“How long has he been screaming at you for?”

Rule shoved both his hands through his hair in obvious frustration and bent down to hug his niece as she toddled over to him. He was messing with his lip ring and practically vibrating with nervous energy. She tapped her fingers on the snake that decorated the back of his hand and laughed when he wiggled his fingers at her to make the forked tongue dance. She seemed oblivious to his distress.

“Longer than a half hour. I don’t know what’s wrong. I changed his diaper. I tried to lay him down for a nap. I tried to feed him the bottle Shaw left. Shit, she’s never going to leave me alone with him again.”

He rose to his full height and started to pace again, this time minus the little boy Rome was jiggling up and down. Ry wasn’t a happy camper and all of us could tell.

I wanted to just go wait outside but figured that would be rude, so I wandered over to the fireplace and dodged Remy as she tried to tackle my knees. There were a bunch of pictures on the mantel—a few of Rule and his twin, Remy, before Remy had passed away, a bunch of the brothers and the rest of the gang from the tattoo shop. It made me happy to see that Ayden was smiling and looked really happy in every single shot she was in. There were also wedding photos and pictures of Rule and Shaw with their new baby. It was a lifetime displayed for anyone to see.

“You’ve never had a baby before. There’s a lot to learn and Shaw knows that. You and the little fella will be fine once you both start to figure things out.” Slipping into bartender advice mode was second nature and I didn’t even realize I was doing it until Rule stopped his frantic movement to stare at me.

There was some banging around in the kitchen and a few loud swearwords, then suddenly blissful silence filled the home. RJ looked up at her uncle, then to me, and clapped her little hands. She spun in a little circle and told Rule something that sounded like “all better.”

Rome came out of the kitchen with the baby. He was balancing a bottle and cooing in a deep and grumbly way that shouldn’t be soothing but apparently was to babies.

“The hole in the nipple on the bottle wasn’t big enough. He was hungry and not getting any food. He’s gonna be big and strong like all the rest of us Archers, so he needs to eat.” Rome grinned at his brother and went to hand the baby back. For a split second Rule looked like he wanted to refuse, but the emotion came and went so fast I was pretty sure I was the only one that caught it. I understood that fear.

Rule took the naked baby and settled him in the crook of his arm with a sigh. “I suck at this.”

Rome crossed his arms over his chest and leveled his brother a hard look. “No, you don’t. You need to cut yourself some slack. There is no guidebook on how to raise a kid right. It’s mostly trial and error.”

The infant gurgled up at his dad and I could swear it was Ry trying to tell his dad everything was all right. Rule lifted one of his tattooed hands and used it to softly rub over the baby’s cap of dark hair.

“I feel like I don’t get a second chance if I screw shit up.” He sounded so torn up about it that it really spoke to how much this life and this little person meant to him.

Rome walked over to where RJ was banging the remote to the TV against the floor and picked her up high over his head, making her laugh out of control.

“When we love someone there’s an endless amount of times we forgive them when they screw up. Shaw did it with you and with me. You had to figure out your issue with Mom and Dad. Thank God Cora never walked out on me when I gave her every reason to.” Rome switched his attention to me and I heard what he was saying even if he didn’t bring up Ayden’s name. “You’re gonna screw up, Rule, and so is he. You’ll both just forgive each other, keep on loving one another, and move on.” The baby let out a yawn and blinked like he was agreeing with his uncle.

Rule popped the now-empty bottle out of the baby’s mouth and shifted him to his shoulder, where he patted his back softly until a little baby belch found its way out. The baby sighed and closed his eyes.

“Thank you for coming by and not making me feel even worse than I already did.”

Rome nodded and RJ waved as we headed toward the door. I trailed behind, still caught up on the time line of love and happiness stretched out on that mantel. I don’t think Ayden and I had a single picture from our childhood. In fact the first time I could remember being in front of a camera outside of class photos in elementary school was when I got picked up for shoplifting at a gas station when I was fourteen and instead of calling the cops the store owner had snapped his own mug shot to display in a window with Do Not Serve written under it. There weren’t any snapshots of joy or happiness, which made that dark place that lurked inside me gape open even wider.