Fireball (Cheap Thrills #1)(18)

“Other hand, dick wad,” the sheriff snapped as we walked down the hallway. “Just told you she fucked her hand up.”

“Oops,” he murmured, giving me a small smile and twisting so that he was now walking backwards in front of me. This move gave him space to hold his left hand out to shake mine without us twisting our hands across our bodies.

Shaking it was awkward with the wrong hand, but I managed it. “That’s right. And we’re on my way to see my sister Jose, and my new little… wait, what did she have?”

I was the worst. I didn’t even know if she’d had a girl or boy because of my crushed hand. Granted that wasn’t my fault, but I probably should have texted Jose, or even asked the big bad sheriff.

“I’m not allowed to tell you,” he told me, stopping at a door and holding his hand out for me to walk in ahead of him. “She swore me to secrecy.”

I was distracted from answering him back as I walked in when I saw Jose lying on the bed with a tiny little bundle in her arms. For a second I was impressed by how pretty she looked, and not at all like the woman who’d almost broken my hand hours earlier as she squeezed a baby out of her vagina. But then the little bundle made a squeaky noise, and that was it for me.

“Gimme,” I ordered as I held my hands out, impatiently waiting for her to release arm custody of the baby to me.

All three of them burst out laughing, but I wasn’t kidding – I wanted that baby now. Still laughing, Jose carefully passed the baby over to me. A range of emotions assaulted me as I brought the human closer to my chest. Fear that I’d drop it and amazement at the fact that only this morning it’d been inside its mother’s stomach and now here it was in my arms. After doing a quick scan to make sure there were no birth remnants on it, I felt relief (give a girl a break, I didn’t want my sister’s vagina cooties on me), and love. So much love.

And then came a smidgeon of guilt. “Uh, I keep thinking of it as, well, it. I can’t keep doing that for the rest of its life.”

“I dunno, it worked for the Pennywise,” Ellis muttered, walking closer to me and peering down at the baby. “Looks like you,” he noted to Jose, who blushed and started fiddling with her sheet.

Sister, sister, I do declare you’re blushin’ at the dear Mr. Beauregard. Of course I said that inside my head and not out loud. And obviously it would have been a crime to not say it in a Scarlett O’Hara voice, and given the Sheriff’s proclivities when it came to having a handcuff and read you your rights trigger finger, no crimes of any form could be committed.

Giving the man in question a quick look, I noted that he was looking between his friend and Jose suspiciously.

“It’s a girl,” Jose said quietly, pulling my attention away and back on the important matter at hand. Well, the important matter in my hands, one of which was only slightly mangled, and apparently I had a niece. “Olivia Tabitha Harrison.”

It took a second for the name to register as I digested the fact that I had a niece, but when it did it took all of my self-control not to burst into tears. The only things stopping me were the two men with us and the worry that I’d drop her.

“You named her after me and Mom,” I croaked around the lump in my throat, stopping to clear it. “Olivia was Mom’s name, and I was named after her great grandmother.”

Looking up at the sister I wished I’d had in my life from the moment I was born, I felt the first tear make its way down my cheek. Lip trembling, she looked back at me and took a deep breath in.

“I didn’t have a lot of people at my back growing up. Mom made it difficult to get close to anyone, and when I did I was too embarrassed to bring them home.” This I knew was because her mom was a ho and usually had ‘friends’ round to party with, or she’d flirt with Jose’s boyfriends. “Meeting you and getting to know you has been the best part of my life, up until she was born,” she nodded at her daughter. “I wish I’d known you my whole life.”

More tears were falling now, and for the thousandth time since we met, I realized how similar we were inside, and how little our differences on the outside meant. “I was just thinking the same thing.”

Jose tilted her head back and looked up at the ceiling while she got control over her emotions. I was too afraid I’d drop Olivia if I did that, so instead I focused on the stain on her sheet until I realized it was from giving birth. Blurp! I didn’t do human goo of any kind, so this was the wrong thing for me to be looking at, but fighting puking was a great distraction from crying – who knew?

“I wanted to call her Tabitha, but I figured it would be weird yelling the name when there were two of you when she gets older. Y’all would never know which one I was screaming at. What if it was hot, so we had a barbeque and I wanted a beer, and my five-year-old went and got me one instead of you? That’s just wrong, so I called her Olivia after your mom because I know she’s watching down on us. I wanted another piece of her with us to match the piece of her you carry on your arm,” she nodded at the tattoo that Olivia’s head was now resting on.

A sob escaped as I took in her tiny head, with the beautifully intricate feather and its bright colors peeking out either side of it. I felt a hand on my shoulder and then I was pulled into the sheriff’s hard side as he placed his other hand under Olivia’s booty in case I lost control and she slipped. I wasn’t fluent in baby holding, so this could have been a possibility.