Page 69 of A Major Puck Up

“Yeah, too ducking soon.”

Aiden reappears, grinning far too wide for my liking. “Aw, he’s a dad now. Ducking. That’s too ducking great. Can I record you saying it and send it to Beckett?”

I glare at him. “You, get out of my sight. You”—I point at Brooks—“follow me down and help me figure this thing out.”

Brooks grabs the seat with one hand and tosses the diaper bag over his shoulder, and I head toward the elevator, clutching my daughter a little tighter.

My daughter. How the duck did this happen?

In the end, Brooks and I didn’t have a clue how to buckle the car seat in, so we wrapped the seat belt around it as many times as it would go while the Uber driver stared at us. Then I looped an arm through the handle and held on with all my strength, all while trying not to freak the fuck out over my reality.

I have a driver that probably could have helped with all this, but the thought didn’t cross my mind until after the fact because my brain isn’t working on all cylinders. I have a fucking child.

How do I have a fucking child?

By the time I reach Beckett’s house, my thoughts are spinning on overdrive and I’m running through a list of things she’ll need. In order to get into the best colleges, she probably needs to be put in a good day care. I know from Beckett’s musings that the lists for those are years long. I’ll get him to add Vivi to the lists he put the twins on. What’s one more kid? He can tell them they have triplets but he must have messed up the paperwork.

Yes, that should work.

When the Uber stops outside Beckett’s brownstone, I unbuckle the seat belt and sigh, feeling a modicum better now that I have a preschool plan.

Halfway up the steps, though, Vivi turns bright red in her seat, and when she lets out the loudest screech, all the dread returns. I don’t have the first fucking clue what caused the issue or how to fix it, and this time, I don’t have Sara to help.

I put the seat down on the steps and pick her up. “Holy duck, kid. You’ve got some pipes on you.” Holding her close again, I rub her back and bounce. She seemed to like that before.

There are a lot of things I’ve learned from my brother, but honestly, I’ve never been so happy that he’s done this before me. He’ll help me figure it out. We’ve got this.

I ring the doorbell, and a second later, Vivi isn’t the only one screaming. “That would be your cousins,” I tell her, doubling down on my bouncing. “Apparently, you have a lot in common.”

She doesn’t laugh at my one-liner like people normally do, and that only fills me with another wave of panic. What if she doesn’t think I’m funny? What if?—

“What part of don’t ring the doorbell do you not understand?” my brother says as he swings open the door. He’s bouncing a screaming baby just like I am.

When he and Liv were first married and she lived with her mom friends, Beckett called the twins in the house the Shining Twins. Then he went and had a set himself. And they do a lot of crying. I’d give him shit about it, but seeing as how we both have a screaming kid in our arms, I’m not gonna lead with that.

“Shh, it’s okay, Maggie Mae. Your idiot uncle is going to take all the other kids for the night, and we’ll have a quiet house so you can sleep.” Jaw locked tight, he looks up from his daughter, glare already in place. When he spots the screaming child in my arms, his eyes go wide and he takes a step back. “No. Nope. Not going to happen. No more babies. Liv!” he shouts over his shoulder. “What did you do? No. We have enough kids here. Liv!”

My brother is full-on ready to go into a crying fit over what he apparently believes to be another child that Liv what, preordered? I’d laugh if it wasn’t actually my kid.

“Not your kid. Calm down.” I push past him. Finn is standing just outside the entryway, decked out in denim and watching us, so I wave a hand at the open door. “Can you grab Vivi’s car seat for me, bud?”

While he darts outside, I walk in circles around the foyer, bouncing as I go, silently begging Vivi to stop screaming. “It’s okay, Vivi girl. We got this. We just need Liv to tell us what to do.”

“Why are you holding a baby?” Beckett, the lucky bastard, has silenced his baby, and now he’s guiding Finn back into the house by his shoulder.

“How’d you do that?” I ask, jutting my chin at his now silent daughter.

“Whose baby is that?”

“Answer me first,” I demand over Vivi’s cries.

“You have to take that thing off her head,” Liv says as she appears in the foyer with the other twin in her arms.This twin is the quieter one, I think.

“What thing?”

Liv pushes June into Beckett’s other arm, and he balances both of his girls easily while scrutinizing me.

“Here,” she says, tilting Vivi back and pulling at a strap under her chin I haven’t noticed. When Liv releases it and pulls the hat from her head, I can see the deep indentation beneath her chin.

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