Baby Daddy Roulette

Chapter 18

[Axel’s POV]

I'm halfway through a protein bowl when Selene walks into the cafeteria with a baby strapped to her chest.

Aria—I recognize her from the photo—stares at the cafeteria with intense focus. Selene looks wrecked. Hair escaping her bun. Spit-up on her blazer. Pure exhaustion.

She spots the coffee station and makes a beeline.

I'm crossing the cafeteria before deciding to. "Do you need help?"

She turns, cycling through surprise, suspicion, desperate calculation. "Daycare had an emergency closure. Pipe burst. Very dramatic. Very inconvenient."

"I have two hours before film review."

"Axel, you don't have to—"

"I know." Aria's watching me with solemn eyes. "But I'm offering anyway."

Selene studies my face, then her shoulders drop. "Yes. God, yes. I have a phone session in twenty minutes and I'm wearing baby vomit, so yes, I need help."

Her office is chaos incarnate.

Two babies in a playpen—Elio destroying a board book, pages everywhere, and Sören crying because sharing is capitalist propaganda apparently.

"Elio, gentle with the book," Selene says, moving toward her desk. "Sören, baby, it's okay—"

Sören's crying escalates to psychological warfare levels.

I've faced championship games. Playoff pressure. Hostile crowds.

This is worse.

"Which one's the problem?"

"Sören's upset because Elio won't share. Elio won't share because he's discovered destruction. And Aria needs to stay with me because she's teething." Selene's pulling up her laptop. "I just need—keep them from killing each other for forty-five minutes—"

"I can do that."

Spoiler: I have no idea if I can do that.

I step into the playpen—it's one of those massive corporate-approved containment units—and crouch down. Sören's still crying, face red, tears everywhere. Elio's ignoring everyone, focused entirely on page-ripping with the dedication of someone who's found their calling.

Championship game. Hostile arena. I've got this.

I pick up Sören with what I hope passes for careful precision. He's heavier than expected—solid weight, warm, radiating distress. Hold him like he might shatter if I grip wrong, which feels accurate because babies are basically flesh grenades with terrible structural integrity.

He stops crying. Just stares at me with huge dark eyes that are examining my face like he's trying to place me in a lineup.

Then his hand reaches out and pats my cheek.

Something in my chest—a mechanism I didn't know existed—cracks open. Not painfully. Just this sudden awareness that I'm holding a person who might share my DNA, who's real and breathing and currently investigating my beard with sticky fingers.

"Hi," I tell him quietly. "I'm Axel."

He pats my face again. Makes a sound that might be baby language or might be a tiny Viking war cry. Hard to tell.

Behind me, Selene shifts into Dr. Marlowe mode—professional and precise.

Elio abandons book destruction and crawls toward me. Zero caution. Pure determination. He reaches my leg and starts climbing using my sweatpants for leverage.

He makes it to standing, grabs my shirt, grins, and keeps climbing. Using my shirt, my arm, working up with mountain goat determination.

"No," I tell him. "We don't climb people."

He ignores me completely.

Sören watches from my arms with intellectual curiosity. Taking notes for future reference.

I shift Sören to one arm—carefully—and redirect Elio. He immediately tries a different angle.

For the next forty-five minutes, I'm in survival mode.

Elio attempts climbing me nine more times. Each attempt more creative. Aria spits up on my practice jersey twice—the second time with direct eye contact. Sören discovers my man bun. His grip is surprisingly strong. He pulls. I wince. He giggles.

But around minute thirty, something shifts.

I start treating it like defense strategy: anticipate movement three steps ahead, position yourself between threat and goal, maintain control through calculated intervention.

Elio reaches for the desk lamp. I'm already moving him away before his fingers make contact.

Sören starts fussing. I bounce slightly—rhythm helps, apparently—and he settles.

Aria watches everything from Selene's chest, occasionally making sounds that might be commentary.

By minute forty, I'm sitting on the floor in lotus position because standing seems inefficient. Elio's in my lap examining my watch with intense focus. Sören's beside me playing with a soft block, occasionally checking that I'm still there. Aria's finally fallen asleep against Selene.

The room is quiet except for Selene's professional voice and baby sounds that have downgraded from chaos to manageable background noise.

She finishes her call and looks up. Her expression does something complicated when she sees me on the floor surrounded by toddlers who are somehow all calm.

"How did you—" She stops. Tries again. "What did you do?"

"Treated it like defense." I shift slightly. Elio immediately adjusts his position to maintain contact. "Watch everything. React fast. Stay three steps ahead. Same principles."

She laughs—not polite professional laughter, but real amusement. "You game-planned my children."

"It worked."

"It did." She's looking at me differently now. Something softer in her expression. "Thank you. Seriously. I don't know what I would've done without—"

"You don't have to do it alone," I interrupt. "If you don't want to."

The weight of that offer hangs between us. Heavy. Real. Complicated.

Elio chooses this moment to try climbing me again, which breaks the tension. Selene rescues me by scooping him up, and I stand slowly because my legs have opinions about lotus position after forty-five minutes.

"I should go," I say, even though leaving feels wrong. "Film review."

"Right. Yes. Thank you again."

I make it to the door before she speaks again.

"Axel? Really. Thank you."

I nod and leave before I say something that makes this more complicated than it already is.

That night I walk into the apartment still smelling like baby powder and what I'm pretty sure is mashed banana.

Mateo takes one look at me and grins. "What happened to you?"

So I tell him. The daycare closure, the chaos, managing three toddlers who have zero respect for personal boundaries.

"Elio has no fear," I say, pulling off my ruined practice jersey. "Just pure determination and a complete disregard for physics. He tried climbing me nine times."

"Nine?" Mateo's grin widens. "Kid's got persistence."

"Sören watches everything. Takes it all in before making moves. Tactical. And Aria makes eye contact when she spits up on you. It's deliberate. She knows exactly what she's doing."

Mateo's watching my face with that look he gets when he's processing something important. "You're smiling."

"I'm not—"

"You absolutely are. You've been smiling since you walked in." He shifts closer, something gentle in his expression. "You're going to be a good dad, Axel."

I don't know what to do with that.

Don't know how to hold that prediction when I don't even know if those kids are mine. Don't know how to want something this much when everything's uncertain.

So I just stand there, still smelling like baby powder, while Mateo watches me with understanding that doesn't require translation.

"Yeah," I finally say. "Maybe."

But my chest is warm with the memory of Sören's sticky hands on my face, Elio's determined climbing attempts, Aria's judgmental stare.

Maybe is enough for now.