Living with the Single Dad

Single Dad of Seattle, Aaron Steele isn't a single dad at all. He's a retired Navy SEAL whose sister just died, leaving him to raise her newborn daughter all by himself. Only he has no clue how to be a dad--let alone a single dad. He's lost in a sea of diapers and bottles, late nights and exhausting mornings, all the while dealing with a failure from his last mission he just can't shake. He needs help. He needs a nanny.

His feet were made of fucking concrete.

His heart the same.

People visiting babies in the NICU shouldn’t have to pay
for fucking parking. They shouldn’t have to pay for squat. A human that weighed
less than a fucking house cat was fighting for her life in a plastic box,
hooked up to only God knows how many electrodes and monitors, and they were
charging him to go and see her. They would also charge him to keep her there,
to keep her alive.

And if he couldn’t pay?

Would they pull the plug on a one-month-old?

This country was so fucked up.

Pay to live. Pay to be kept alive.

Hippocratic oath, his fucking left nut.

You were only worth saving if you could afford it.

Thank Christ he could pay.

Dina made good money as a lawyer. She’d made sure Sophie
would want for nothing.

Except her mother.

She’d want her mother.

She’d need her mother.

Fuck.

Aaron needed his sister.

Grief ensnared him, digging its razor-sharp claws into
every cell of his body and shaking him like a rag doll. He pounded his fists on
the steering wheel, hollering at the top of his lungs until tears rolled down his
cheeks and his throat was raw.

How?

How could this have happened?

He’d spoken to Dina on the phone not two days ago. He was
on his way back from a wedding in the South Pacific and couldn’t wait to go see
Sophie. Dina said that they were getting ready to take her off the ventilators
and that if her glucose stayed steady and she could breathe on her own, then
they might be able to bring her home soon.

Home.

To Dina’s condo.

To the nursery his sister had spent hours decorating.
Where the crib he’d built for his niece sat waiting for her to sleep in.

The home his sister had created for a child she’d longed
for her entire life, and then finally decided to go it alone when she knew her clock
was ticking and she hadn’t found the right man yet.

They were going to raise Sophie together.

She would be the mother, the world’s best mother, and he
would the cool uncle who spoiled his niece rotten. He would be the one to buy her
her first tutu, her first horseback riding lessons, her first phone, her first
car. He’d also be the tattooed muscle at the front door to intimidate the shit
out of any boy that tried to mess with his precious Sophie.

From the first moment he laid eyes on her after Dina had her,
he’d fallen in love and had vowed to protect her with everything that he was,
everything that he had. He would gladly lay down his life for his niece.

He’d also said all that when he knew Dina would be doing
the majority of the child-raising. When he knew she’d be doing all the hard
stuff, like diapers and discipline.

But now, he was all Sophie had.

He was her everything. Mother, father. Uncle, aunt.

There was no cool
uncle status anymore. Just the overwhelming responsibility of being everything
she needed.

Sophie wouldn’t be running to him when her mother brought
down the hammer, pissed her off and she needed somebody to talk to. Now he was
going to have to be the one to bring down the hammer. Who would she run to?

Two days.

Two days ago, his sister had been alive. She’d been
happy, madly in love with her daughter and both excited and scared to embark on
her new role as a mom.

“Give her a kiss for me,” Aaron had said as he stood in
line with his boarding pass in his hand. He’d been out of town for ten days at his
buddy Rob’s wedding in French Polynesia and was just heading back to the States.
“I can’t wait to see how much she’s grown and changed.”

“She’s doing so well. Gained nearly a pound and half, her
jaundice is gone, and she’s starting to nurse a bit. Which is amazing, because
I fucking hate pumping, and my boobs are constantly sore. I look like a porn
star.”

“Not an image I want to conjure up about my sister,
thanks.”

Dina chuckled into the phone. Aaron had always loved his
sister’s laugh. It was so big and loud and full. You knew she put her whole
soul into her laugh. “Whatever. One day you’ll have a wife or whatever, and
she’ll be complaining of the same shit.”

Aaron made a noise in his throat that said he wasn’t sure
he agreed. He couldn’t see himself settling down anytime soon—if ever. “We’ll
see.” He approached the desk before the jet bridge and handed the attendant his
boarding pass and passport. “But listen, sis, I’m about to board. I can’t wait
to see the little monkey … and Sophie too.”

“Ha. Ha.” He could practically see her eye roll from
across the globe.

Then they’d said they loved each other, like they always
did before they said goodbye on the phone, and they hung up. And that was the last
time he spoke to his baby sister before she was gunned down during a mass
shooting in a mall as she was busy picking out preemie baby clothes for Sophie.

His baby sister, the only person he’d ever loved, his
best friend in the entire fucking world, was gunned down in a goddamn shopping
mall while buying baby clothes for her premature daughter, who was back at the
hospital breathing via machine.

It would never sink in.

Never.

How did shit like this happen?

How?

Still unable to move from behind the driver’s seat of his
black Chevy pickup truck, Aaron Steele, retired Navy SEAL and special operative,
stared straight ahead at the sign for hospital parking and how much it would
cost him an hour to go and sit with his one-month-old niece, who’d been born one
month premature. To stare at her little body as it struggled to live, knowing
that she would never see her mother again. Knowing that she would never know
the sound of her mother’s voice, the feel of her mother’s lips on her soft baby
cheeks, her arms around her.

Sophie was in there fighting for her life, and in the
blink of an eye, her mother’s life had ended.

How in the fuck did this make any goddamn sense at all?