Cradling and bottle feeding baby Emma, I strolled through both floors of Kade’s brother’s house; partly for the exercise and partly because she seemed to like the movement.

It’d been a few days and I still wasn’t super comfortable here.

Originally, I wasn’t going to move into Kade’s place, but the shop and my tiny office was a terrible place to take care of an infant. I’d be racked with worry that she’d fall into one of the giant mixing containers somehow. They were all closed so that’d be impossible, but everyone knew that babies were part magic, so I couldn’t completely rule it out.

Besides, all of Emma’s baby supplies were here. I made Kade take us to his brother’s house before we went shopping to see what they already had. Turns out, they, like most good parents, were fully stocked to take care of their infant. Kade had absolutely no idea how babies worked, which was begrudgingly adorable, so I gave him a quick Baby One-On-One class just in case there was an emergency.

Nearly every room was covered in cardboard boxes. Maybe it was somehow due to his special forces training, but Kade was a machine when it came to packing and organizing. He had a very rigid system in place with basically three categories - trash, donations, and mementos for Emma which would go into a long-term storage.

Fortunately, most of the photos of Emma and her parents had been packed away in boxes for long-term storage early on. I think Kade needed to get rid of those as quickly as possible to make everything else easier. I saw a few of the happy family before they disappeared. They were hard to look at, especially while holding Emma, and knowing that she was going to grow up never knowing her birth parents first hand.

The whole thing was surreal. Thinking about it formed a pit in my stomach that left me with this cold, churning dread that was hard to explain. Even growing up I rarely ever saw Kade’s brother. He was several years older than us and hung out in different circles. In the last few years I bumped into Emma’s parents a few times at the store and post office, and we made polite small talk. We were friendly, but we weren’t friends or anything. I didn’t even know them well enough to grieve for them.

And now, even if it was only temporarily, I was taking care of their baby.

How horrible was that?

Ugh! I felt gross and needed a distraction, something to keep my mind busy. I browsed through the old pictures in Kade’s brother’s office on the second floor. It was the one room that had the most stuff from their childhood, which was probably why it was relatively untouched by Mr. Packing Machine. The only exception was a safe on the floor that Kade had been trying to get into, but wasn’t successful with yet.

I sat in the plush computer chair and soothed the stirring baby. It was so hard not to be enamored with Emma, even considering how much she hated me being anything less than exhausted all the time. Emma flopped onto her back and kicked her feet in the air like she was riding a bicycle only she could see.

I couldn’t help but chuckle at all her crazy adorable antics. She absolutely loved grabbing my finger. We played that game constantly. I think I loved it as much as she did. For a little ball of crying fat, Emma really was the most beautiful baby I’d ever seen. She had so much of her father in her, which also meant she looked a lot like Kade too.

I was fooling myself when I thought this was going to be an easy ten-thousand-dollars. The longer I spent with Emma, the more attached I was becoming. I’d been so busy helping my family stay afloat that I’d never given much thought to having a family of my own.

Last night was the hardest by far.

Kade and I watched a movie on the loveseat, which was the last remaining piece of furniture in the living room. He put on this terribly cheesy sci-fi movie that his brother had in his collection, and it wasn’t long until we were laughing and making fun of it like we used to as kids.

It’d been so long that I’d forgotten how good of friends we used to be. He wasn’t just handsome, he was also fun, goofy, and witty. After the stressful days we had gone through, both of us vegging out on the couch being silly was exactly what we needed.

Emma, swaddled warm and safe in a blanket on my lap, had finally fallen asleep, and I wasn’t far behind. I don’t remember drifting off, but when I woke up my head was resting in the nook between Kade’s broad, muscular shoulder and his strong chest. He’d put an arm around me to help me sleep.

We weren’t cuddling by any stretch, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t pretend to be asleep just to stay there a little longer. Having that innocent, intimate connection with another person, especially one I used to care about more than anyone, was a powerful thing.

The rational voice in the back of my mind screamed at me that this was a terrible idea, how getting attached was going to make everything so much worse, but I just couldn’t force myself to move.

My head swayed slightly with his deep inhalations. His warmth blissfully soaking into my bones as I listened to him breathing. The scent of his skin flooded my senses like thick caramel with old, familiar, and cherished memories.

Eventually, Emma stirred with a rapidly filling diaper, and my senses were suddenly filled with an unglamorous reality.

I groaned, waking up for real this time, and untangled myself from Kade. Kade shrugged, giving me the room I needed to stand up. He probably thought I was annoyed I had to change her diaper.

That wasn’t it at all.

I didn’t mind taking care of Emma, in fact I’d kind of grown to like it. Growing a business was rewarding in it’s own way, but caring for a helpless little person made me feel…needed. I don’t know. Whole maybe?

It was a strange feeling, one I was definitely not prepared for, but I really loved it.

I groaned when I got up because I knew that the fantasy world I’d been creating in my head these past couple of days, the one where Kade, Emma, and I were an actual family, was quickly coming to an end.

The longer the week stretched on, the more I really didn’t want it to end.

My mind switched back to the present as I rocked Emma, seeing her dopey grin made me smile wider than I had in such a long time.

“Would this be what it would’ve been like if Kade had stayed?” I asked, looking into Emma’s gorgeous deep brown eyes - the same color as Kade’s. “You have his family’s infuriating wise-beyond-their-years calmness that can instantly turn into passion. Yes, you do. Yes, you do. Granted, in your case, that passion is either food or a clean diaper.”

“To be fair, I think we both like our diapers clean,” Kade’s charcoal voice softly boomed from the hallway.

“Goddamnit!” I whisper squeaked, startled. It was weird how with Emma in my arms, that despite being surprised, I was still able to keep my voice down so I didn’t scare her. Kade, who was leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, was wearing the smuggest smile I’d ever seen. “What are you, part ninja?”

“Maybe.” Kade shrugged casually, enjoying my reaction. “You should’ve seen me in my Ninja Turtles footy-pajamas. I was a force to be reckoned with.”

“I bet ten-year-old you was pretty fearsome.” I glanced down and rocked Emma to calm her after my outburst, all the while trying to suppress the budding smile that came from imagining an adorable little Kade karate kicking his way across a living room.

“Ten-year-old-nothing.” Kade frowned, feigning being insulted. “I bought those pajamas last year.”

I cocked an eyebrow at him in skeptical disbelief.

“My unit threw a Halloween party.” Kade glanced away as his self-satisfied smirk flirted with actual bashfulness, but he quickly caught himself and smoothly recovered. “I was the not-so-teenage, mutant ninja SEAL.”

“Yeah?” I chuckled. My overactive imagination painted the picture of him in his costume perfectly. “Which ninja weapon did you have?”

“A M4A1 carbine rifle.” Kade winked at me, then glanced around the office and nudged himself off the doorframe. “I took the bullets out to make it fair.”

There was a moment of hesitation in his body language before he walked in. I could tell that underneath his devil-may-care demeanor he had some old scars that never healed properly. That’s probably why he hadn’t touched this room yet.

Despite still being mad at him for abandoning me, it was impossible to not have sympathy for Kade. He and his brother had a complicated relationship, but they were still family. I couldn’t imagine what that loss must feel like. It being the Christmas season didn’t help either.

“Hey. I know you haven’t had the chance to bring over any of your things so…” He said with a renewed joviality, reaching for something in his back pocket.

I didn’t like that he soldiered through the hard emotions, but I let it go. The urge to help him swelled in me but I had to remind myself that we were barely friends again, let alone anything more than that.

The harshness of that realization stung so much worse than it should’ve. We should’ve been so much more.

“What’s this?” I asked when he handed me a CD.

“It’s a...mix tape. I made for you about a million years ago, give or take.” He snorted and shook his head at the absurdity of the archaic gesture. “I was going through some boxes in the basement and found it.”

“Seriously?” I took the disk with a reverence you’d only see in an Indiana Jones movie, when he was grabbing an ancient artifact. I turned the case over and read out some of the hand-written song titles. “Oh my God. ‘Livin’ La Vida Loca’, ‘The Boy is Mine’, by Brandy and ‘Monica’, ‘Mambo Number Five’? Are you shitting me right now?”

“I burned it myself in senior year. It had all your late nineties early two-thousands favorites. So of course, you’ll probably hate it now.”

“Oh this is so happening. Tell me you have a CD player here somewhere.” My excited eyes flashed at Kade telling him that wasn’t a request.

He took a deep breath, then nodded. Reaching over my head, high up on a shelf he pulled down a small boombox. Why his brother even still had this was beyond me. Kade wiped the dust off the top, and plugged it in. There was delay, but eventually the power light switched on and the nostalgic crackle of between stations white noise billowed out of the old round speakers.

“Yay!” I quietly cheered as he put the disc in, and the Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air theme song started up.

“Now, this is a story all about how my life got flipped, turned upside down. And I'd like to take a minute, just sit right there, I'll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel-air,” we sang in unison. Neither of us had thought about this show in nearly a decade, but the lyrics were hardwired into our DNA. It was basically impossible for us not to sing along. Instantly, we were seventeen again.

It was crazy how easy it was to get lost in that feeling with him.

We listened -and occasionally even danced- to most of the CD when I realized my phone, which was set to vibrate so I wouldn’t disturb Emma, had been going off like crazy. Ten calls from a phone number that wasn’t in my contact list. Having no idea who was trying to reach me or why, I knew it couldn’t be good news.

After listening to half of the dozen angry messages from the delivery driver about being given the wrong address and how this fucked up his schedule for the rest of the night, I called him back.

This didn’t make any sense. I never would’ve made that mistake. My personal life was kind of a trainwreck, but I was always extremely thorough when it came to work. I handed Emma to Kade and stepped out into the hallway. Maybe it was because this was my work, or maybe it was because I was still trying to keep Kade at arms length, but I didn’t want him to hear me getting yelled at.

When the driver was on the phone I tried apologizing for the weird mix up and asked how he could’ve possibly got the wrong address, but I couldn’t get a word in. I was called every derogatory name I’d ever heard and even some I hadn’t heard before. The guy refused to move an inch without me being there in person to lead him to the shop. I had to step back into the office to hastily jot down the address of where the driver was. I told him I’d be there as soon as possible, before he hung up on me.

I had tough skin, but that level of irrational anger was hard to deal with. I was a little shaken.

“What’s going on? Who was that?” Kade’s expression darkened in a protective way that was almost endearing.

“No one. Nothing. It’s just...” I stammered. For as much as I tried to bottle up my emotions they must’ve been written all over my face. “I know it’s not part of our agreement, but I have to step out for a few hours. Would you mind watching Emma?”

“Who was that?” Kade snapped again, his eyes narrowing. I could tell that the budding anger simmering behind those dark brown eyes wasn’t aimed at me, but the hardened edge to his tone still startled me.

“I can handle this,” I said, after taking a deep breath. I didn’t need Kade over the last eight years, and I didn’t need him now. This was all part of being the boss, owner...and only employee of my own business. Sometimes, I just had to deal with uncomfortable situations. “It’s just a delivery driver with the last of the equipment I need for the shop. It’s not a big deal. He’ll probably be calmed down by the time I get there.”

“Fuck that. I‘m coming with you.” Kade stood up and adjusted Emma to carry her more comfortably.

“Kade, no.” I protested. Granted, it was a bit weak this time. If I was being honest, I liked the idea of having help with this, but I was just too proud to accept any. “This isn’t your problem.”

“For the smartest person I’ve ever met, you’re awfully stupid sometimes.” Kade shook his head in disbelief.

“Kade…” I frowned, but more at myself than at him.

“If you don’t let me come with you I’m just going to follow you.”

I didn’t have to like it, but he was right of course. Of all the people watching my back, I probably couldn’t do much better than a Navy SEAL. Besides, it wasn’t like I could possibly stop him anyways.

“Fine.” I hung my head defeated, before snapping my eyes at him. “But only on one condition. You follow my lead. I do all the talking. OK?”

My mind switched gears as I started figuring out all the baby gear we needed to bring. I had no idea how this was going to go down or how long it was going to take. I decided to plan for the worst and bring an overnight bag just in case.

“Yes, ma’am.” Kade gave me a quick salute as a smug smile crept across his face. “You’re the boss.”