Page 8 of The Doctor

BEX

I was just pulling into the visitor’s parking when my phone rang. I was on the list of people allowed in the building because of my Salinger Security credentials, so the guard didn’t have to call upstairs. Seeing Logan’s name flash across my screen made me smile. I pressed the answer button on my steering wheel as I picked a spot as close to the entrance as I could.

“Missing me already?”

I heard his chuckle but it was the pause that followed that had me concerned. “Bex, we have a bit of a situation.”

Unlike me and my siblings, Logan was not prone to melodrama. I switched off the car and pulled the phone to my ear. “What’s going on?”

I heard a baby’s whimper in the background and pulled the phone away and checked we were still connected, frowning as I held the phone back to my ear.

“How far are you?”

“I’m here. I just parked.” She slid out of the car and closed the door.

“I’ll tell you when you get up here.”

The original plan was to calmly make my way upstairs. As much as I wanted Logan, there was no need to let him know that.The urgency and concern in his tone changed things though. I left my bag on the backseat and slipped the phone into my pocket.

It didn’t take more than a few minutes and an uneventful elevator ride to find myself knocking on Logan’s door.

The sight that met me as Logan opened the door had my breath hitching and I couldn’t help the gasp that passed my lips. He held a hiccupping toddler? An image of all the baggage between us hung like a neon light over his head. Did Logan have another kid? Was it a patient? That was probably the case. I’d overheard him complaining about how his fellow tenants knocked at odd hours instead of going to the ER.

“Something you want to tell me, Lo?”

“Lots, come in.”

I stepped inside and saw a teenager holding a baby. “Bex, this is Dominic Bayers. He is holding his sister, and I’m holding his brother.”

“Dominic Bayers? As in…?” My brain stalled at the overload of information. Nothing about this situation was right.

I stared at Logan as he placed the little boy on the black faux marble kitchen counter and picked up his medical bag. “Yep.”

Something was wrong. My baby boy had gone to a childless couple. As far as I knew, the couple couldn’t have children of their own. “Okay, someone needs to make all the dots connect, explain to me what is going on. Slowly, like I’m stupid.”

The kid hitched the baby in his arms. His cheeks were hollow, but it was the emptiness in his eyes that worried me. “Two weeks ago, my mother and stepfather were murdered in front of me. Well, not actually in front of me since I didn’t see who did it. I was hiding upstairs.”

I glanced over at Logan and swallowed hard. There was a big chunk of the story I missed since I knew nothing about a stepfather and siblings but my heart ached for the boy in front ofme. “I am so sorry you lost her and that you had to see that.” I squared my shoulders and motioned for him to sit next to me on the dark gray sectional couch, while Logan checked the little boy. I loved watching him do the doctor thing, but I had bigger things to deal with.

Dominic came to Logan, so he had obviously accessed the adoption records somehow. I didn’t think he was looking for replacement parents but he’d come to the right place. I could be exactly what he needed under the circumstances. “You want to tell me what happened?”

Dominic sat next to me, moving the baby to lie on his chest with her head on his shoulder, in much the same way I’d seen my brothers hold their kids. “It happened two weeks ago.”

“Okay.” I nodded. He seemed to be struggling with what to say so I prompted him. “Start at the beginning. Even if it seems insignificant.”

“My stepdad had scolded me and rushed me to do my homework. He’d been moody all afternoon. Then when Landon and Victoria had gone to bed, he urged me to do the same.”

The kid swallowed and Logan brought the toddler back with a lollipop in his fist. He placed the little boy between Dominic and me. Logan held his arms out for the little girl, but Dominic tightened his arms on her.

“Just let me check her over, and make sure her cries are just hunger or missing your mother. Was your mother still breastfeeding?”

Dominic shook his head. “She struggled and the doctors said it might have something to do with her having a kid so late. She had no trouble with Landy.”

He handed the baby over to Logan but his gaze remained on little Victoria.

I needed to get all the information while everyone in the room still had their emotions under control. “You were tellingme your stepfather was agitated when he chased you to bed. Then what happened?”

Dominic frowned and, in that moment, he looked so much like Logan, I stifled a smile. “I didn’t go to sleep. Ever since my stepdad moved in, he thought he could boss me around like he was my father, but I’m not a kid. I know how to manage my time. Instead, I stayed up and read.”

---