Play For Me by Tam DeRudder Jackson

Author:Tam DeRudder Jackson [Jackson, Tam DeRudder]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tam DeRudder Jackson
Published: 2021-05-05T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Jack

Holy shit. I was a father. My girl had given birth to an Angel. And I was her dad. The whole situation probably should have terrified me. Truthfully, it did a little. But this was Clio, the only woman I’d ever loved. And this was Angel—my beautiful daughter with my eyes and her mom’s face. We had so much shit to work out, but one thing was sure—our baby meant we were always going to be in each other’s lives.

Angel was my daughter. I had a daughter, a precious little girl to love and take care of. The idea of Clio leaving my daughter in a daycare didn’t sit well. Not even a little bit. Even if she could ignore it, I couldn’t ignore who her parents were, who I was now. Being related to well-known people, celebrities, would make Angel an enticing target for some enterprising lowlife when Clio had to leave her in the care of others. The idea drove me crazy already, and I’d only known about her for a minute.

“Talk to me about this daycare.”

“It’s on campus. It’s a drop-in service for nontraditional students. Early childhood development majors run it. It serves as a kind of field station for experiments in early childhood education,” she said like it was no big deal.

“Sorry I can’t share your enthusiasm for other people experimenting on my kid.”

Clio slanted me a look. “It’s a great facility with a top-notch reputation. The work they do there is cutting-edge. People outside the university are on a waiting list to put their kids in the center whenever there’s an opening,” she said, her tone defensive. “I toured it as part of my nursing program before I became pregnant, and the place impressed the hell out of me.”

I put up my hands to slow her roll. “I wasn’t criticizing your judgment. I only want Angel to be safe.”

Those clear gray eyes stared at me for a long time before she said softly, “Me too.”

“She better? May I hold her again?”

She handed our baby back to me. Our baby. Wow. As I stared into the mirror of my eyes, I couldn’t believe it. Yet it felt exactly right. Angel was so tiny, but I could feel strength in her. She also liked my voice. I could tell by the way she tracked me when I spoke. I stroked the pad of my finger over her features. Like her mom, she had the softest skin. Like her mom, she also smelled so damn good. In another life, like yesterday, sitting on the couch in Clio’s shoebox of an apartment and holding a baby would have sounded about as appealing as watching grass grow. Normally, I needed to keep moving, maintain a rhythm.

Today, holding my daughter, I discovered I wanted to do nothing more than to live in the stillness. Sit quietly and look at her. She was the most incredible person on the planet, and I’d helped to make her. I found myself checking out of the conversation because I was too busy staring at Angel.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.