“Long story. Come on, I’m dying here. It’s not...pleasant,” Jaeger said.
“Tell us what we want to know and I’ll guide you through it,” Linc drawled.
Bastard! “It’s Piper Mills’s kid and she’s downstairs asleep. The kid has had an ear infection and she’s had no rest two nights running. I heard the kid and came up here and was rewarded with this mess in its pants.”
“You could just wake her up,” Beck suggested.
He’d covered that ground several times. “Are you going to help me or not?”
“Only if you agree to watch Shaw this week so Beck and I can go watch the Knicks kick ass.”
Jaeger glared at his phone. He also had a ticket to that game, the asshat.
“I don’t babysit, Linc. You know that,” Jaeger said, his hand on Ty’s thigh. Ty was looking past him to the ceiling. Jaeger glanced up, too, and noticed the glow-in-the-dark stickers of cartoon characters on the ceiling. Pretty cool, Piper.
“You’re changing a diaper on a baby belonging to a woman you barely know, but you won’t babysit your own nephew?” Linc asked.
Crap! But he was changing a freakin’ diaper, so he’d might as well go all-in and babysit too. Essentially, Linc had him between a rock and a dirty diaper, so he reluctantly agreed. Linc walked him through the process. Because Piper was organized, he found everything he needed quickly. Within five minutes, Ty was clean, creamed and powdered. After listening to his brothers’ sarcastic congratulations, he disconnected the call.
He’d survived.
Jaeger felt like he needed a strong drink. To normal people, changing a diaper was an oft-repeated action. To Jaeger it felt like he’d negotiated a mental Mount Everest. He’d been hiding from kids, from babies, scared to deal with the memories of Jess he thought would drop him to his knees.
He hadn’t realized how much pain he’d buried until, four years ago, he’d seen Linc rock a tiny Shaw to sleep, unaware that Jaeger was standing in the doorway. When Linc rested his lips against his son’s head, Jaeger felt the burn of hot, unwelcome and acidic tears on his skin.
He’d had this; he’d lost this. And he’d known that although he loved Linc, he couldn’t watch Linc raise Shaw. It would hurt too damn much.
He’d had to leave, to run. Before dawn he was on a plane to Colombia, trying to outpace his past.
He now accepted that, while he could face down warlords and hardened criminals, he’d lacked the courage to push past his own loss and be there for his brother in raising Shaw. It was one of his deepest regrets. He loved his sibs and enjoyed spending time with them. Someday there would be more Ballantyne children, and he wouldn’t make the same mistake with Beckett and Sage. He wouldn’t distance himself from his family to avoid their babies. Or hide from his past.
Ty was a good way to become reacquainted with the smaller species. With Ty, he could take it as fast or as slow as he liked.
Best of all, when he felt overwhelmed, he could hand the baby back to Piper and walk away. Jaeger placed his hands on either side of Ty’s body and looked down into his happy face. The little guy was seriously cute.
“That was a hell of a way to get to know you, dude,” he murmured. Ty gave him a gummy smile, and Jaeger couldn’t help smiling in return. “You don’t have much of your pretty mom in you, Ty. Now, Jess, she looked just like her mom. Same pointed chin, triangular face, black hair. Deep brown eyes. Pretty, you know.”
He was talking to a baby about his baby, Jaeger thought. Talking about Jess wasn’t something he did. But he figured he was safe since Ty wasn’t going to blab. “She had a birthmark on the inside of her thigh.” Jaeger pressed a spot on Ty’s pudgy thigh and the kid laughed. “Just here, and it was shaped like a butterfly.”
Jaeger squeezed Ty’s thigh and he laughed again. Ah, so he was ticklish. Jaeger allowed his fingers to dance his way up the sides of Ty’s ribs, and Ty’s belly laugh rumbled over his skin. “Would she have laughed like this? Would she be ticklish?”
Ty shoved his hand into his mouth and stared at Jaeger with his owl-like eyes.
“She would be a teenager now. Probably wearing a bra and talking about boys. God!”