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She rushed down the hall, bursting through the doors into the drawing room. Following the high wails that were steadily increasing in volume.
“Charlie!?”
The baby was sitting on a blanket in the middle of the room, his face contorted with terror as he cried his little heart out. Swooping into the room, Lily scooped him up, cradling the back of his head when she pulled his tiny body into her chest. He immediately nuzzled into her neck, still crying even as he clung to her.
“Sweet boy. It’s okay. I’ve got you.” She swayed them both gently from side to side. “Shush…it’s okay.” Satisfied that he was safe once he started to settle, she looked around the room, brows furrowing.
John and Esme had come by to let their kids run off some of their energy by playing on Arrow House’s expansive grounds. She could hear their hoots and hollers filtering in through the window. Tommy had to go down to his office in Small Heath for something, and Grace was in London doing some wedding shopping. Lily had some things she needed to get done, and so took John and Esme up on their offer to babysit Charlie while she worked in her office. She thought it would be fine. They had about a thousand children, so it wasn’t like she was worried they would drop the baby on his head or anything. Besides, it was only for an hour at most.
And yet, looking around the room where she’d left them, there was no John or Esme to be found. Her eyes narrowed. What the fuck? Didn’t they know better than to leave a baby alone like this? The least they could have done was put him in his crib in the nursery so he couldn’t get into trouble.
Charlie’s cries had mostly subdued, resting his head on her shoulder with his chubby little arms still clinging to her.
“Where’d your aunt and uncle go, Charlie?” she asked, truly baffled. But steadily replacing that bafflement was a deep fury. What the fuck was wrong with them?
Still carrying Charlie, she began to walk towards the upstairs, adjusting the weight of him in her arms.
“I know, sweetie,” she said when he sniffled into her shoulder. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left you alone with them.”
A pit of guilt opened up inside her.
It was just as she was rounding the corner to take Charlie back to the nursery that the door to one of the guest rooms flew open. John and Esme staggered out, giggling and readjusting their clothes.
When they caught sight of her they froze, expressions turning sheepish. For a long moment, the three of them just stared at each other.
“He was crying,” Lily said finally.
“Shit.” John wiped a hand down his face, stifling a laugh. “Sorry. We didn’t hear.”
“Cleary.” She knew that she would be better served to just bite her tongue and tell Tommy about what happened later and let him deal with it, but she was too angry. “You should have said if it was such an inconvenience to watch him. I could have just put him in his bassinet in my office.”
“It’s no inconvenience–”
“No?” She raised an eyebrow. John rolled his eyes.
“Look, the kid fell asleep. Esme and I haven’t had a moment alone in fuck knows how long. We figured we’d just step away for a few minutes while he slept and everything would be fine–”
Poor Charlie. He must have woken up laying on that blanket in the big drawing room all by himself and gotten scared. Lily tightened her arms around him protectively.
“Well then you should have called a maid or the nanny to come watch him. You can’t just leave a baby alone like that! He could have gotten hurt!”
“Oh, come on, Lils, he can barely even crawl yet. He would’ve been fine–”
“We know a hell of a lot more about raising kids than you,” Esme ground out. Lily felt her hackles raise at the underlying meaning.
“Excuse me?”
Esme opened her mouth, but John interjected before she could say anymore.
“Look,” he pinched his brow. “Fine. It was a mistake, and we’re sorry.” He gave Esme a little nudge. “Aren’t we, Esme?”
“Mm,” was all she said, still glaring at Lily.
“But he’s fine.” John gestured to where Charlie was settled comfortably in Lily’s arms. “No harm done. So…”
Lily raised an eyebrow. “So…?” she quoted back, though she had a pretty good idea of what John was going to ask of her next.
He sighed. “So, if you could just maybe not mention any of this to Tommy…”
Lily cocked her head. “I think that Tommy has a right to know what happens in his own household, don’t you? Especially if it has to do with his child.”
John’s face twitched. He’d always had a short fuse. But at least Lily was fairly confident he wouldn’t try anything too rash so long as she had the baby in her arms.
“Would it kill you to not be a fucking snitch, just once in your life!?” he snapped. “You act all shocked and hurt that none of us can fucking stand you, but have never stopped to consider that maybe it’s because we know everything we do or say around you gets back to him?”
“I do my job, John. Just like you do yours.”
Esme scoffed. “His little spy. Even amongst his own family members.” She hissed a curse in Romani and spat at her feet. Shaking her head, Lily shouldered past them. She wasn’t going to stand around and listen to this.
“I’m not going to lie to Tommy when he asks me how things went today just so you two can avoid a scolding.”
“Why do you even care so much!?” John exploded, shouting at her as she continued to walk down the hallway. “He’s not even your kid!”
Lily froze, shoes skidding to a stop against the soft rug. She was glad that her back was turned, so John couldn’t see her face when the words punched a hole in her heart.
Swallowing hard and carefully schooling her features into an expression that hopefully hid just how heartbroken the statement left her, she turned around, taking a few steps back towards them.
“Get out of my house.”
John and Esme both looked momentarily taken aback by the dark tone in her voice.
“It’s not your house,” John tried to argue.
“Oh, okay. Let’s wait for Tommy or Grace to come home and see how they feel about that sentiment.”
Their jaws clenched, but they both seemed to recognize that was not a fight they particularly wanted to engage in. Especially considering they were in enough trouble already. John wiped at his nose, then took Esme’s hand.
“Come on, Esme.” He led her with booming steps towards the stairs. Lily watched them until they disappeared out of sight, squeezing Charlie a little tighter to her. The moment they were gone, she felt her features crumple slightly, breaths shaky as she turned back around to head towards the nursery. As if sensing she was distressed, Charlie pulled back from where he’d been resting his head on her shoulder to look at her.
“I’m okay, honey,” she said, shouldering open the door to the nursery. Instead of taking him to the crib, she sat down in the rocking chair with him in her lap. Charlie craned his head up to look at her curiously. The chair shifted back and forth as she rocked them mindlessly. Breaths still shuttering in her chest with the effort it was taking her not to cry, Lily smoothed down Charlie’s hair with her palm, kissing the top of his head.
She loved Charlie with all her heart. And Tommy and Grace had made herculean efforts to ensure she never felt left out in raising him, always insisting that Charlie was just as much hers as he was theirs.
They’d made even more of an effort on emphasizing that fact ever since she’d finally admitted to them her inability to have her own biological children.
But despite their efforts, fear still weighed heavily inside her chest. Of what would happen when Charlie got old enough to begin asking questions about the nature of her relationship with his parents. And that, maybe, even after he knew the truth, he wouldn’t understand. He could even come to the conclusion that he didn’t want his parents being with her at all.
They hadn’t really decided how much they were going to tell him when he got older. Of course there was the concern that when he was young he might not fully understand the importance of discretion in the whole arrangement. But the idea of him not knowing, and growing up thinking that either of his parents were being unfaithful to each other with her, and inevitably resenting her for it, made her want to cry.
“Da!” Charlie squawked.
“I know.” She stroked his soft hair. “Daddy will be home soon.”
Charlie cuddled back against her chest, yawning a little. Lily sighed, stroking his back.
“I hope you’ll still love me this much when you’re older, kiddo,” she whispered.
He’s not even your kid! John’s voice echoed in her head, and her bottom lip trembled.
It always stung to be reminded that outside of Tommy and Grace, no one would ever really see her as Charlie’s parent. While most of the family knew about the arrangement between her, Grace, and Tommy, many of them did not approve of or even accept it. And she knew that quite a few of them also viewed her extensive involvement in Charlie’s upbringing as her pushing herself into a position where she didn’t belong.
God, the possibility that Charlie himself might someday feel that same way…
A shuddering sound left her lips, breaths stuttering as she tried hard not to cry. Suddenly unable to sit still, she picked Charlie back up and stood, going to the window.
She had never thought of Charlie as anything other than her baby.
And given what the doctors had told her, he–and any other children Tommy and Grace might have–was the only baby she would ever have.
That was alright. She’d mostly made peace with that fact, small bouts of sadness or insecurity aside. And she loved Charlie so much; he would always be enough for her.
He’s not even your kid.
The idea, that nagging, insistent feeling that someday Charlie might say something of the exact same sentiment to her, was more than enough to break her heart.
Hot tears finally slid down her cheeks, a small sob spasming in her chest. Charlie reached up, patting at her wet face clumsily with one of his tiny hands.
“Mama,” he said.
“Mama will be back soon too, sweetie.” Her voice was heavy with tears.
“Mama!” he insisted, patting her face again.
Lily looked down at him in puzzlement, lips parting when she finally understood. “Oh, no, honey…I’m not your mama.”
“Mama,” Charlie said once more, stubbornly. Lily sighed. He really was his father’s child.
“It’s just ‘Lily,’ baby,” she tried to explain. She didn’t really have an official title for him to call her by. Any form of ‘mother’ just felt like it would confuse the poor boy, but she wasn’t particularly fond of variations like ‘Aunt Lily’ either. She had come more or less to the conclusion that she would just be ‘Lily’ to him almost without even realizing it.
“Mama!” Charlie’s hand tried to again pat at her damp cheek, though it was more like he was gently smacking her thanks to his lack of coordination. She sputtered out a sound that was half a laugh, slightly tipping her face away from him after he almost poked her in the eye.
Adjusting him so he was propped up on her hip, she leaned her head against the top of his. She closed her eyes, swaying them back and forth. A moment later, Charlie put his little arms on each of her shoulders in what could only be considered a hug, and she nearly burst into another round of tears over how heartwarming it was.
Sometimes she swore that the kid understood far more of what was actually going on than they gave him credit for.
She didn’t think she stood there for very long–though she couldn’t be entirely sure–before she heard the creak of shoes on the floorboards behind her.
“There you are.” Tommy was striding towards her before she really had time to process that he was there, pecking a kiss to her lips and stroking a gentle hand over Charlie’s head. He frowned when he pulled back and got a good look at her face. Her eyes were probably still red from crying. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, um…”
“Da!” Charlie interrupted her, ecstatic to see his father.
“You wanna go to your Daddy, Charlie?” Lily asked. “Give my arms a break before they get too sore? You’re getting heavy, kiddo.”
Tommy chuckled, taking Charlie from her with a grin, holding the baby close to him with Charlie’s head tucked securely on his shoulder. Once he was situated, he turned back to Lily, eyebrow raised questioningly. She shook her head.
“I’m fine.”
The look in his eyes said that he didn’t believe her. “I noticed John, Esme, and the kids are gone.”
“Yeah, I, um,” she cleared her throat, “I kinda threw them out.”
“Why?”
“Because they offered to watch Charlie while the kids were playing outside so I could get some work done. And then I heard him crying later while I was in my office and I found him lying on a blanket in the drawing room wailing by himself.”
Tommy’s brows pulled together. “They just left him alone?”
“Apparently he fell asleep, and they thought it would be acceptable to go fuck in one of the spare rooms.” She reached out to stroke Charlie’s back. “He’s okay.” Retracting her hand, she ran it through her hair. “I shouldn’t have left him alone with them.”
“John and Esme know better than that,” Tommy growled, and from the far-off, calculating look in his eyes, she could tell that both his brother and sister-in-law were in for a proper scolding the next time he saw them. His gaze snapped back to her. “What else happened?”
She shook her head. “That’s it.”
With one arm hooked securely around Charlie, he reached out the other to cup her cheek, thumb stroking the slightly puffy skin under one of her eyes.
“You’ve been crying.”
“I’m okay.”
His eyes narrowed, immediately closing in on what must have happened. “What did John say?”
“It’s not that big of a deal, Tommy…”
He gave her a stern look and she sighed, breaking eye contact with him to instead adjust the collar on Charlie’s shirt. “Just some shit about Charlie not really being my kid.”
Tommy was quiet for a long moment.
“What?” he finally said, voice a low, dangerous growl. When she looked back up it was to find that his eyes had hardened, jaw tensing.
“Yeah, um,” she coughed. And then, because she figured if she was already going to do the equivalent of throwing John into a pit with an angry wolf, she might as well tell the entire story, she added, “he also tried to say that this wasn’t my house.”
“I’m gonna kill him.” The absolute seriousness with which it was said had a weak smile pulling at the corners of her lips. Tommy shook his head, turning his furious eyes towards the window like he could somehow beam his anger and disappointment at John just by staring in the general direction of his house. “Fucking John…” he hissed under his breath.
“Yeah.” Wrapping her arms around herself, she looked down at the floor. Tommy’s head snapped around to her.
“Hey,” adjusting Charlie in his arms, he reached out and cupped her face again, tilting her head up and resting his forehead against hers. “He’s wrong, eh? John’s an idiot; don’t listen to a word he says.”
Lily let out a small laugh, a hand coming to rest on Tommy’s chest. “It’s what they’re all thinking, though.”
Tommy shook his head. “Don’t listen to them.” His nose brushed against hers. “They don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.” He crowded in closer to her, mouth brushing over hers sensually. “You’re his mother,” he said after he pulled back. “Both me and Grace say so.”
Charlie made a squealing noise, reaching his little fists for Lily’s hair. Tommy chuckled.
“See? Charlie does too.”
Lily sniffled, nodding and letting him draw her into the circle of his arm, so that he was holding both her and his son to his chest.
“We love you,” Tommy said into her hair.
“Love you too,” she mumbled. Charlie tried to grab her hair again, catching a fistful of it.
“No tugging, son.” Tommy carefully untangled the strands from Charlie’s fingers before he could begin yanking on it. “Lily doesn’t like that.”
Charlie pouted, but relented, yawning and resting his head on his father’s chest.
“I’ll talk to John,” Tommy told her.
“You gonna yell at him?”
“Oh, yeah.”
She tried not to smile at the idea and thoroughly failed. He never once failed to defend her to his family whenever they stepped out of line. She couldn’t begin to tell him just how much that meant to her.
“Thanks.”
He pecked her forehead “Of course.”
The door opened with a soft creak, approaching heels clicking on the floor.
“Why, hello you three,” Grace smiled brightly when she took in the sight of her two lovers and their baby embracing. She whisked forward to give both Lily and Tommy quick greeting pecks on the lips before kissing Charlie on the cheek. He made a happy cooing noise at the presence of his mother before snuggling closer to Tommy.
“I think he’s about ready to go down,” Tommy commented, hoisting the baby a little more firmly up on his shoulder.
“Can I take him?” Lily asked. Tommy shot her a look, smile pulling at his lips.
“Sure.” He handed Charlie over to her with zero hesitation. The baby, already half asleep, nestled his head in the crook of her neck with no complaint, heavy in her arms. Grace pulled her eyes away from Charlie to look at her, brows furrowing.
“Did something happen?”
“John’s been being an ass,” Tommy explained, wrapping an arm around Grace’s shoulders. “I’ll take care of it.”
“How was the shopping?” Lily asked, wanting desperately to change the topic of conversation. Though she could already tell from the look on Grace’s face that she would be wanting more details later.
“Oh, very successful. I got the order in for those centerpieces we agreed on.”
“That’s good.” Lily carried Charlie over to the crib. “I love you,” she whispered into the baby’s ear. He cooed softly when she cradled him carefully as she put him down.
“Mary said dinner is almost ready. We should head down,” Grace said, her and Tommy moving to join Lily at the crib. She kissed Lily’s temple. “And then you can tell me all about what exactly John did.”
“Okay,” Lily breathed out, still staring down into the crib, where Charlie was looking up at her sleepily. Most of the inhabitants of Small Heath–and even many of the Shelbys–had always looked at her like she was a demon. Some monster that had crawled out of the bowels of hell to terrorize them all. But Charlie looked up at her not just with the unquestioning love that a baby had for its parents, but with complete and absolute trust. Like she was his guardian angel.
She hoped, probably in vain, that he would always look at her like that.