Page 41 of Biker Orc Baby Daddy
Orry squirms. Makes a happy sound. Reaches for me again.
"No, baby, we're bothering the nice man." Cecie pulls him back gently, but Orry protests with a high-pitched squeal that makes both Colum and the intern at the far desk wince.
"He's fine," I hear myself say. "I don't mind."
What am I doing?
Cecie hesitates. Then she adjusts her hold, and Orry beams at me with that damned dimple, and I feel something crack wide open inside my chest that I have absolutely no idea how to fix.
"He likes you." Cecie's voice is carefully neutral, but there's something underneath it. Something sharp and wary that makes me think of cornered animals and defensive walls built brick by brick.
"I like him too." The words come out steadier than I feel, and they're true—so devastatingly, terrifyingly true that I have to grip the edge of the desk to keep myself grounded. Orry grins wider, that perfect dimple deepening, and something in my carefully ordered world tilts on its axis. I've spent years building spreadsheets and routines, constructing walls brick by brick against exactly this kind of chaos. Against exactly this kind of love, messy and illogical and entirely outside my control. Yet here it is, blooming in my chest like some kind of data I never saw coming, some variable that no amount of calculation could have predicted.
True.Absolutely, impossibly true. The kind of truth that terrifies me more than any spreadsheet error or social misstep ever could, because it demands vulnerability. It demands Iadmit that in four minutes, this small, green-eyed child with his confident toddler energy and his infectious grin has made himself indispensable to me.
Cecie watches my face as I say it, and I can see her cataloging my reaction, filing it away behind those sharp, wary eyes. She knows something. Perhaps not everything, but enough to make her careful, protective in that fierce way of hers. I hold my breath, waiting to see if she'll push, if she'll demand answers I'm not yet ready to give.
I've known this child for approximately four minutes, and I already feel a fierce, irrational protectiveness that makes no logical sense except for the part where he might be?—
My son.
The thought hits me like a physical blow. I take another step back. Bump the desk again. This time, one of Colum's mugs tips over. I catch it reflexively, set it upright with shaking hands.
"You okay there, Ridge?" Colum's voice cuts through the chaos in my head. He's watching me with that particular expression he gets when he's trying very hard not to laugh at my expense.
"Fine." I clear my throat, forcing my voice into something approximating normal despite the way my pulse hammers at my temples. "Just a long day."
"It's ten in the morning," Cecie observes with the precision of someone who's spent the last four minutes cataloging every one of my tells. Her tone carries that particular brand of wry observation that suggests she finds my excuse both transparent and mildly amusing.
I grip Clarence a little tighter, my knuckles whitening around the calculator's worn plastic shell. The cracked screen catches the fluorescent office light as I avoid her gaze.
"Longweek," I amend quietly, as though the distinction matters. As though anything I say right now will somehowadequately explain the peculiar combination of panic and recognition and bone-deep certainty that's currently dismantling my carefully ordered internal spreadsheet into something resembling chaos. My spreadsheet, the one I've maintained with meticulous color-coding and logistical precision, suddenly feels laughably inadequate for processing this particular moment.
Colum's theatrical laugh rings out from somewhere behind me, utterly oblivious to the undercurrent of meaning threading through this exchange. He's already moved on to something else, some new scheme or social commentary that requires his full attention.
But Cecie. Cecie is still watching me with those sharp hazel eyes, and I can see her deciding something. Choosing, perhaps, between pushing and letting this particular conversation lie dormant for now.
Cecie glances between us, and I see her clock the nickname.Ridge.Her mouth tightens almost imperceptibly before she smooths it back into that pleasant, professional mask.
She knows.
The certainty of it settles over me like a lead weight, heavy and suffocating in my chest. Shedefinitelyknows, I see it in the way her hazel eyes track mine for just a fraction too long, in the careful neutrality she's painted across her face, in the slight tension around her mouth that suggests she's holding back a dozen different responses and choosing none of them.
And she's not saying anything. Not a word. Not even a hint of accusation or confusion or the thousand accusations I deserve. She's just standing there with Orry balanced against her hip, watching me with an expression I can't quite parse, and the silence is somehow worse than any confrontation could possibly be.
Why?
The question loops endlessly through my mind, tangling with the spreadsheet already fragmenting into statistical chaos. Why wouldn't she say something? Why wouldn't she demand answers, throw accusations,something—anything other than this maddening, deliberate quiet? Is she protecting herself? Protecting Orry? Or is she simply deciding right now, in this very moment, that whatever happened between us isn't worth addressing in front of Colum and his oblivious enthusiasm?
I grip Clarence harder, feeling the familiar plastic shell press against my palm like an anchor. The cracked screen reflects the office lighting in a dozen fractured directions, and I wonder if my thoughts look like that too—broken into a thousand pieces that no amount of careful reorganization could ever reassemble into something resembling coherence.
"Well." Cecie shifts Orry again, adjusting the stroller with one practiced foot. "I should let you all get back to work. Thanks again for the warm welcome, Colum."
"Anytime, neighbor." Colum grins, oblivious to the tension crackling through the air like static electricity before a storm. "And seriously, those muffins are incredible. You should sell them at Sparkle Beauty."
"I'll keep that in mind." She turns toward the door, and I watch her go with the sick certainty that if I let her walk out right now, I'll never get answers to the thousand questions currently shredding my internal logic into confetti.
"Wait."
