by Evelyn Glass
“I can’t believe any of this.” Lucy shook her head as she sat down on my couch, dumping her bag next to her and stretching her arms up over her head.
“Me neither,” I sighed heavily and flopped down into the armchair next to her.
“So, do you know how far gone you are?” She nodded towards my stomach.
“No idea. Maybe a month, at the most?”
“And…” She hesitated, and I knew the question that was going to come out of her mouth next. “What are you going to do with it?”
“The baby?” I patted my stomach protectively, and shrugged. “I don’t know. I wanted to keep it, but I don’t want to be a single parent. And with Jazz AWOL…”
“Have you stopped by the club house? That biker thing that he’s part of?” she suggested.
I’d called earlier in the week, but there had been no answer—and I found it highly unlikely they would tell me where Jazz was even if they knew. They were loyal to him, at the end of the day, and not me. I wondered if they even knew what had happened, or if Jazz had dumped them the same way he had me.
“I called, but nothing, and I don’t want to actually go down there without him.” I sighed. “I don’t know where he would have gone. If he’s gone anywhere.”
“Huh?” Lucy furrowed her brow.
“Maybe he just…went for a drive?” I shrugged, groping around for some kind of answer. I hadn’t felt obliged to find one for myself, but now that Lucy was sitting here in front of me, I couldn’t help but feel even more impotent than ever. “Maybe he’s back at the house?”
She leaned forward. “Have you checked?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “I…I’ve gone by there every day, and no one’s been home. Or at least no one’s answering the door.”
“Moan,” she began gently, and I knew what was coming next. Lucy wasn’t a coddler, so when that tone of voice came out I knew she really, really meant it.
“I know, I know.” I waved my hand, not needing to hear it. “I know he’s probably gone. I just…fuck, I just needed to think he was still in this with me, you know?”
“Well, now I’m in it with you,” she replied firmly, and I couldn’t keep the smile from my face. Despite everything that had happened, someone was still on my side. And that was priceless.
“If he’s gone, what are you going to do?” She nodded towards my stomach again.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I guess I’m waiting to see if he’s really gone or if this is just…I don’t know, if this is just panic or something.”
“You know that even if he comes back, things aren’t going to be the same,” she warned me. “I mean, he loves you, and you love him, but he’s never going to get over this.”
“I know.” I bowed my head, conceding her point. I knew she was right—that even if Jazz were to walk through that door right now and tell me he loved me and wanted to raise our baby together, it wouldn’t be as easy as that. Ella would haunt us, hanging over our heads, the ghost of the child he once had. Life would never be the same—and not in the overdramatic way that most people used that term. No, our lives had been changed irrevocably by what had happened. Though I still held out some small hope that Ella was alive, I knew that the chances were slim, and that moving past that would be almost impossible.
“But…you still want to be with him?” she pressed.
I cocked my head at her, not sure exactly what she was getting at. I nodded again. “Yeah, I do. I know it’s crazy, but I have to know whether or not we could make this happen.”
“You love him?”
I nodded, unable to get the words out. But she didn’t need to hear them. She reached over and squeezed my knee.
“Then we need to go out and find him,” she murmured, a small, slightly sad, smile on her lips. I raised my eyebrows at her.
“The fuck?”
“Everything that’s happened…” She hesitated, as though trying to make sure this was coming out how she wanted it to. “You deserve a shot at something you want. I don’t want you to spend the rest of your life wondering what would have happened if you’d done things differently.”
“Neither do I,” I sighed. “But where do we start?”
“We don’t have to think about that now.” Lucy waved her hand, dismissing me. “But I just want you to know that I’m here for you, and that we can figure this out, the two of us.”
“Girl detectives.” I managed a grin. She flashed one back at me in return, and for a second I forgot about all of it—all that mattered was that my best friend was here, and that she and I were going to put the world to rights. I found myself welling up once again—Jesus, I was like a fucking faucet in the last few days. I dabbed at my eyes and lay back in the seat, finding myself suddenly exhausted. I hadn’t been sleeping all that much in the last few days thanks to my thoughts bouncing off the walls of my head endlessly when I lay down at night, but now that I had passed them on to someone else, I felt able to relax again. It was as though someone had stuck a pin in me and let out all the tension that had accumulated since last week.
“Tired?” Lucy smiled at me gently, and I nodded. My eyes were already drifting shut as she tucked an arm around my waist and pulled me to my feet. She guided me through to bed, pulling off my shoes as I flopped down on top of the covers.
“Thank you for all of this.” I propped myself up on my elbows in a moment of lucidity. “I don’t…I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Anytime,” she replied sincerely.
“And hey, you know I want to hear that gossip about the guy at your work when I get up tomorrow.” I raised my eyebrows at her. “Promise?”
She laughed, the sound almost sounding odd to my ears it had been so long. “Of course!”
“Are you okay to get yourself set up on the couch?” I yawned, rolling under the covers and shimmying out of my jeans. “I put out the covers—”
“Of course I am,” she assured me. “Seriously. Now will you just go to sleep?”
“Whatever you say.” I peered over the edge of the covers at her, and she went to switch out the light. I felt like a kid again, coddled and tired and taken care of.
“Goodnight,” she called softly.
“Night.”
She flicked the light off, casting me into darkness, and I found myself staring at the ceiling as I drifted off to sleep. I had no idea how I’d ended up here—pregnant, alone, mourning the loss of a daughter I never even really got to call my own. But all I knew was that I wouldn’t opt out of it if I’d had the chance. If someone had come to me all those months ago and told me that I would love and be loved by the two of them as much as I had been—I wouldn’t have walked away. I couldn’t have. And yes, things hadn’t gone according to plan—but there was still hope. That was all I needed, at the end of the day, the promise of something more, of something better.
We could still put the pieces together if we wanted to. The life we made after this, I knew it would be different—it would exist on a far different plane to the one we had lived beforehand. But maybe that was for the best. Maybe starting anew was the only way we could make this work. I thought of Jazz, and Ella, and the baby—and for a moment, could see the four of us together, a family, happier than we’d ever been. And it was on that image that I allowed myself to drift off to sleep, clinging to hope, and the promise of a future that I could be happy in.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The next morning, I woke up to the sound of two voices in my living room. I sprang to my feet and rolled out of bed at once; my brain flashed to images of the police, of more bad news, but I did my best to calm myself down and remind myself that not every little thing had to be an indicator of more imminent tragedy.
I pressed my ear to the door and listened for a moment; I recognized one of the voices as Lucy’s, but the other was deeper, heavier, and I couldn’t quite place it. I pulled on some clothes, put my hand on the door, and made my way out into the living room.
My jaw dropped when I saw who was
sitting there. Jazz, arms crossed over his chest on my couch, face drawn and gaunt. I wanted to go to him, to wrap my arms tight around his neck and tell him that everything was going to be okay—but we both knew that I didn’t know that for certain, and I felt like I’d have been mocking him with the half-promise. It seemed, from looking at his face, that he hadn’t eaten or slept in a good few days. I wondered at once where he’d been, and realized that I’d been standing in silence in the doorway of the living room for a good thirty seconds. Lucy and Jazz were both looking at me, and I did my best to shake the last vestiges of sleep and surprise from my head and sit down to join them.
“When did you…?” I began, trying to keep my voice steady, but tears were already welling up in my eyes, my emotions getting the better of me. Lucy placed a hand on my back, and I pressed my fingertips to my forehead. The pressure helped calm me down, relaxing me far enough that I felt as though I could catch my breath again.
“This morning,” Lucy filled in for me. “He got back this morning. I called him after you went to bed and told him that he needed to get down here so the two of you could talk.”
“And you just…came?” I glanced up at him. That was all it took? Or maybe it was Lucy’s strident nature that had convinced him to finally stop by. I knew that I had trouble saying no to her when she got it in her head to do something.
“She said there was stuff we needed to talk about and that I owed it to you to at least try and talk things through.” He bowed his head, speaking at last. His voice sounded strained, as though he was already regretting coming out here.
“Do you know about the…?” I trailed off, glancing at Lucy. She shook her head. Jazz looked between us, eyebrows raised.
“The what?”
“The baby,” I blurted out, forcing myself to say it before I could back out. The words felt foreign between my lips—it hadn’t been long enough for the facts of the matter to really sink in yet. My heart thumped in my chest as I stared at my hands, waiting for him to respond. I made myself meet his gaze, but found that he, too, had his eyes trained on the ground.
“Jazz?” Lucy prompted. His head snapped up and he narrowed his eyes at me. It wasn’t in suspicion, but something else—doubt, as though this news coming on the back of everything else was just too much to handle.
“When did you find out?” he asked, standing up and crouching down next to me. He balanced his elbows on his knees and let his hands dangle between his legs, staring up at me intently as though checking for any flicker that this might not be true.
“Last week,” I admitted. “That’s what I was coming around to tell you when…”
I didn’t want to have to say the words out loud again, but there they were—the reminder of what had happened only a few days ago. I wasn’t sure what I thought was going to happen if I said it again—as if he might have forgotten by now, and would flee this place at the reminder. He flinched slightly, but his gaze didn’t waver.
“The day of the fire,” he finished for me, running his hands through his hair. “Jesus, Mona. Jesus.”
“I think I’m about a month along,” I went on softly. “I haven’t been to a doctor yet, but…roughly.”
“And you want to keep it?” he asked. There was a flicker of panic in his eyes, as though he feared that I might tell him no.
“Yes.” I nodded. “I do. And I want to raise it with you, whether we’re…together, or not.”
He fell silent, got to his feet, and sat back down on the couch opposite me. The space between us made me panic, and I had to fight the sudden, ridiculous urge to reach out for him as though closing the physical gap between us might close the mental one, too.
The silence weighed heavy on the room, and Lucy looked between the two of us, waiting for a reaction. Jazz was slumped in a heap on the couch, eyes fixed on the ground again, while I was clasping and unclasping my hands in my lap as a distraction. I didn’t know what to do or say next; I assumed he would either storm off in a rage or fall to his knees with joy. This silence… I didn’t like this. I didn’t know what to do with this.
“I want to raise it with you,” he finally filled in quietly, so quiet that for a moment I didn’t even realize that he was speaking. A flood of relief passed over my system at hearing those words come out of his mouth, and I let out a breath I didn’t even realize I’d been holding.
“Do you want to…be with me?” I asked, the words heavy on my tongue.
He nodded wordlessly.
“I should go,” Lucy got to her feet. “I’ll stop by later, okay?”
“Okay.” I looked up at her as she came over to give me a hug. “Thanks,” I murmured into her ear, and she nodded. I couldn’t verbalize how grateful I was with Jazz still in the room, but she understood it. I would make it clear when she came back just how much this meant to me.
We both watched as she made her way out the door, and Jazz slid onto the armchair next to me. He tossed an arm around my shoulders, and just feeling the weight of it there was a comfort.
“Why did you go?” I asked, glad that we didn’t have to look at each other; speaking these words into the void and pretending there would never be anyone else to hear them was so much easier than acknowledging that we needed answers from each other directly.
“I had to get away,” he responded, voice almost robotic. “I just couldn’t…it was too much. Being there without her.”
“Were you ever planning on coming back?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “If Lucy hadn’t called me on your phone, I don’t know that I ever would have. I assumed I’d fucked things up with you, and I was just going to ghost the Marauders…”
“Did they even know you left?” I wondered. I hadn’t heard from any of them, and had assumed that at least one would get in contact with me at some point once they realized Jazz was missing.
“Yeah.” He lowered his voice. “My deputy did. I was going to let him just step up and hope that no one bothered to come looking for me, but…”
“But you’re back,” I finished off for him. “It’s for the best. You’ve got a life here, even if—”
I stopped myself before I could finish off that sentence. I knew that hearing the rest of it wouldn’t do either of us any good.
“So, a baby,” Jazz jumped in, changing the subject. I nodded, put my head in my hands, and laughed.
“What?”
“It’s just so…ridiculous.”
I looked up at him at last, managing to keep the smile of my face. “You were meant to be my client and you got me pregnant.”
“I don’t even remember not using a condom any of the times.” He shook his head. “I never thought I would have another—”
“Kid?” I finished for him, and a smile curled on to his lips.
“Girlfriend,” he corrected me. I raised my eyebrows at him playfully, and for a moment there, it felt as though none of the last week had happened—that he was just visiting mine to pass the time, that the two of us were just hanging out and having fun as people in the first year of their relationship were meant to do. I wanted to wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him, kiss him to remind us both why he wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon.
He leaned down and planted a kiss on my forehead, and his lips traveled down to find my mouth; I sighed softly against him, relieved and in love and glad to have this bit of comfort to cling to. The angle was awkward, so he tucked his arms beneath me and pulled me onto his lap so he could kiss me harder.
It was so easy to forget everything when I was in his arms like this. I never thought it worked like that before; prior to Jazz, every encounter I’d had with my previous boyfriends had always been tangled up in what had been going on around us. But right then, everything dropped away as he pushed his tongue into my mouth and kissed me harder. I felt a heat growing between my legs, and I couldn’t remember anything but him and how he felt and how he smelled and just how much I wanted him.
“I love you.” He pulled back
and caught my head between his hands, gazing intently into my eyes. I only needed to nod in return for him to kiss me again, tucking his arms beneath me and pulling me against his chest. He carried us over to the couch and laid me down, climbing on top of me so I could feel his full weight pressing down; I was reminded for a moment of our encounter in the safe house, when we’d made this baby, and wrapped my arms around him to draw him closer. The man I loved. The father of my child. He ran his hand across my stomach and I shivered at everything it implied.
“I missed you so much,” he murmured, kissing down my neck; he was already shimmying down my pajama bottoms, his hands slipping into my panties as he began to play with me. I was already wet from his touch, and I hadn’t realized just how much I’d been craving it till that instant. As soon as his fingers found my clit, I gasped loudly and my body tensed up beneath him. Every movement felt cathartic, every breath that skimmed my skin a release. I ground against his hand, and he let me use him, allowing me to set the pace and intensity. My lips parted and my breath came faster; I was already slick just at the promise of him. He brushed his mouth against mine again, moving down to suck lightly on my ear. I shuddered, shoulders hunching as pleasure coursed across my body in waves.