Watch Over My Life: Emotional Love Story (What Will Be Book Series)

by Laura Ashley Gallagher

  “Gee, thanks for the support.”

  “No problem.” He flashed a wide smile at her before getting out to open her door.

  “I can open my own car door. I’m only pregnant.”

  “I am being supportive.” He threw her words back at her and smiled smugly. “Come on, beautiful. Get your sexy ass out of the car.”

  She rolled her eyes before getting out and strolling towards the hospital by his side.

  “You know, you won’t be saying that in a couple of months when my ass is the size of a small island.”

  “I don’t care if your ass takes over the entire bed,” he laughed, nudging her playfully.

  She grimaced.

  Once they got inside, Jessica gave her name to the receptionist and took her seat as she waited for the doctor to call her name. Doctor Harris was going to conduct the ultrasound, and she did everything in her power to make him promise not to say anything. He couldn’t anyway because of confidentiality, but she still had to be sure.

  “Jessica Connors,” a familiar deep and jolly voice called. His small, smiling eyes awaited her as she approached him.

  “Hey, Doc.” She smiled gently.

  “And you must be the father.” He turned to Jake as they made their way into the ultrasound room.

  “Yes, I am. Jake Williams, nice to meet you.” He gestured his hand and Doctor Harris shook it firmly, in the way only men could.

  They seemed to eye each other skeptically for a moment. What was it with men and their constant ego battle? Jake was a God of a man, and Doctor Harris, although a nice man, was a blob. There was no competition there.

  “You ready to see this baby?”

  Jessica’s stomach knotted with nerves and anxiety.

  “Can’t wait.”

  She pulled herself onto the leather bed and pulled her sweater up to just under her breasts. She flinched as the gel squirted onto her bare flesh. He searched around for a long moment until a bright smile trapped his facial features.

  “There it is.” He pointed to a blurry area on the screen.

  And then it came into focus.

  Little hands and feet jerking around in sudden movements. And the most beautiful outline of a little face.

  Jake’s hand tightened around hers, and she felt his lips softly to her forehead.

  “We made that,” he whispered in her ear.

  “Yeah, we did,” she agreed, letting the tears fall from her eyes as she turned to look at him.

  “I love you,” he mouthed silently.

  She smiled then and let the joy take hold of her emotions. She didn’t want to think about the bad things that lay ahead. This was their moment, and she was going to hold on to it for as long as she could.

  “Always,” she breathed, pulling him into her kiss.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Are you nervous?” Jake knocked her out of oblivion.

  They were on their way to her parent’s house and her stomach felt like it was twisting with a thousand knots as her leg bounced continuously up and down in the front seat of the car.

  “Yeah,” she breathed, nodding her head without so much as glancing at him.

  How were they going to react to this? Her parents meant so much to her. They didn’t even know she and Jake were dating, let alone that she was pregnant with his baby.

  “Calm down, Jess.” He placed a firm hand on her knee to stop her leg from trembling. “Your brother took it well.”

  “Yes, after he called you every scumbag under the sun.” She reminded him. “They don’t even know we are going out, Jake, and now I have to jump right in there and tell them I am pregnant,” she snapped.

  It pained her to even say it. She didn’t want to disappoint anyone; least of all her parents, but it needed to be done. She just wished someone else would do it for her.

  “Sorry.” She swallowed hard, turning to look at him now, regretting her outburst. It wasn’t his fault. Well, maybe it was, but she didn’t want to be angry with him.

  She sat there and watched how his jaw flinched and his teeth gritted together as he saw the pain and worry in her eyes. It was something he had been trying to protect her from all her life. She just never knew it until recently. She smiled at him reassuringly, closing her eyes briefly before she whispered the words that flowed so freely from her mouth.

  “I love you.”

  He smiled then and turned his head back towards the road.

  “I love you too.”

  Ten minutes later, they pulled into the drive of her parent’s house. She never knew the house she grew up in could look so daunting.

  “Let’s do it.” She jumped enthusiastically out of the car. Jessica was hoping her fearless body language would rub off on her erratic emotions.

  “Jessica sweetheart, what a lovely surprise.” Her mother greeted her with a warm hug as she opened the door. Her eyes narrowed as she pulled away and set her eyes on Jake. “Did you two come over here together?”

  Jessica swallowed hard and relaxed again as Jake soothed his hand over her back.

  “Yes, we did,” she answered, her voice reflecting the fear burning in her blue eyes.

  “Well, come in. Don’t just stand there.”

  “Is Dad here, Mom?”

  “Yes sweetie, he is in the living room.”

  “Could I talk to you both?”

  Jessica thought it best if she got straight to the point. There was no way she could survive through a whole conversation and the weekly gossip with her mother without her knowing there was something wrong. She was trembling with nerves, and Jake wasn’t the only one who had noticed.

  “Of course,” Rose responded quickly, her brows furrowing with confusion.

  As they made their way into the living room, Jessica greeted the smiling eyes of her father with a wide grin and a hug she never wanted to escape from. She wanted to stay there forever and be his little girl. It was exactly what she was dreading most about this conversation. Seeing her father’s face was either going to kill her or make her the proudest woman in the world.

  She had witnessed his unforgiving stare, and a whole month of the silent treatment when she was fourteen and had sneaked out of the house to be with a boy—not that they were doing any more than holding hands, but fathers’ minds wander sometimes to a place where they can only see the danger.

  She had been caught, and she never heard from that boy again. Apart from the odd glance in history class, he never seemed to stare at her for more than five seconds because of the forever engraved visual of her father’s rant that night.

  “Are you alright, Jess? You’re gone as pale as a ghost.” Her father feathered his fingers along her ice-cold cheek.

  Of course, she wasn’t alright. She was about to tell her parents she was pregnant by a man they didn’t even know she was dating.

  “I’m fine,” she assured him. Her lips were trembling at her best efforts to slide them into a soft smile.

  “Will you both sit down, please?” She swallowed hard, taking a seat on the sofa opposite them.

  She couldn’t shake her mother’s scrutinizing stares as she placed her body into the soft cushions of the sofa. Her mother’s eyes could see right through her, and she knew something was up.

  “Breathe,” Jake whispered, quickly winking his eye.

  Jessica thought she was going to pass out as beads of sweat crept down her back, making her shiver violently.

  “Mom. Dad.” Jessica searched both of their faces and prayed the ground would just open up and swallow her.

  “Are you two going out?” Rose blurted, straightening her back to sit up straight as she clasped her hands on her lap, tilting her head sideways as she waited for an answer.

  Jessica didn’t know what to say. It felt like her words had gotten stuck in her throat and she was unable to find them.

  “I mean,” her mother continued, her eyes shifting between them both repeatedly, “you arrive here together, which, not so long ago, would have been like dr
awing blood from a turnip. And you have been getting along a lot better than you usually do. I noticed it the last time we all had dinner together.”

  Jessica turned to look at Jake, who seemed just as helpless as she did. There was no getting past that woman.

  “Jessica is your mother correct?” her father interrupted.

  “I am right. Just look at them both.”

  Before Jessica could respond in any sort of way, Jake tore his eyes away from hers to her parents.

  “Yes Rose, you are right.”

  She watched him smile proudly as he took her hand in his.

  She felt numb. She hadn’t even opened her mouth, and everything she had feared was unfolding there in front of her. But there was no screaming and shouting, and people telling her how none of this was going to work. And before she had a chance to digest any of it, she became wrapped in her mother’s arms, listening to her express her congratulations to them both.

  “Your mother would be so proud of you, Jake.” Rose hugged him tightly.

  “Once you treat her well,” her father huffed, “I don’t have a problem with it. Congratulations to you both.”

  “Thanks, Chris.” Jake smiled; his voice full of relief.

  And then she heard her mother go off again. She just continued to rant and rant and rant about how lovely a couple they would both make.

  “And there was me thinking you were coming here to tell me something extreme. You looked like you had the weight of the world on your shoulders,” Rose rambled on as Jessica sat there frozen in place, trying her hardest not to concentrate on her mother’s lips move at the speed of light.

  They still had to tell her parents the most important bit, but with her mother babbling on the way she was, they would never get the chance. She would have to deliver the baby in their living room if she left her mother to go on.

  “But our Jessica always was a worrier,” she continued. “I am so happy…”

  “I’m pregnant,” Jessica exclaimed, followed by a loud and painful gasp. It wasn’t meant to come out that way, was it?

  It shut her mother up if nothing else.

  “Oh,” was the only thing her mother could say.

  “Yes, oh.” Jessica nodded, feeling her cheeks burn.

  She should have just let her mother rant on, and by the way Jake was darting looks at her, he thought the same thing.

  “Now that nobody is saying anything, I will tell you everything. I am three months pregnant with Jake’s baby. And we’re not just dating, we have been going out for a few months now, and we have moved in together.”

  “A little fast, don’t you think?” Her mother’s eyes narrowed into tiny lines.

  “Probably, but we are doing this.”

  Her father spoke then, his lip twitching, “So, you got my daughter knocked up?”

  “Dad!” Jessica warned, feeling the blood pound behind her ears.

  She didn’t dare look at Jake for fear she might pass out with just the look in his eyes.

  Surprisingly, her mother had said nothing yet. Maybe she was quietly hyperventilating. God knew Jessica was.

  “You know,” Chris began, a smile edging on his thin lips, “this would be a whole lot worse if you were a stranger, Jake. But it’s not like you are going anywhere. You are already part of this family, so even if things don’t work out between you and Jess, I know you will still be there for this child.”

  Jessica thought her eyes had just popped out of her head.

  “I love your daughter, and no matter what, I will be there for my child. And things will work out for us. I know it.”

  Jessica looked towards her mother.

  “Mom, are you okay?”

  She was more than okay, and she proved it when she laughed herself into hysterics. Jessica hoped she was laughing because she was happy and not because she was about to choke her daughter.

  “You sure know how to surprise your mother.” Rose leaped up from the seat, and looking around, Jessica noticed the scared look in her father’s eyes mirrored that of the terrified one in hers. “I am proud of you, sweetie.” Rose knelt beside Jessica and held her daughter’s face in her hands.

  “What? For getting myself knocked up?” Jessica teased.

  “Don’t put it like that. You have a new life growing inside you and your father is right. It’s not like Jake can go anywhere. And he wouldn’t. I can see he loves you. He has loved you for an awfully long time.” Rose smiled, staring at them both with so much adoration. “Congratulations, to both of you. A baby is a blessing,” Rose said before she kissed Jessica softly on the cheek.

  *****

  The next morning, Jessica sat at her desk, sorting through a pile of books she had to get through by the end of the month.

  “You’re pregnant?”

  Jessica jumped, her body shaking as her head shot up to the strong, tense figure of Mark standing at her doorway as his voice stormed through her room.

  Her mouth suddenly became dry, and her hands clammed up into fists.

  “How the hell do you know that?” She stumbled over her words, trying to swallow away the terror in her voice.

  “Your boyfriend is telling people,” he said, stepping into her office, closing the door, and taking a seat in the chair opposite her.

  “He’s what?” Jessica bellowed, unable to find the strength in her legs to stand up. They hadn’t discussed that part.

  Mark rolled his irritated eyes and shook his head in disbelief.

  “You are not getting my point here, Jessica. You are pregnant,” he repeated. “Jake is doing what every other proud father-to-be would do. Believe me, I know better than anyone how it feels. But I also have a good idea of what it feels like to know the person you love the most could be dying. But he doesn’t know that part, does he, Jessica?”

  She took a deep breath, looking around the room, refusing to meet his steady gaze.

  “You’re scared in case he wants you to get rid of it, aren’t you?”

  “He wants this child more than anything else.”

  “In exchange for your life? I don’t think so.”

  Jessica wiped away the moisture stinging her eyes.

  “I know how this works, Jessica. My wife is in recovery, remember? Now you are telling people, you must be around the three months stage.”

  She didn’t answer. All she could do was stare at him and feel so helpless it felt like she was going to slide right off her chair to curl up into a ball on the floor.

  “I get you want to see this child being born. But what if it’s too late, and in exchange for your child’s life, you give your own?”

  “Exactly, it’s my child. Mark, you have two kids, right? Don’t tell me you wouldn’t give your life for them in a split second.”

  She had him. She knew by the look in his eyes, she had hit a soft spot.

  “Jessica, that doesn’t excuse what you are doing to Jake. I can’t just sit back and watch a man go on about his life, not knowing that the woman he loves is going through the hardest time in hers, and he doesn’t know about it. I can’t imagine my wife going through what she went through without telling me.”

  Her breathing became suddenly frantic. What did he mean, he couldn’t just sit back?

  “What are you saying, Mark?”

  “I am saying that if you don’t tell him, I will.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Jessica couldn’t feel anything. She was waiting for someone to come along and tell her it was all a dream. Mark couldn’t be serious, could he? He would not tell Jake about her.

  Who did he think he was? This was none of his business. Did he expect her to just crumble right there in front of him?

  “You can’t honestly tell me you are serious about this, can you?” She had to bite down on her already throbbing lip to stop herself from shouting the place down.

  “And you can’t honestly expect me to sit back and watch you go through this alone? The man you love is upstairs telling people you two are offi
cial and he is about to be a father - an enormously proud one, may I add. Do you honestly think it’s fair on him and expecting the mother of his child to be there through this?”

  Mark closed his eyes briefly as he took a deep breath, sitting back in his chair as his hand involuntarily smoothed over the stubble on his strong jawline.

  “Jessica, I don’t want to be this person who is scaring you into doing something, but I am thinking of how much you will regret it if you don’t. He loves you. The last thing he wants is to find out you are going through all of this and you never told him. And hopefully when you have this baby and you are getting better; can you imagine how hard it will be for him to know you were going through all of that on your own? He won’t just hate you; he will hate himself, and God forbid that poor child. Tell him because it will even be harder hearing it from someone else.”

  If Jessica had ever heard a threat, it was that. It suddenly felt like that threat was balancing the end of her world.

  The pain tugging at her rib cage, along with the constant pounding at her chest, made her head ache and her stomach churn as Mark stood up and made his way towards the door. She knew he would not tell Jake now, but the moment he turned his back and put his foot out of her office, she knew she was going to be constantly walking on eggshells around him, wondering when he was going to say something. The anxiety alone would kill her if the cancer didn’t.

  She needed to tell Jake. She knew it from the moment she woke this morning. With Mark now deciding to become a good Samaritan, it confirmed her decision even more so.

  “I’ll tell him.” Her mouth opened reluctantly as the words fell like poison from her swollen, bitten lips.

  “Good.” Mark smiled softly.

  Deep inside, she knew he wanted to help someone. That, someone, was not her, and if it was, it sure didn’t feel like it.

  “Just don’t leave it too late, Jessica,” he finished before leaving her office.

  She knew what it meant; don’t leave it too late because if she did, he would just jump right in there and do her dirty work for her.

  How dare he? Who was he to just storm into her life, uninvited, and try to take over? What she did in her private life was none of his business. She knew she would have to tell Jake. It was no big secret to her, but she had it planned out in her head, and she hated when people messed around with her plans.