Page 25 of Coast

I didn’t need to freak out.

With that in mind, I pulled close to the front door, leaving the car running with Lainey in the back as I did my first trip up. Then the next. On and on until everything was piled on the front stoop.

Stepping back, I snapped the delivery photo and completed the order.

But before I could even turn around to walk away, the door was flying open.

And there he was.

Of all people.

Coast.

“Zoe?”

CHAPTER SIX

Coast

If I heard one more time that I was acting off, I was gonna haul off and punch someone.

Everyone needed a break from partying every now and again. Or, at least, that was what I was telling myself. Because anything else would make even less sense.

How could I possibly explain to them that I couldn’t fucking get a set of blue eyes out of my mind? Or a set of gray ones for that matter?

Hell, I don’t even know what time I’d made it back to the clubhouse that night after dragging the girls down the alley and feeling up Zoe to keep her from the two idiots chasing her down.

I’d done some unhinged and morally questionable things in my day. But who the fuck chased a woman with a baby?

Even if she did see something.

You clean your mess up and get the fuck gone. Scared people made terrible witnesses. The chances of getting caught were slim.

Just amateur shit, what they did.

Both the mama and the baby kind of took it like a champ, though. All things considered. Most babies would be testing outtheir lungs after a run like that. And Zoe? Well, she played along real good with my impromptu ‘fucking against a wall’ plan. Moaning and writhing and shit.

Believable as fuck.

So believable that I’d needed to talk my body down from going full-on hard right then and there.

Sure, Zo had kind of lost her shit there for a minute. But that was just the adrenaline. And Lainey seemed none the worse as I picked her up and rocked her, told her stories and shit.

I’d read once that you weren’t supposed to baby-talk a baby, that it was better for their development to talk to ‘em like the human beings they were.

It was a habit my club brothers always found weird when someone brought their baby by. But, hey, you can’t fucking argue about science. Facts were facts.

And I’ll be damned if Zoe’s baby didn’t watch me with those big gray eyes like she knew exactly what I was saying. Even letting out those damn little owl hoots on occasion, like she was telling me to go on.

It was the most hands-on I’d been with a baby in a long fucking time.

That shit was by design.

I’d sworn off kids a long-ass time ago.

And while I might pick up a dropped sippy cup or roll a toy truck across the couch when one of the club kids wanted that, I didn’t volunteer to babysit like some of the guys—especially Eddie—did.

So it was kind of surprising how easy that shit came back to me. How familiar it still was.

---