Free Lyon's Heart by Jordan Silver Page B

tattle and tell
me what a madman he had been.
    “I don’t see how he had time
to do all this because he never left the hospital, not even when I
was asleep.” Colt refused to leave the hospital grounds because he
was terrified someone would make off with his Caitie bear. He’d
seen some news report where the woman walked into the hospital and
made it all the way to the door with the baby before being caught.
I had to hear about that ad nauseam. The nurses thought he was too
cute because when I was asleep he sat up in the chair next to my
bed with the baby in his arms. I thought he was nuts.
    “He called Elena every hour
on the hour with instructions. Daniel kept us well supplied with
the wacky weed or we might’ve all shanked your husband by now the
man’s a menace.”
    “Oh hush Jared he’s not that
bad.” My ass, he’s totally out of control.

 
    For the first three months
of Caitlin’s life I don’t think Colton slept a wink. He laid with
her on his chest up until she was three and a half months. The only
reason he put her in her crib after that is because she was getting
bigger and moving around more and he was afraid she’d either fall
or he’d roll over on her. I tell you I never really worried about
anything, because if there was something that could go wrong Colt
had already thought of it and put things in place to prevent it.
Everywhere he went that baby was on his arm, she was like an
extension of him and boy is she a daddy’s girl. Now his newest
obsession is making sure the baby has the best first Xmas ever.
He’s got more camera equipment to immortalize the occasion than a
photographer at New York fashion week. I just go with the flow and
try to keep up. I knew my bad boy was going to be a lot to handle
but good grief.

Chapter 1
     
    “Caitlin baby give daddy a
break will ya?”
    “Dada, da, da.”
    “I’m gonna da, da, da you in
a minute get over here.”
    My little princess is nine
months going on fifteen. She can’t really talk yet but her first
word was dada then came mama. I won that fight. She started
crawling at six or seven months and all hell broke loose from then
on. She gets into everything so I have to watch her every minute
that I’m alone with her or I’m afraid she’d hurt herself. Her
mother is a little more lax than I when it comes to parenting. She
says ‘oh she’s supposed to do that or don’t worry Colt that’s
normal’. I didn’t take shit for granted. In the first three months
after I’d started putting her in her crib at night I stood over her
to make sure she was breathing right and shit before I went to bed.
I spent almost every waking hour worrying about one thing or the
other. Anything that could go wrong I tried to head off at the
pass. Now realistically I know there are no guarantees in life but
I couldn’t help myself. Now instead of one I had two people to
protect and take care of. While Kat was healing from the birth I
saw that she had everything she needed and was doing everything
that they told her to do. Believe it or not she was up and about in
just a few days; which I found unfucking believable after having
seen the birth process. I had to keep an eye on her to make sure
she didn’t overdo it but all in all things went fine. I was tired
as fuck most of the time because Caitlin woke up every hour on the
hour that first two or so months. Half the time Kat slept through
the feedings while I held the baby in place. Those were our bonding
times because as she got older she stayed up longer and longer
after her feedings and that’s when she and daddy had their
talks.
    Now she’s growing like a
tumbleweed. She smiles and my heart melts and she’s so much her
mother’s daughter that she knows it and uses it. She gets into shit
and heads for me with her pouty face and those teary eyes that I
can’t resist. I always know she’s done something that she wasn’t
supposed to but I can’t scold my baby. She’s going to be a handful
if I keep that