Beautifully Knight (Jordan Knight Fanfic, Liadan #5)

Brothers and Balloons

-LOGAN-

The intermittent whine of beeping machines, quiet pitter-patter of falling rain, and hushed whisper of Hailey's snores mingled in my ears as I reached sensory overload.

My brain was running at a million miles an hour, my heart raced in my chest, my eyes burned from scrolling through my phone to read every terrifying article on electrolytes and pregnancy that I could find, and my body tensed every time Hailey shifted in my arms.

I was exhausted and yet, I couldn't bring myself to relax for even a second. I was too busy trying to wrap my head around the fact that I was going to have a kid—my own kid.

I was used to looking after other people's kids. It just came with the territory of volunteering with sports organizations for as long as I could remember and my siblings starting families at a young age. I was good at playing with kids and having fun as Coach Knight and Uncle Cool, but this was different. There was no competition over who was the better coach like Simon and I had with Zeke and Oliver or who was the coolest uncle like the jovial debate I'd had with Simon between me and DJ—I was it. I was about to be a dad—the dad—the only one my kid had and I didn't know how to process that. Even at twenty-seven, my dad was still my role model. When I didn't know what to do, I looked to him as an example of how to be a man and the thought of being that person for someone else was both exhilarating and terrifying.

Suddenly, all my recent daydreams about having a mini-Hailey were coming to life and I couldn't help wondering if those thoughts had been some kind of premonition. Had my subconscious been trying to tell me something? Was that the "knowing" I'd told Simon that my brother and brothers-in-law all swore they had? But it couldn't be. I couldn't have "known" this was coming.

Hailey and I were always careful.

Well, I was almost always careful.

There'd been a moment or two over the past few weeks when my emotions had gotten the best of me and I hadn't been as careful as I could've been. Blame it on Hailey's obsession with playing old school romance songs in our apartment 24/7. Or her habit of pounding out a paper at the dead last minute in her underwear. Or the way she mixed up cocktails that got you drunk without you knowing it. But any other red-blooded male in my position would've been just as hard-pressed not to end up tangled with her on the couch or kitchen counter or against the wall.

After all, she was always careful. She took the pill every day and put a little heart on our bathroom calendar to keep track. I'd thought that was more than enough to keep us safe, but obviously somewhere along the way, there'd been a mix-up.

Although at the time, I'd been talking about Simon, my dad's comments about babies never being an accident rang true for me. Hailey was beautiful and irresistible and I had no regrets for my lapses in judgment. I just hoped she felt the same.

Our lives were chaotic, to say the least.

She was focused on finishing her internship at my mom's firm, working at Beantown Tavern, preparing for her final year of law school, doing advocacy work, and trying to keep her personal life out of earshot of her family. And I was a self-admitted workaholic—although I'd slowed things down enough to make special time for her, my business was still growing fast. I'd recently won the contract to begin building the urban park that she'd suggested I add flowers to, I was finishing up a high school rec center, designing a backyard baseball diamond for a former Red Sox player, and my crew had just broken ground on a workout facility at a rural hospital a couple of dozen miles beyond Uncle Jon and Nate's neck of the woods.

We were busy people with long-term obligations and plans—big plans that hadn't accounted for adding a baby to our lives anytime soon.

Before we'd officially moved in together, Hailey had asked me if a wife and babies were in my five-year-plan and I'd told her that I didn't plan on getting either any time soon. And at the time, I hadn't. But then I started coming home to her every night and waking up next to her every morning and things got a little murky in my head.