Being at the warehouse on Holden’s family’s property on Sophie’s Island really was ideal for me, especially since I didn’t want anyone to see me. I still had a ways to go in my pregnancy, but I was already showing, and I had to wear Holden’s sweatpants and T-shirts because none of my clothes fit me anymore.
I did go out to pick blackberries that grew along the path to the dock, and once a week I biked to one of the farmer’s markets on the island. I always wore my sunglasses and a huge floppy hat to cover my face, and that made me feel safe enough. Especially since the only people there first thing on weekday mornings were the staff, plus the chickens that ran around on the farm.
So I kept myself as busy as possible while I was home alone at the warehouse. Holden figured out how to get the Wi-Fi hooked up, and over the next week he got the sinks and claw foot bathtub installed. So, even though the space was still looking pretty rough, we had everything we needed.
I started going online for hours, watching YouTube tutorials on how to cook healthy meals on a limited budget, and with very limited equipment. It was actually really fun. I started looking at everything like an adventure—how to do things simply and easily instead of using my dad’s credit card to buy everything I wanted. It made me feel good to decorate in ingenious ways and cook really good meals with just a few vegetables and spices that I bought right there on Sophie’s Island.
I did buy some things without telling Holden, though. I knew he was working so hard, and I didn’t want to bum him out. But there were things I needed if I really wanted to make our little house a home. Like some special cooking utensils and a pressure cooker. Those were the types of things that really allowed me to expand my cooking skills.
But the day finally came when I needed to start buying some major items. Things I couldn’t really hide from Holden, like a baby crib and all the clothes and diapers and bottles and teething rings we were going to need. Plus, I envisioned myself making my own baby food and I really needed a high-powered blender for that. So one night I brought up the conversation that I had been dreading for a while.
“I need to do it,” I said to Holden one night while we were lying in bed. “I can’t keep wearing your clothes.”
Holden sighed. “I hate the idea that I can’t provide everything for you, Brent. It kills me. I want to be your alpha. I want to take care of you. I want to buy you every single thing your heart desires, and everything we need for the baby.”
“You will, Holden. I believe in you. I mean, look at what you’ve done so far. You’re amazing. And I know, deep in my heart, that your business is going to be incredibly successful. You just have to give it time.”
“But we need the money now. I don’t have time to wait. The baby is coming, and we need to make this place a home. I don’t want our baby to be born in a half-finished warehouse. That’s not how I envisioned us beginning our family.”
“I can buy the things we need, Holden. Isn’t there anyway you can just chill out a little bit and let me help? Because I really want to. I want to contribute to this relationship just as much as you do.”
“But your dad is going to know where we are if you use your credit card and have things shipped here. I thought you were trying to be all incognito with him. Or has that finally changed.”
“No, I’m still not ready for him to know about the baby. But I have other money in my own account.”
“Really? How much?”
“About ten thousand.”
“Dollars?”
“Yeah,” I said sheepishly. “Are you mad?”
“No, I’m not mad, but …” Holden turned on his side so he was facing me. “How? I thought you just had your dad’s credit card.”
“Well, I didn’t want to tell you about this cause I knew you’d worry. About once a week, while we were on the yacht, I snuck back into my dad’s house.”
“What? Why did you do that?”
“I’ve been taking some stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?” Holden asked with furrowed eyebrows and intense eyes, like he didn’t approve.
“I’m not stealing from my dad. Not technically, anyway. Okay, so remember when I gave you that phone, the replacement for the one that drowned in the river?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I got both of them—one for you and one for me—from my dad’s office. He has people sending him stuff all the time. Just out of the blue, multiple times a week, he gets phones and all kinds of devices, television sets, cologne, cookware. It’s bizarre. But that’s the way it is when you’re rich. People send you stuff, hoping you’ll endorse it or mention it somehow, somewhere. My dad has a closet full of the stuff, and he never uses any of it. The only time he ever opens the closet is to stick more boxes in there. So I started taking things from there and selling it all online. I’m sure he has absolutely no idea that anything is missing. He probably doesn’t even know what half of it is.”
Holden was silent for a long time.
“Really,” I said, running my hand up and down Holden’s chest. “It’s not a big deal. So much of that stuff, it just sits there, unused. I’m sure every wealthy politician and celebrity and influencer has a closet, or even a whole room, exactly like that where they stash things that they will never, ever use. I swear my dad won’t even know anything’s missing.”
“That’s not what I’m thinking about. It bums me out that there’s so much stuff that a lot of people could use. People with very little money. And for some reason it goes to the people who need it least.”
“Yeah, exactly,” I said, propping myself up on my elbow. “That’s what I’ve been thinking. I mean, if we didn’t need the money, I’ve seriously just thought about giving that stuff away to a shelter. But honestly, we are the people with very little money right now. We’re the ones who can benefit from all that materialism.”
“You’re right,” Holden said with a lopsided smile. “We do need help right now. I’ve been too proud to admit it, but the thing is, lots of people need temporary help.”
“Yeah,” I said, getting excited that I’d finally gotten through to Holden. “It’s not like we plan on living off my dad forever. We’re just doing this until we get on our feet. And we will. I know it.”
Holden took my face in his hands. “I don’t know where I’d be without you, Brent. You’re helping me see things in a way I’d never seen them before. I’m sorry you felt like you had to wait so long to talk to me about all this. I don’t ever want you to feel that way again. No matter what’s on your mind, I want you to feel like you can tell me anything.”
And so our lives went on in the most perfect way I could imagine. For a while, during the final month of summer, Holden left every morning to make his rounds. I would get up and make him breakfast and a cup of coffee for his travel mug to take with him, then after he left I would get to work finding everything we needed online and teaching myself all kinds of recipes.
I made jam from the blackberries in the yard, sourdough bread, and pickles from the produce at the farmer’s market. And I always made sure the fridge and freezer were stocked with snacks and meals that could be heated up in a moments notice if Holden came home for lunch, or if I wasn’t up to cooking a big dinner.
I even learned how to install sheet rock from YouTube tutorials. I had to talk Holden into letting me do some of the heavy duty work around the house, but eventually I did convince him that if the two of us hung the sheet rock walls together in the evening, and he drilled in all of the screws that were up high, I could do the rest without having to get up on a ladder.
Then, once all of the walls were up and I got everything painted, our little warehouse really started to feel like home. I had our bathroom looking like a beautiful, sparkly underwater scene with fish and seahorses all over the walls, and on the towels and rugs and soap. And I bought everything we needed for the nursery.
We still didn’t know the sex of the baby because I wouldn’t let Holden take me to the clinic. I just didn’t want to
risk anyone seeing me. I knew I was being irrational, but I just couldn’t do it. So, a month before my due date Holden had someone from The Sunnyside Clinic come to the house to do a checkup.
I don’t know how Holden managed to get me a house call, but he said one of his old roommates was really good friends with a bunch of people who worked at that clinic, and Dr. Livingston was more than happy to stop by.
When he told us that we were having a baby boy I started crying so hard I couldn’t breathe. I’d already been crying when Dr. Livingston set up his portable ultrasound and jellied up my baby bump, but when I realized I was carrying a little teeny Holden inside me, I just couldn’t contain myself.
“He’s going to have your eyes,” Holden said as he gripped my hand.
“No way!” I yelled. “He’s going to have your eyes!” I slapped Holden on the arm, then grabbed a tissue and blew my nose. “You have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen in my life and our baby is going to look exactly like you,” I sobbed.
“Okay, okay,” Holden said, wrapping his arms around me. “He’ll have my eyes. But he’s going to have your brother’s name.”
I slowly looked up at Holden. “Bradly?” I asked. “You’d do that?”
“Of course. If it’s what you want.”
“I do. It’s such an amazing idea. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it.”
I kissed Holden and wound up sobbing right into his mouth.
“Again?” he said, holding my head to his shoulder and kissing my forehead.
“It’s all your fault,” I said in between sobs. “If you weren’t so perfect I wouldn’t be crying all the time!”
“Okay, Brent,” he said as he rubbed my back. “Whatever you say.”
Chapter 14
Holden
“You know,” Brent said one morning as he was frying up some French toast for the two of us. “This is never going to feel like our home if you keep referring to it as the warehouse.”
I was just bringing my cup of coffee up to my lips and luckily hadn’t taken a sip yet because that comment really made me laugh.
“It’s not funny! I mean, if we’re going to refer to our homes by what they’re made of I should call the governor’s mansion ‘the brick structure my dad lives in.’ Or you should call the old house you had with your roommates ‘the wooden box I lived in.’”
“You’re right,” I said, shaking my head and still laughing. “I don’t know why a keep calling this place the warehouse. It’s our home, and I’m really proud of it. You’ve done so much in the last couple months. Stuff that I should’ve taken care of a while ago. And stuff I would have never even thought of.”
“Don’t say that,” Brent said as he set two plates of French toast down on the table. “You don’t need to do everything, Holden. I’ve had a lot of fun learning how to fix this place up.”
“You’ve had fun putting up sheet rock?” I asked.
Brent rolled his eyes. “Well, okay, that was probably the least fun thing I’ve done. But you actually did the hard part. All I had to do was put in the lower screws and tape it off.”
“It’s still a pain in the ass. I wish neither one of us had to do any of that.”
“Well, next time will hire someone to do the sheet rock.”
“Next time? You think there’s gonna be a next time?”
Brent nodded emphatically with his mouth packed full. “Of course, I do,” he said after swallowing. “I think you and I make a really great team. I mean, this place is amazing, and I want to live here for a long time, but I’ve really kind of developed a passion for renovation since I started working on turning this warehouse into a home. We could flip houses, or other warehouses, or even boats!”
“You know,” I said, taking another sip of my coffee. “That’s not a bad idea.”
“Yeah! We could do anything we want! We don’t have to do anything!”
I could tell Brent was getting really excited, and it wasn’t just the three cups of coffee he’d already had that morning. “Okay, well, you just contradicted yourself there, but I get what you’re saying.”
Brent laughed and threw a kitchen towel at my face, but I caught it just before it landed and threw it right back at him. Then I jumped up and caught him by surprise with a tickle attack.
It was so awesome. Brent was huge now, and he could barely move. He was actually a little past his due date, and I knew he was uncomfortable, but he never complained. Not even when I could see that he was tired and his back was sore, like this morning. And because he was so huge he couldn’t fight me off when I started to tickle him.
Brent was just adorable. He would giggle and bat at me, but he never really tried to stop me because he loved being tickled. After he was done laughing like a maniac he would tell me it felt like he’d been through an aerobic workout.
So, after I tickled his waist for a few seconds, and after he laughed so hard no sound came out for a few minutes, I helped him stand up and took him over to the bed. “I want you to stay here today,” I said, helping him sit, then lie down.
“I always stay here,” he said, wiping the laughter tears off his cheeks.
“I mean here in bed. You’re due any second now, and I don’t want you exerting yourself. I’ll clean up the breakfast dishes, and the rest of the house. I have some errands that I need to run a little later, but other than that, I’ll be around if you need me. Okay?” I said, kissing Brent softly on the lips.
“Okay,” he said with a smile. “But I have a feeling you’re not gonna get to those errands.”
“Why?”
“Because when you were tickling me … over there at the kitchen table … I think I felt a contraction.”
“What?! Are you serious? You think you’re going into labor? Now?”
“Well, I’m not positive, but it sure felt like it.”
“Oh, my God, what are we gonna do? I need to get you to the clinic! Wait, I need your bag! Brent, where’s your bag? Oh, my God, where’s the clinic?”
Suddenly my brain was a complete blank. I couldn’t remember our birth plan, I couldn’t remember any of the advice the doctors and nurses had given me, I couldn’t remember a goddamned thing.
“Just breathe,” Brent said. “I haven’t had a contraction since that first one, so I don’t think the baby is coming right this second. We have time, and we have a plan. I stuck it to the refrigerator door.”
“Oh yeah,” I said, jumping up and sprinting into the kitchen. I came running back into the bedroom with a piece of paper in my hand. “It says your bag is already in my car. Okay, I knew that. I put it there. Okay, the next thing on the list is Get Brent Dressed.” I looked at Brent and he was already fully dressed. “Okay, we got that taken care of.”
“Yeah, we sure did,” he said sarcastically. “Look, everything is fine. Just check the navigation app and see how long it’s supposed to take us to get to The Sunnyside Clinic, then call the clinic and tell them we’re on our way.”
“Good idea,” I said, pointing at Brent. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and checked the route. “It’s red.”
“What’s red?”
“Highway 30, it’s got a big red section with a bunch of x’s through it just past the Sophie’s Island bridge.”
“Well, tap on it. See what it says.”
I was silent for almost a minute, trying to figure out if what I was reading was really true. It just seemed impossible.
“What does it say?”
“The entire highway is shut down. In both directions. There’s no traffic getting through at all, and it’s expected to be shut down for at least an hour, may be more.”
“That’s not possible. They can’t close it for that long.” Brent tried to sit up on his elbows but couldn’t. Any other time I would’ve laughed, but I was too terrified in that moment.
“It’s true, babe. I just looked at The Oregonian website. It’s right here on the front page. Highway 30 has been shut down indefinitely due to a massive
fertilizer spillage. We can’t get through.”
Chapter 15
Brent
So that’s how I wound up here on this boat. What I wasn’t expecting was for one of my dad’s oldest friends, Professor Austin Dylan, to wind up here as well. Even when Holden said the name Austin on the phone I didn’t put it together. I mean, why would I? There’s lots of guys out there named Austin, and there’s definitely more than one Austin Dylan.
It wasn’t until I saw him walking towards Holden’s boat that I realized who he was. That’s when I panicked and hid in the supply cupboard. I don’t even know how I got myself in that small space. It was the sheer panic of being recognized that helped me squeeze my knees into my enormous belly and crab walk backwards into that dark hole where I could hide like a total freak.
But really, seeing Professor Dylan turned out to be fine. And motoring down the Willamina River with the freezing cold wind whipping around my face wound up being a piece of cake. Hoisting my giant ass up the rickety ladder and onto the dilapidated dock was no problem. Even squeezing two pregnant men, their partners, and a their cop friend into his police car felt like no big deal at all. It wasn’t until I got to the clinic that everything really fell apart.
Professor Dylan told me he was going to call my dad when we got to the clinic, but that’s not what he wound up doing. He sent my dad a text while we were in the boat, or the cop car. I’m actually not sure when he did it. But either way, guess who was waiting for me when I got to the clinic?
I’d heard one of Holden’s room mates talking in the cop car on the way over. He said there were two more pregnant omegas and their partners on their way to the clinic at the same time as us. Somehow all three of the guys who’s shared that house with Holden got pregnant this summer—either as an omega who was carrying the baby, or as the responsible alpha. It was really crazy.
Portville Summer Series: The Complete Collection Books 1-4: (MM Nonshifter Omegaverse) Page 36