Chapter Four - Quin
At nine AM on Tuesday morning I was one hundred percent sure I wasn’t showing up for lunch with Chella at the Club. By nine-thirty I was at a solid eighty-five percent.
You can see where this is headed.
I show up at Turning Point ten minutes early.
Margaret, Bric’s White Room manager, is gushing over me like a mother because I’ve been MIA for so long. She takes my coat and straightens my tie, asking me a million questions that both annoy me and make me feel special at the same time.
“I’m fine, Margaret,” I say, brushing her hands away from the lapels of my suit. “Stop it.”
“Sorry. I’ve just missed you.” Margaret stares up at me, hands clasped together in front of her, like I’m giving her a proud moment and she needs to soak it up. “Mr. Bricman and Mr. Baldwin are up in Mr. Baldwin’s bar.” Margaret shakes her head. “Both of you… back on the same day.”
“I’m here for lunch with Chella,” I say. “In the White Room.”
“Oh, she called a little while ago and said she’d be late. That’s why Mr. Baldwin is here, I suppose. And you know how he is about his privacy. Plus he brought a dog.” Margaret tsks her tongue. “Mr. Bricman was not happy about that. So lunch will be up in the Baldwin Bar.”
I turn around and look up, and sure enough, there’s Smith holding that little rat with the pink bow. He waves one of her paws at me, smiling.
I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to the dog-dad version of Smith.
I can’t see Bric from down here, but I guess I’m stuck seeing the whole thing through. I climb the stairs up to the second floor asking myself why I’m really mad at Bric. I believe him when he says he just gave Rochelle her options. So OK, he didn’t actually tell her to have an abortion. But the part where he keeps that little conversation to himself, even after she left and he knew I was devastated—well, I’m having more trouble with that.
He kept things from me. It’s on the verge of lying. Not quite, but very close. It was total betrayal. I don’t like lies. And I hate the feeling of betrayal even more. What we were doing was based on trust. And loyalty. He broke his oath with me.
Maybe he did mean to tell me about his conversation with Rochelle. But I don’t think so. I think he deliberately didn’t tell me she was pregnant because he didn’t want me to leave the game.
This, I decide, is the root of my problem.
Bric is selfish. Sure, he plays Mr. Philanthropist at Smith’s instructions. He looks generous and benevolent on the outside. Always in control, always ready with a big ol’ check to hand out just when people need it. But it’s not his money and it’s not his goal.
He’s like a paper-doll version of Smith. The mask Smith refuses to wear.
And I understand now—completely understand—that the reason he didn’t tell me about Rochelle being pregnant was because he didn’t want to make a change in his life.
His life.
Fuck her life and the problems she was facing. Fuck my life and the epiphany I was slowly realizing. If I knew about Rochelle’s pregnancy we’d both leave the game. And what would happen to Bric then?
Really, what would happen to him if he didn’t have Smith and me around? Keep him in check. That’s why we make such a good team. Smith and I keep him in check. The Club keeps him in check.
I’m not surprised that he’s selfish. I’ve always known that. So that’s not why I stopped hanging out here or stopped talking to him. I made the unconscious decision to distance myself from Elias Bricman a while back when I realized he was a dick.
I’m probably a dick at times. Smith is a dick almost all the time—except with Chella. But Bric—Bric is a dick because he doesn’t care. I think Smith cares about people. Why would he give all that money away if he didn’t? And I care about people. I’m not usually a dick. I had a few moments with Chella when she first showed up, but I think I was justified.
I’m the nice guy in this group. I like to make the girls happy, and not just sexually. I like to make them happy in life.
Smith played the game because he was into the concept of sharing. He wanted things, but they had to be offered. It made sense when he said it.
But Bric likes to make them bend to his will, even when they don’t want to. He likes this game because he can do all that dark shit he hides up in that head of his and call it playing.
When I get to the top of the stairs I turn right and head up the second, shorter set of stairs that lead into the private bar. Smith is in his usual seat, smiling down at his dumb dog. Bric is also sitting in his usual seat, across from Smith, but not on the balcony side of the table.
“Wassup,” Smith says, shaking a dog paw at me.
“Where’s Chella?” I ask, taking a seat next to Smith instead of my usual, on the other side of Bric. Bric looks at me. Gives me a slight nod of his head. Then snaps his fingers for the bartender to bring me a drink.
“She texted me twenty minutes ago and told me to come here. She’s running late,” Smith says.
Smith is wearing… sweats. At the Club. I almost can’t take this guy. I’ve only ever seen him wear sweats to bed. And this hoodie? I had no idea Smith Baldwin owned a hoodie. “What the fuck are you wearing?” I ask.
“I was at the gym down in Five Points,” Smith says. “I came right over.” He looks at his watch. “I can’t stay long because I’m boxing with some thugs in an hour.”
“They’re gonna kick your ass,” Bric mumbles down into his glass of whiskey.
“Probably,” Smith says. “But it’ll be fun.” He smiles into his drink as he takes a sip.
The bartender comes with my glass, offers me a smile and says, “Nice to see you, Mr. Foster.”
“Thanks,” I say, taking the drink. It’s a good whiskey. Better than the shit I drink with Robert on Friday nights.
“So what’ve you been up to?” Bric asks. I assume he’s talking to me, even though he’s still staring down at his glass.
“Same old shit,” I say. There’s an awkward silence after that, which I do not feel the need to fill. Hey, if these assholes want me here, they can provide the entertainment.
The three of us are shifting in our seats, unaccustomed to the new relationship we find ourselves in—or lack of one—when Chella comes running up the stairs.
She stops a few feet from the table, huffing. Like she ran across town to get here. She says nothing. Just stares at me. Her face is flushed and her heavy breathing makes her chest quickly rise and fall underneath her cream-colored silk blouse.
“What?” Smith asks. “What’s going on?”
She doesn’t look at Smith. She stares straight at me. And then she bursts into tears.
Smith and I both get up at the same time. We’re surrounding her a second later, Smith holding on to her shoulders, asking her over and over again. “What’s happening, Chella? What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”
I don’t say anything, and I don’t touch her. Just hover like a third wheel. Not allowed to touch her, Quin. But I want to. And when she reaches for me instead of Smith, I let it happen. I pull her in and let her hug me tight.
“Chella?” I ask. “What’s going on?”
Smith is there too, the three of us pressed together tightly. It hurts. God, it hurts. I’ve missed her. I’ve missed him too, if I’m being honest. But mostly I’ve missed… this.
The us.
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” Chella says, leaning her head on my shoulder. “I have no idea how to tell you this.”
“Tell me what?” I ask.
“Just say it,” Smith urges. “Tell me what the fuck is happening.”
“Rochelle is back,” Chella says.
“Back where?” Smith growls. He goes from soft and caring to angry in the same moment.
“Here,” Chella says, still looking at me. “She called me. She called me, Quin. And even though I promised her I’d never say anything to you guys, the promise I made to you last year is way more important to me. I didn’t want to be the one who found her. I didn’t want to be the one who had to tell you anything.”
“Where is she?” Bric says. I’d almost forgotten about him. He didn’t rush over to Chella when she started to cry. And he’s not pressed up against her like Smith and I are.
Chella pulls away and I feel a sense of loss. God, if only Smith hadn’t fallen in love with her. We could still be playing the game. Maybe I’m not as into it as Bric, but I played it for more than a decade because I liked it. And I do miss it.
She turns to Smith and says, “She called me like thirty minutes ago and said she was passing through town. Did I want to have dinner tonight?”
“What’d you say?” I ask. But her words—passing through town—they stab me.
“I said yes, of course.” She takes a moment to wipe the tears off her cheeks and dab a fingertip at her eye makeup.
“Did she say anything else?” I ask, unsure how much I want to know.
Chella nods. “She said not to tell you guys.”
“Which guys?” I ask. “All of us? Or just me?”
Chella’s face crumples, so I get that answer even though she never answers.
I walk back over to the table and take a seat. They all wait to see if I’ll say anything, but I don’t. I just sit there and drink my whiskey.
Passing through town.
Don’t tell Quin.
Got it.
“I have her room number,” Chella says, coming over to sit next to me in Smith’s chair. “She’s at the Four Seasons.”
“The Four Seasons.” I laugh. “Of course she is. The fucking Four Seasons.” I raise my glass and yell, “One more for me, bartender. Because the girl I loved got pregnant, had an abortion, left town without telling me, and then decides to come back a year later, except she’s just passing through. And she’s staying at the motherfucking Four Seasons Hotel. That’s just fan-fucking-tastic.”
“Quin,” Chella says in a soft voice. “I have to tell you something else.”
“There’s more?” I chuckle, watching the bartender refill my glass. “Hit me, Chella. Might as well just plunge that knife in a little deeper.”
“She didn’t have an abortion.”
I choke on that whiskey. Almost spit it out. “What?” I croak, trying not to cough.
“There was a baby crying in the background. So I asked her about it. And she just… she just said she had a baby. Six months old. And did I want to come over while she was in town?”
“Right,” I whisper. “Do you want to meet my new baby, Chella? And don’t tell Quin I’m just passing through town.”
I stand up but Smith has my arm. “Nope,” he says. “You’re not going over there alone.”
“I’m not going over there at all, you dumbass.” I laugh. “Fuck her. Just fuck her.”
Bric is standing in front of me, like a goddamned wall. “Then where are you going?”
“Back to work,” I say, pushing him aside.
“No, Quin,” Chella says, tugging on my arm. “No. She’s here and we’re gonna have this out once and for all. If she’s only here one night, then this is your only chance to put it behind you.”
“Put it behind me?” I ask. “She had my baby, Chella. She got pregnant, took off in the middle of the night. Never bothered to call. And she had my baby.”
“You don’t know it’s yours,” Bric says.
I glare at him in disgust. “It’s mine.”
Bric puts his hands up, conceding to my anger. “Whatever.”
“We’re going,” Smith says. His no-nonsense voice doesn’t quite have the same power when he’s wearing sweats, not the way it does when he’s in a five-thousand-dollar suit. But it comes close. “We’re going over there. All four of us. And we’re getting to the bottom of this bullshit. Fuck her. She did this to us, OK? She fucked with us. I for one—I’m getting an answer. And the rest of you are coming with me.”
Smith hands the dog off to Chella, who hugs her tightly to her chest, and then he picks up his gym bag. “Meet us in the Four Seasons’ lobby. Come on, Chella.” He grabs her hand and tugs her down the stairs, leaving me alone with Bric.
I look at him, my eyes narrowed and angry.
“What do you want to do?” he asks.
“Did you know about this?” I ask.
“No,” he says, defensive. “How the fuck would I know about this?”
I don't believe him. I can’t put my finger on why, but I don’t believe him.
“I swear, Quin. I had no idea she was in town. But now that she’s here you should go talk to her. Say what you have to say. Set things right.”
“Set things right?” I ask. “In what way do you see me setting things right? I didn’t do anything. I didn’t leave her. I didn’t run away. I didn’t tell her to get an abortion. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I didn’t tell her to get an abortion, either,” Bric growls. “And now that you know she kept the baby, don’t you want to see her?”
“How do you know the baby’s a her?” I ask.
“Not the baby, asshole,” Bric says. “Her, as in Rochelle.”
Do I want to see Rochelle?
I can honestly say that up until this revelation, that answer was yes. So many yeses. No hesitation, no qualms, no conditions. Yes.
I thought I’d feel relief when Rochelle was found. We did look for her but Bric never had any luck. And every time he called with a report I’d have a little flutter of hope in my heart that he’d say he knew where she was. I’d imagine how I’d go to her. How we’d reunite and all the bad things would disappear. All the sadness and anger and confusion.
But now that this moment is real… I’m so fucking pissed off.
And she had my baby.
I missed it. I missed the pregnancy. Her belly getting big. The heartbeat. That picture thing the doctor takes that people post all over social media. The birth. What did she name it? What does it look like?
I missed everything. She took it all away from me and I don’t think I can ever forgive her for that.
“Quin.” Bric interrupts my thoughts. “Come on. You need to do this.”
“No,” I say, the anger melting away. “No. I’m not going.”
I turn to leave but Bric has my arm again. “You’re going, Quin. This shit is over now. You and Smith are my best friends and Rochelle tore us apart.”
“Exactly. So now it’s over, Bric. I’m done. I don’t even care what you did or didn’t do. We can be friends again.”
“We can’t,” he says. “It’s not the same. You know it’s not. You’re still pissed off at me about this shit and if we just go over there like Smith says, and have it out with her, it will be better. I know it.”
I just look at him, trying to figure out his angle. He always has an angle. “Why do you care?”
“Why?” He laughs. “Why? I’m playing the fucking game with Jordan Wells, Quin. He’s just not my type.”
I laugh. I can’t help myself.
Bric laughs too. “I’m totally fucking serious. I can’t, man. I can’t have sex with that guy two on one. He’s an asshole. It’s nothing like it was with you and Smith. And OK, Smith is out. Fine. But if you were still in… It’d be a whole lot better than me and Jordan Wells.”
I stop laughing but I’m still smiling, trying to picture Bric and Jordan trying to play with some random girl. I miss it, so there’s this little part of me that’s jealous. But mostly I find it comical.
“And the girls, man. Jesus Christ. We’ve been through three of them. This last one…” Bric rolls his eyes and lets out a long exhale. “Rochelle was so much better than these girls. Chella was great too, you know?”
I nod. “She really was. I kinda wish Chella and Smith were still playing. I think I’d have handled all this shit better if we were still in that relationship.”
“I think so too,” Bric says. “But you and me, man. We’re still good at this, you know? We could be friends again. Find a new girl.”
“With Jordan?” I ask, one eyebrow raised.
Bric shrugs. “I don’t care. He was always good enough down in the Club, you know?”
True. We have fucked girls with Jordan plenty of times. I don’t really like him, but Bric is right. He’s good enough when we’re the ones in control. The game was never meant to be played with just two guys. I imagine that makes everything off balance. You really need that third guy to keep the feelings away.
And even then…
“Or just the two of us,” Bric offers, his voice low, like he’s uncertain how I’d feel about it. “We could come up with a new game. Change things around a little.”
“Maybe,” I admit, sighing. “I do miss that, you know.”
“I do too,” Bric says. “But we can’t go forward until we deal with the past. Let’s just go over there, meet up with Smith, go up, and confront her. You say everything you want to say. Then we’ll leave.”
“And the baby?” I ask. “What do I do about the baby?”
Bric shrugs. “I dunno, man. You just gotta see what happens, I guess.”
I take my own car over to the Four Seasons. It’s only about eight blocks away from the Club, so not nearly enough time to process what’s happening. I pull into the valet, hand over my keys, and spy Bric, Chella, and Smith standing near the sleek, modern stairs, through the window of the lobby.
Chella walks towards me as I enter, holding the little rat called Precious. “Quin, are you sure you’re up to this? Don’t let them pressure you into anything you’re not ready for.”
“Come on,” I say. “I’m fine. I’m pissed off, but otherwise fine.”
“Just give her the benefit of the doubt, OK?”
“Why should I? What she did—”
“What she did,” Chella interrupts me, “was done in desperation.”
“How was she desperate? Huh? Explain that to me, please. Because I don’t get it.”
“She was pregnant, Quin. It’s a weird time for some women. I know you don’t understand that, but some don’t handle it well. They do crazy things. Overreact and become sad. I can’t explain it, because obviously, I’ve never been pregnant. But I was with her, remember? We were friends that whole time she was getting ready to leave. I told you she was sad. I told you something big was happening to her. So just… just be patient and be quiet.”
I sneer down at Chella.
“Just listen to her.”
“What if she has nothing to say?” I ask. “What if she blows us off and just says, ‘Fuck you guys?’”
“Then…” Chella shrugs. “Then walk out and don’t look back.”
“The baby, Chella.”
“Shit,” she says, biting her lip. “I forgot about that.”
“I might want to walk out on Rochelle, but not the baby.”
“It could be Bric’s,” Chella says, a little hint of hope in her voice. We both know Bric isn’t into kids. He might be happy if Rochelle walked away with his kid.
“It’s not,” I say.
“You don’t know.”
“Sometimes you know, and this is one of those times. I just know.”
“Well, let’s take one step at a time, OK?”
“Ready?” Smith says, walking up to us. Bric looks nervous, which surprises me. But Smith looks… angry.
Why is he pissed off?
“Ready,” I say, sighing.
We walk towards the elevator and wait until the doors open. The ride up to the twenty-first floor seems to take forever, but then when the doors open, it’s all going too fast as we walk down the hall. She’s at the very end. A suite, from the looks of the door.
Smith knocks, no hesitation. I hear a baby fussing inside and look over at Bric. He still looks very nervous. Chella grabs my hand just as the lock disengages and the door swings in.
Rochelle. My beautiful, beautiful Rochelle. She doesn’t look anything like the girl I lost. She looks… so much better.
“I should’ve known,” she says, no hello or greeting.
“I’m sorry,” Chella says, letting go of my hand and stepping forward. “He needed to know. We’ll leave if you want, but I think you owe them a conversation.”
“Fine,” Rochelle says, waving her hand for us to enter. “I probably do deserve this.”
Deserve this. That’s all she has to say? Just, Fine, I deserve this?
Chella enters first, then Smith, then Bric and I’m last. I hesitate for a second, but then the heavy door begins to swing closed and Bric stops it, last second, pulling it open for me again. “Come on,” he says. “Give it five minutes. Then you can leave.”
I enter into a hallway—master bedroom off to the right, large bathroom right in front of me with one of those huge soaking tubs—and then go left and follow Chella into the living room. There’s a couch, three chairs, a small office table, and, once I get fully into the suite, a dining room off to the left that seats one, two, three… eight. Eight fucking people. Sweeping mountain and city views from the two windows that flank the corner fireplace draw my attention back to what’s happening.
I wonder who’s paying for this? This room has got to cost two thousand a night, easy.
“Might as well sit down,” Rochelle says, picking up the baby from a seat sitting on the floor.
God, they are so beautiful.
Smith takes a seat in a chair, propping a foot on his knee and leaning back like he’s making himself comfortable. Chella sits in the chair closest to him, Bric takes the couch and I… I just stare at them.
Not them. Rochelle and the baby.
Rochelle is wearing light-colored jeans, a pale-blue t-shirt that says Pagosa Springs in faded white letters, and nothing on her feet. Her hair is even longer than the last time I saw her, and it was halfway down her back then. It’s golden in the light that pours into the room from the windows. Her stunning blue-green hazel eyes are trained on me, waiting to see what I’ll say.
I say nothing. Just take my gaze to the baby in her arms. A girl. She’s wearing a pink and white dress with eyelet lace trim. Downy tufts of blonde hair end in soft curls right at the top of her shoulders. She has a red plastic block in her mouth and she looks like she’s about to cry.
“Adley,” Rochelle says, still staring at me.
“Adley,” I repeat back. “How old is she?”
“Six months.”
I nod and look over at Smith. Help me out, man, my look says. Because I have no idea what to do.
Chella starts. “We just want to—”
“We want to know what the fuck, Rochelle,” Smith finishes for her.
“Don’t say fuck in front of the baby,” Bric says.
We all turn to look at him. Since when does he have baby rules?
“I’m just saying,” Bric explains. “Let’s try to keep this… professional.”
“Professional?” I ask.
Everyone turns to look at me. I don’t like the attention and Smith realizes this, because he picks right back up where he left off.
“You have a lot of actions to account for,” he says.
“Maybe,” Rochelle says. Calmly. She takes a seat in another chair, opposite Smith and just a few feet to my right, holding Adley tightly to her chest like she needs the comfort. Adley. What a pretty name. Something I’d agree to. “Maybe not. We did have an agreement, right? The contract said—”
“I don’t give one flying fuck what that contract said,” Smith spits, stabbing the wooden arm of the chair with his finger. He’s really pissed off. I don’t think Chella has ever seen him this way, because she looks at him, aghast, with a hand over her heart. “What you did was bullshit.”
“Can we stop with the swearing?” Bric interrupts again.
“Fuck off, Bric,” Smith counters. “You’re not gonna take her side now. Not after what she did to Quin. Fuck that contract, you know? He loved you, Rochelle. And you knew he loved you. And even Bric cared.”
“You never did though, right?”
“Right,” he says, matter-of-factly. “Your decision to leave didn’t hurt me one bit. But the way you treated them”—Smith hikes a thumb in the direction of Bric and me—“that did hurt me, Rochelle. So I’m gonna be as pissed off as I want right now.”
“Look,” Rochelle says, huffing out some air. “I don’t have to explain myself.”
“I paid you ten thousand dollars a month, you sneaky bitch,” Smith says. “So you goddamned will explain yourself.”
“What?” Bric and I both say at the same time.
“That’s right,” Smith says, not taking his eyes off Rochelle. “I kept paying my part. And you know why I kept paying my part, Rochelle?” He spits out her name like it tastes bad.
Rochelle stays silent.
“I paid you to stay gone.”
“What the fuck is happening?” I ask. “You paid her to leave?” I ask Smith.
“Not to leave, dumbass. To stay away. But now that she’s back, and she took my money, now she fucking owes me. I have questions for you, Rochelle Bastille. I paid you over three hundred thousand dollars for these answers. And you’re gonna give them to me right the fuck now.”
A part of me wants to stop Smith’s angry outburst, but most of me doesn’t. I have so many questions too.
Where did you go? Why did you leave? Whose baby is that? What day was she born? Is she healthy? How long are you staying?
“And my first question is…” Smith continues. “Why the fuck are you here?”
Rochelle says nothing. She’s not afraid of Smith. I’ve heard them have small arguments before. Nothing this dramatic. But she’s not a pushover for him like she is for Bric.
Chella stands up, takes a deep breath, and says, “Maybe we should go.”
Smith continues, undeterred. “And once we get past that little formality, I want you to tell Quin just what the fuck happened last year. And then I want to know when the fuck you’re leaving Denver. Because we don’t want you here.”
“I plan on telling you all those things,” Rochelle sneers back at Smith.
“Liar. Such a little fucking liar. You were trying to use that fucking contract to get out of it, so don’t—”
“Smith,” Chella says in an uncharacteristically loud voice. “We’re leaving. This has nothing to do with us. This is between Bric, Rochelle, and Quin. So let’s go.” She stands up, holding the dog in one hand while simultaneously pulling on Smith’s arm.
Smith waits a full second, staring at Rochelle. Then he looks at Chella and gives in to her request.
I expect him to get the last word on his way out, because that’s just the kind of guy Smith is, but he drops it and they leave quietly.
Rochelle huffs out a breath of air that makes the baby’s hair fly up. “Well, he hasn’t changed.”
“He actually has,” I say, feeling the need to defend my friend. “A lot.”
Rochelle looks at Bric and shakes her head. “What can I say other than sorry, right?” She switches to me. “I’m sorry.”
“Whose baby?” I ask.
“I don’t know. If I knew do you really think I would’ve left without saying something? It could be either of you.”
“No one else?” Bric asks.
“What the fuck, Bric?” I say.
“I’m just asking to make sure,” he continues, his eyes squarely on Rochelle’s face.
“There’s no one else,” Rochelle says, looking at me. “I didn’t think you’d be interested.”
I rub a hand down my face and laugh.
“I didn’t think you loved me,” Rochelle continues. “I told you I loved you and you said nothing that night.”
“That’s no excuse,” I say, turning my back to her. “No excuse for what you did. You told Chella to get in your bed, pretend to be you—” I almost want to fucking choke her right now, that’s how angry thinking about that night makes me.
I take a deep, deep breath instead.
“I’m sorry,” Rochelle says again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you—”
“You didn’t mean to hurt me?” I laugh so loud the baby cries.
Rochelle morphs into some version of herself I have no knowledge of. She shushes the baby, walks to the small counter where the hotel-room-sized refrigerator is, takes out a bottle, and then sticks it inside some contraption as she rocks the baby on her hip.
I look over at Bric, who is watching everything she does with a look of fascination. “What’s that thing?” he asks.
I kinda want to know too, but wasn’t gonna ask.
“A bottle warmer,” Rochelle says, turning to face us. “You came at a bad time. She needs to eat and then nap. We were on the road since early this morning. So we’re both tired.”
“Where did you come from?” I ask.
Rochelle pulls on her t-shirt. “Here.”
Pagosa Springs. “Where are you going?” I ask, wanting to tick off as many questions as I can before she boots us out. Because we are definitely being booted out of here in a matter of minutes.
“Jackson,” she says. “I was gonna go up to Jackson.”
“You have a place up there?” Bric asks.
“I’m gonna check into a hotel for a while.”
“Good luck with that,” I say. “There’s no rooms in Jackson the week after Thanksgiving. So unless you booked ahead, you’re fucked.”
“Swearing,” Bric says, tired of repeating himself.
I roll my eyes, which makes Rochelle smile. “I’ll be OK.”
“One night then?” I ask. “You came here for one night to what? Fuck with us again?”
“I called Chella, not you.”
“Yeah, I heard. Passing through. Don’t tell Quin.”
The little bottle warmer thing dings and the baby must know that means food, because she suddenly gets very fussy. Rochelle turns away, juggling the baby and the bottle for a few seconds, until she gets everything straight, and then walks over to the couch and plops down with the baby in her lap.
Tiny hands eagerly clasp around the bottle and bring it to her mouth. Seconds later there is the sound of sucking.
I want to touch her. Both of them. I want to walk over to that couch, sit my ass down, and be with them. But I won’t. I refuse to give in that easily.
“We should go,” Bric says. “It was nice, I guess, Rochelle. But you do what you have to do.”
“Do what you have to do?” I say, shaking my head in disbelief. “No. Nope. I want a DNA test. I want that right now, before you leave town, Rochelle. I want a fucking DNA test.”
When I look at Bric he’s got a weird smug look on his face. But I ignore it and pull out my phone, doing a search for paternity testing in Denver. “Here’s one.” I press the contact number and let it ring though.
“You’re doing this now?” Bric asks.
“She’s passing though,” I say. “If not now, when?”
“Rochelle,” Bric says, swiping my phone from me and ending the call.
“What the fuck, asshole?” He opens his mouth and I cut him off. “If you bitch at me one more time about swearing in front of a baby who can’t even talk yet, I’ll punch you in the eye.”
Bric looks back to Rochelle. “You don’t have a room booked, right?”
She shakes her head.
“Then you’re not in a hurry. Passing through can mean a lot of things. It can mean one night. It can mean one week. It can mean one month.”
“Not really in any hurry,” she says.
“So just… hang out for a little bit. Let’s talk about this stuff. Take more time with it. You’re at least staying one night. You already have the room. So we’ll go, let you have time with the baby. Get settled. And we’ll come back tomorrow.”
They both look at me like I’m the one in charge here.
“OK,” she finally says. “I can stay a few days. Try to work this out.”
“Good,” Bric says. “Perfect. You happy?” he asks, looking at me.
No. No, I’m not happy at all. I’m fucking pissed off.
But Bric moves on and says, “You?” He looks at Rochelle. She nods. “Perfect. Then we’ll get going and one of us will call you in the morning.”
Bric turns towards the door and I follow, snatching my phone from his hand as he passes me. I don’t want to look back as I turn the corner towards the short hallway. But I do.
And it hurts. So bad.
God, I want them.