“She is.” And I’m not lying. I’ve never been around babies, never held an interest in them. Why would I? But as I look at her, I can see the beauty.
Elicea looks up to me, then to Creed still sleeping in the chair. “He won’t leave. Maybe you can convince him?”
His arms are crossed over his chest, his face soft, very unlike him.
“When do you get out?”
She turns the baby around, so she’s lying on her legs as she starts to change her. “Tomorrow hopefully.”
“Congratulations,” I say, and I mean it.
Elicea looks to me and I’m taken back by how beautiful she is with no make-up, tired and green eyes staring back at me.
“I think you actually mean that, so I’m going to thank you.”
“I do.”
She smiles as she looks at her new baby. “Thank you, Falcon.” Elicea nods to the end of the bed and I sit on it, looking back to Creed as he starts to stir. His eyes find Elicea’s first then straight to me. I used to fuck with him by hitting on Elicea when he first met her, how could I not. He didn’t love. It was impossible to get an ‘I care for you’ out of him. Yet, here we are now, sitting in a hospital with a baby I never thought he would have.
“Falcon came to sit with me while you go home and get me some things and take a shower. Isn’t that nice of him?”
Both sets of eyes lock onto me. Elicea smiles and Creed’s forehead crinkles as he tries to work out if what she’s saying is true.
“Yeah, you go. You stink.”
He stands, walks around to the other side of the bed and leans down and kisses Elicea hard on her lips, his hand on her face not letting her go. She smiles at him when he pulls away, with a faraway look on her face.
“Go. We won’t be going anywhere.” Elicea pushes him away and he looks back to me, unsure.
“I won’t move.”
He nods his head then grabs a bag that was next to him on the floor and rushes out.
“Guarantee he’ll only be gone an hour,” El says with a laugh, looking back to her baby.
“I say forty minutes.”
El smiles and lifts her daughter up. “Want to hold her?”
I shake my head. Never have I held a baby and I don’t intend to start anytime soon.
“She won’t break.” She holds her up. “I promise. If Creed can hold her, I have faith in you, Falcon. You’re a man of many wonders.” She winks at me.
I stand and walk to her side of the bed while she lifts the baby up. “Her name is Annabelle,” she says as she places her in my arms. I don’t know how to hold her, so El starts to move my hands into the correct positions until I have hold of the baby properly, then slowly lets go. “Isn’t she beautiful?”
“She is,” I agree, barely above a whisper.
Who would have thought that Creed would be the first of us to have a family? If any of us would have guessed it would have been Echo, not Creed.
“She has his eyes,” I say. “I know those eyes, I grew up with those eyes.”
“You’re the only one that’s noticed.”
I sit with her in my arms and she closes her little eyes and goes back to sleep.
We sit in silence for a long while as I stare at Annabelle, and when I look back up El is asleep. My heartrate picks up because I don’t want to wake her, but I also don’t want to be left with a baby. Just as I try to work out what to do, the door opens and Creed walks in. His eyes slam into me before they fall to El asleep on the bed. I don’t know what to do because I don’t want to walk with her in my arms, I don’t trust myself, so I stay exactly where I am waiting for him to take her.
“Ariel’s back, I heard?” he asks, walking over to me. He’s clean-shaven and he smells like Creed, not a bum who hasn’t moved from the hospital for days.
“She is.”
Creed’s eyes fall to Annabelle in my arms then back to me. “What are you going to do about it?”
“What do you mean?”
He’s close enough that he could take his daughter from my arms but he doesn’t.
“You have a plan, right? Or do you plan to just try and sleep with her?”
“I was going with fucking her.”
He shakes his head and takes Annabelle from my arms, and it looks so natural to see him holding her, like he was born to do it. But Creed wasn’t born for that, he has a dark side to him. It’s what made me like him in the first place. He wasn’t like the other kids at school, he was quiet and reserved, but he paid close attention to detail.