisy’s room, laughing, all of the awkwardness of earlier long gone. How could anyone be angry right now? There’s a new member of our family.
Daisy is sitting up in bed, her hair gathered on top of her head. She looks exhausted and pale and completely ecstatic, and she’s holding a baby. Everyone immediately hushes as we enter the room, staring at her.
“Come in,” she says, grinning. “Come meet Rose.”
“Rose!” Paige squeaks. “What a beautiful name!”
Daltrey grabs Reed’s shoulder and steers him over to the bed to see his kid. Our oldest brother stares down at her for a minute before putting his arm around Daltrey’s shoulder, laughing through watery eyes. “This is unbelievable,” he says. “Aren’t you still that little?”
Cash joins them, kissing Daisy on the head before peering down at Rose. “Thank God she got your looks,” he tells her.
“Shut up, Cash,” she says, laughing. “She has Daltrey’s hair and eyes.”
“Then she’ll be beautiful,” Paige says, hugging him before turning her attention to the baby. “She is beautiful!” She bursts into noisy tears as Reed laughs, pulling her into a hug.
“Glad to see you’re keeping tradition alive with the name,” Cash says, nodding at Daltrey in approval. “Axl Rose is a worthy rock star to name your kid after.”
“We did not name her after Axl Rose,” Daisy scoffs. “We gave her a flower name to match mine.”
“Sure we did, honey,” Daltrey says, meeting Cash’s gaze over her head and giving a quick shake of his head. “Totally Axl,” he mouths.
Mr. Harris steps forward to meet his first grandchild, kissing her forehead before turning his attention to Daisy. He hugs her for a long time, whispering something in her ear, and when he straightens, her eyes are wet.
“Dad,” Daltrey says, turning to our father, who’s hovering near the door. “Come and see.”
The others step back, Reed tensing only a little, as Dad takes the spot by the bed. He shakes his head, looking down at the baby. “She’s beautiful,” he agrees, nodding his head several times before slapping Daltrey on the back. I think he might be close to tears, but he just keeps nodding, staring at the baby. Emotional maturity is harder than it looks.
Daisy introduces Rose to Levi, Karen, and Sam. I stand by the foot of the bed, content to watch from the perimeter for a while, just like I usually do. Until Daisy looks up and meets my eyes. “Come here.”
I cross to her side, and she grins up at me. “Want to hold her?”
Before I can say anything, she hands Rose to me. I’ve never held a baby before, and for a second I panic, but Daisy is calm. “Put your hand under her head,” she says. “Perfect. Support her back. That’s it. Easier than it looks.”
“This is weird,” I say, staring at the baby, and Daltrey snorts.
“Thanks, man.”
“No, I just…” I look down at Daisy. “You have a baby.”
She laughs. “I know.”
I shake my head, overwhelmed, and return my attention to the baby in my arms. She’s tiny, her nose barely as big as my pinky fingernail. Under the little knit cap that all babies seem to wear, I can see a few tufts of white-blond hair. Daltrey’s hair.
We’re going to do better for you, I think. All of us. And then she yawns, and her little eyes flutter open. I know that brand new babies probably can’t focus yet, but I swear she looks right up at me, her eyes wide and blue. And just like that I’m in love. “Hey,” I whisper. “I’m your Uncle Lennon.”
I feel a hand on my shoulder and see Cash from the corner of my eye. He stands next to me, looking at her, and then Reed joins on the other side. “I’m your other uncle,” Cash says. “You’ll be able to tell it’s me because I’m the best looking one.”
“Also the biggest bullshitter,” Reed says.
“Hey!” Paige cries. “You can’t swear in front of babies!”
“Uh oh,” I say to Rose. “Your uncles are going to be in big trouble now.”
“Really big trouble,” Reed says. “Because you’re going to have all of us wrapped around this tiny little finger, aren’t you?”
I look up to wink at Daisy and see Daltrey has joined her on the bed, leaning on her pillow as he kisses her hair. He smiles at me, shaking his head. He doesn’t say a word, but he doesn’t have to. There’s nothing but love, pure and simple, on his face as he watches his brothers meeting his baby girl.
***
Daltrey basically has to force us out of the room an hour later so Daisy can get some rest. I think we all would have been content to look at the baby for the rest of the day. The Ransome brothers have all fallen in love. Embarrassingly, sickeningly in love with a newborn baby. Cash has a surprisingly good talking-to-the-baby voice down already, which Daltrey tells him is lame even though it’s pretty much identical to his own talking-to-the-baby voice.
“We should go buy her something,” Cash says, his arm around Sam as we head down the hallway toward the waiting room.
“Like what?” she asks, smiling at him indulgently.
He scrunches up his nose. “Do they make baby leather jackets?”
“I’m getting her a toy drum,” Reed announces.
“I’m sure Daisy will love you for it when Rose is big enough to bang on the thing,” Karen mutters.
“No way,” Cash argues. “She’s not playing something lame like drums. She’s going to play a real instrument.”
“A bass?” I ask.
He makes a scathing noise. “Are you kidding me? The kid is going to play guitar. Who the hell wants to play bass?”
“Bass is reserved for people with a little more intelligence,” I say. “So obviously Rose qualifies.”
“You guys realize she’s approximately two hours old, right?” Sam asks.
“Stop ruining our fun, woman,” Cash says. “Besides, she’s obviously very advanced for her age.”
“Obviously,” Reed agrees.
“They’ve all lost their minds,” Karen mutters.
When we reach the waiting room, I stop dead in my tracks, making Cash and Sam run into me. “The hell?” Cash says, but I barely hear him.
“Haylee!” Paige cries. “I’m so glad you made it!”
“Hi,” she says softly, her eyes on mine. “I hope it’s okay…”
I’m having trouble processing that she’s actually here. The entire day feels surreal, from flying up to New York to the hurried trip back, all the emotion of meeting the baby… and now she’s here. Am I dreaming?
“We’ll just give you a minute,” Reed says, a smile in his voice. He slaps my back as he passes, but I still can’t tear my eyes from Haylee.
“A baby girl, huh?” she asks once the others have gone.
“How’d you know?”
“Paige texted me. That’s how I knew what hospital you were at.”
Her words barely register. All I can think is how beautiful she looks. How happy I am to see her right now, on this day, when I met my niece for the first time and felt like my family might just become whole again after all. For her to be here…
“I probably should have called you,” she says, fidgeting. She’s nervous. “But I figured you were busy and—”
“You’re here.”
She meets my gaze. “I should have come with you from the start. I never should have let you go.”
“Haylee.”
“I started thinking, after you left. You know, I was so worried about us being too messed up to make this work. But then I realized something.”
“What?”
“Do you know what the first thing I thought about you was, that day in LA? I thought, he looks broken. He looks just like me.”
I frown, not quite sure I like that as her first impression of me, but she continues. “And I think that’s why I trusted you. Why I let myself get close to you. Because I knew you understood.”
“I thought that about you too.”
She smiles. “So all this shit that makes us feel so messed up—it’s good for something, isn’t it? Because we probably wouldn’t have happened if we were both shiny, happy, normal people.”
I let out a snort of laughter. “I guess that’s one way of looking at it.”
She takes a step closer and then another, and my laughter dies. Her eyes are locked on mine, her expression determined. “You said I made your life better,” she whispers. “And that made me realize that my life is so much better than it was back in LA. And that’s only after a few weeks. Think about how much better things might get if we had years.”
I don’t know if she planned to say anything else. I don’t really care. I’ve heard enough. I close the distance between us and lift her into my arms, my lips finding hers, relishing the little sigh that escapes her as she kisses me back.
“I love you, Haylee,” I whisper against her mouth.
“I love you too.”
At that party before the tour started, Daisy asked me to imagine a world with her baby in it. I couldn’t. Back then I couldn’t see life beyond the next day, the next task. But then I’d taken one look at Haylee and everything changed. For the first time in years she made me feel hopeful. She made me believe in somedays. And now I can imagine it all, years and years spreading in front of us. My family finding their way, figuring out how to be whole again. Rose growing up in a world where everyone loves her.
And me and Haylee. Making things better for each other. A little bit at a time, every day, for as long as I can imagine.
THE END
Don’t miss the sixth book in the Ransom series, The Ransome Brothers, coming soon!