Page 79 of Doctor Daddy

I pointed at my eye. “Peyton DeBoise has a mean right hook.”

“What the fuck is Peyton beating you down for? Did you make a pass at his wife?”

“Worse, his daughter.”

“Oh shit, what did you do?”

“Remember that secret woman I was seeing?”

“Yeah, your imaginary girlfriend.”

“Not imaginary. Brooke DeBoise, Peyton’s daughter. However, we were keeping what was going on between us on the down-low because we knew that Peyton wasn’t going to take it well.”

“I don’t think I’d take it very well if one of my friends was dating one of my girls. I mean, she’s only twenty-two, twenty-three tops. No wonder he decked you.”

“Yeah, she’s twenty-four, and um, I get it. I’ve got two baby girls now. I totally understand.”

“Two? I thought you said—”

“Twins,” I cut him off. “She had twins yesterday.”

David opened his mouth and chuckled. “So, Peyton tracked you down and decked you?”

I shook my head. “I walked into his living room and broke the news.”

“That took some balls. I thought the two of you broke it off. That’s why you’ve been such a dickhead lately. Now everything is all better, despite daddy hating you?”

“Well, yeah. We had broken up, and she ran away. I didn’t even know she was pregnant. I have been a complete dick head. Look, I wanted to let you know, Peyton and I are on the outs. But, on the upside you’re an uncle, and I’m getting married.”

“Married?”

“Yeah. I love her. We have kids, of course, I’m going to marry her.”

“You haven’t asked her yet, have you?”

“That’s a matter of details right now.”

“Important details, Mark. You better have a ring in your pocket the next time you see her. Don’t fuck this up, or you’ll never see those babies again.”

36

BROOKE

Iwas not quite asleep when I thought I heard my mom.

“Brooke?”

I opened my eyes. It took a minute to become awake enough to fathom what I saw. My parents were hovering over my hospital bed with worried expressions on their faces.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

I was groggy from having been woken. I was annoyed, I wanted to sleep. I wasn’t getting any rest. The nurse had insisted that they take the babies into the nursery so that I could rest.

“You won’t be any good to anyone if you can’t figure out how to sleep,” she had scolded me right before wheeling the babies out of my room.

“How am I supposed to sleep? As soon as I get one of them fed and asleep, the other one is fussy and needs her diaper changed,” I knew I was being a whiny patient.

I was so tired and stressed. Mark hadn’t returned when I had expected him to. I had been up all night worrying about him and watching the babies. And now I couldn’t sleep, not with my parents staring at me like I was a goldfish in a bowl.

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