Page 5 of Providence

Except it seemed like he was staring directly into my soul.

Cain returned, and held his hands out for the baby. I shifted him over as gently as my big fucking hands could. I felt huge and rough. I was a sledgehammer and he was so damn breakable. I expected him to cry or something, but he just shifted his gaze to Cain, his brow creasing. I could hear Cain let out a breath.

“You have your mama’s eyes, little guy,” he murmured softly to the baby, and it seemed to like that, because it slipped an arm from my shirt that was swaddling his body. He reached out and Cain placed his finger next to the baby’s palm. His tiny hand gripped Cain’s finger like he was a lifeline, his tiny brow creased. “Come on, let’s put you in something other than G’s dirty ole shirt.”

Logistically, that was easier said than done. We finally wrangled him into a diaper, which looked huge on his tiny body. We slipped his feet into the little baby onesie, then we stalled.

“What if we hurt his wings?” I whispered, because I didn’t want Serendipity to know we were fucking this up already, if she could hear us in her unconsciousness.

The baby seemed concerned, but he wasn’t crying.

“You’re doing it wrong,” someone said from near the door, and I had my gun up and pointing at the voice in an instant. I lowered it immediately when I realized it was one of Marco’s kids. Shit, I was going to have to be more careful, or talk to Marco about letting his damn kids wander around the Clubhouse.

Cain looked at the boy. Sammie. His name was Sammie. “Whatcha doing here, kid? You’re supposed to be asleep.”

He shrugged, walking toward us hesitantly. “Marco is pacing and I can’t sleep. I heard her sc-screams,” he stumbled over the words, but I was impressed. The kid was tough. “I know something is wrong, even though Marco won’t talk about it in front of Cara. I wanted to see. I snuck out.”

Cain sighed heavily, and nodded toward Serendipity. “She’s okay, Sammie. She needs to sleep it off though. It was hard for her. She’ll wake up when she’s ready.”

The kid nods solemnly, walking over to look down at the woman who seemed to inspire that soft look in men of all ages. He stroked her hair off her forehead, so like his guardian earlier.

“She’s tough. She’ll be okay,” Sammie said, and I wasn’t sure if he was trying to reassure us, or himself. He straightened his tiny shoulders and walked over to where we were kneeling. He knelt down beside us, and the baby’s eyes shot to him immediately. There was a soft look on Sammie’s face. “He’s so small.” He reached out and stroked the baby’s head. Then he noticed why we were holding him so damn weird. His dark eyes went huge in his face. “He has wings!” he squeaked out, and Cain grimaced.

“Yeah, seems that way,” I murmured.

Sammie bit his lip, his eyes drawing down. “Okay. You are meant to start with the arms and then do the legs, because the legs are the bendy bits, you know?”

Uh, no. I didn’t know. Sammie slipped the onesie from his leg, tightening the tab on the baby’s diaper and giving us a very judgmental look. Fucking kid had balls.

“Normally you lay it out and put their arms in, but that won’t work, cause you gotta get his wings in.” Then he grinned. “I got it. You lie down,” he pointed at me, “And then put the baby on your chest. Like you are chest bumping the baby,” he explained slowly like I was a simpleton. “Then we can slip it all over the back and he’ll be comfy.”

As much as I disliked being bossed around by a seven year old, I did what he suggested because it was a good idea. I leaned back against the wall a little more, and placed the baby gently between my pecs. The kid was way gentler than we were with our huge fumbling hands. He slipped one arm in the white onesie, and I held my breath when he got to the baby’s wings, but the little guy didn’t so much as bat an eyelid. Thank fuck.

“So freaking cool. Cara is going to go bananas,” he whispered, as he gently slipped one wing in, then pulled the slit across to slip the other one in too. He did the final arm. “Now lay him back down so you can do his legs.”

“Do you think it will hurt his wings?” I asked, and when the kid gave me a dumbstruck look, I wanted to slap my damn forehead. Why was I asking a fucking kid?

Either way, he shrugged. “Babies let you know if they don’t like something. Usually super loudly.”

I rested the baby on his back, Cain hovering over us both like a fucking mother hen. Sammie slipped the baby’s feet in the onesie and pressed the snaps with such skill, it was like he lived in a trailer park and had already popped out six kids.

“How are you so good at this? Were you a nursemaid in a past life?” Cain grumbled.

Sammie giggled at that, finally getting to the last two press snaps. “No. Mom didn’t want to do this stuff for Cara, so I did. Dad refused to get a nanny for her either, because she wasn’t his.”

I stared at this weird, grown up child. “You had to be what, two?”

He shrugged. “Three and a bit. I only had to see Mama do it a couple of times though. Then she didn’t want to do it anymore, and Cara screamed all the time, so I just did it.”

I wanted to track down this kid's parents and put them in a hole so deep that not even the worms would eat their rotten corpses.

Sammie leaned down, his nose almost touching the baby’s. “I think we’ll be brothers. Marco is gonna marry Serendipity, and you’ll love Cara. She is gonna love you. What do you think about that?” he asked the baby in a soft voice.

I’ll be damned if the baby didn’t squeak back like he was trying to talk. Sammie grinned so wide that I thought his face would crack. It could have been a coincidence, babies made weird noises all the time. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t even so much as let out a peep when he was dragged from the womb. Or when I held him after he was born.

I looked over the heads of the two children to Cain, who had both eyebrows raised. I wondered if he was drawing the same conclusions as me.

This baby wasn’t an ordinary baby. And it wasn’t just the wings.

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