by Nalini Singh
Abe placed one big hand on her leg, the touch one of comfort rather than sexual. She knew she should push him away, but she closed her hand over the warmth of his. She needed comfort today, needed to hang on to something or someone lest she shatter.
“We could watch a movie,” Abe suggested.
“No, I need to do something or I’ll lose my mind.” She rubbed her face. “I’m going to clean my house from top to bottom.” It would keep her hands and legs busy, hopefully distract her brain.
“I’ll help.”
“There’s no need.” She had to grit her teeth to make herself break the connection between them, gently nudging his hand back to his side of the vehicle. “I’ll call soon as the doctor gets in touch.”
“I’ll go nuts waiting on my own.” Abe shot her a look that hid none of his own tension, and she remembered there were two of them in this.
“And,” he added, “I bet you never shift all the furniture to clean underneath because some of it’s too heavy.”
The chambers of her heart seemed to fill with nails, sharp and painful, at the same time that stubborn flickers of hope whispered awake inside her. She tried to shove them aside, the pain and the hope both. “I’ll make you vacuum.”
“I can take it.”
Sarah wasn’t sure she could.
Having Abe home, the two of them doing a domestic chore together, had been one of her stupid daydreams during their marriage. Instead of dreaming about going to big, glamorous events as his date or experiencing exotic vacations by his side, she’d dreamed small, domestic dreams.
And today, when she was at her most vulnerable, her most defenseless, one of those dreams was going to come true.
CHAPTER 18
TWO HOURS LATER, Abe felt like he’d moved every piece of furniture in Sarah’s home. His arms ached, but the ache was a glorious one. In spite of her threat, she hadn’t actually made him vacuum, but she had made him pick up and individually dust each of her books as well as her bookshelves. Sarah had a lot of bookshelves.
She, meanwhile, had changed into shorts and a tee and vacuumed with a vengeance.
When he saw her getting ready to spray some cleaning liquid on her already squeaky clean bathroom tiles, he grabbed the bottle. “Wait a minute. This type of stuff has all kinds of chemicals in it.” He scowled at the laundry list of impossible-to-pronounce ingredients. “I don’t think you should use this. Just in case.”
Leaning slightly against him, Sarah looked down at the bottle with a worried eye. “Do you really think so?”
“Go. I’ll do it.”
When her face dropped, his wife obviously lost with nothing to occupy her, he said, “How about you make those egg-and-spinach things for lunch? I’ve got a craving for them.”
Her eyes lit up. “I think I have everything I need to whip up a batch.”
REFUSING TO NEUROTICALLY CHECK THE PHONE in her pocket for missed calls, Sarah concentrated on cooking the frittatas. They weren’t difficult to make, but she took precise care with every one of the steps, from blanching the spinach, to setting the oven to exactly the right temperature.
When Abe came into the kitchen a half hour later, having stowed the cleaning supplies and washed up, she pointed to the table where she’d just put a jug of fresh lemonade and a glass. “Thanks for doing that.”
Abe shrugged and poured himself a glass of the cold, refreshing drink. “It was pretty easy since you’re so hyperclean anyway.”
Sarah knew she was a bit OCD on the cleaning front, but when you’d spent time on the streets, cleanliness took on a whole new importance. At least she’d channeled her tendencies into a successful business. “What time is it?” It just slipped out.
“Just past noon.” Putting down his glass after finishing his lemonade in one go, Abe hummed a tune. “Tell me what you think of this.”
Butterflies erupted inside her at the slow, bluesy sound of his voice. Abe rarely sang on Schoolboy Choir albums, but she’d always loved listening to him when he mucked around at home. The sound sank into her bones, the lyrics wrapping around her, a man speaking of dreams that shatter under the weight of harsh reality.
“It’s sad,” she said after he finished. “But… it gets you right here.” She touched her fingers to her heart. “Did you write it?”
Abe shook his head. “David—in his pre-Thea period, when he thought he’d never have a shot with her. He and the others want me to be lead vocals on it.”
A smile took over Sarah’s face, her obsession with the phone pushed aside for the moment. “That’s wonderful.”
“There’s a reason Fox is lead singer,” Abe pointed out. “The man has serious vocal range.”
“Yes, but Fox’s voice wouldn’t work for this song.” Sarah could see exactly why his bandmates wanted Abe to take lead vocals. “You should do it.”
Abe tapped his finger on her kitchen table. “I’ll think about it.” A quick flash of white teeth. “I don’t want to become a showboat like Fox and Noah.”
Laughing at the old joke, she turned off the oven timer when it buzzed, then pulled out the tray with the frittatas. Abe helped her throw together a green salad, then the two of them sat down to lunch. Sarah tried to eat, she really did, but her stomach wasn’t in the mood to cooperate.
Abe’s dark eyes dropped to where she rubbed at her tummy. “You think it might be—”
Sarah interrupted before he could finish his question. “Just nerves.” She picked up her phone, stared at its mockingly silent face. “I’m going to take a shower.”
Abe didn’t attempt to stop her, and she spent twenty minutes in the shower, another forty minutes drying her hair and putting on makeup, before pulling on tailored black shorts and a short-sleeved top in deep orange, a thin gold chain around her neck her only ornamentation. When she padded to the living room on bare feet, she found Abe sitting on the sofa with his feet up, Flossie beside him.
The two of them were engrossed in a documentary about penguins.
And her heart, it went all mushy at the cozy sight she would’ve given anything to witness during their marriage. Fighting the soft, squishy feeling, she left them to it and walked into the kitchen with the vague idea of baking something.
The phone rang.
Sarah had it in her hand with no knowledge of having pulled it out of her pocket, but she couldn’t make herself answer it, though Dr. Snyder’s name flashed on the home screen. Abe was suddenly beside her, his arm strong and warm around her waist.
He took the phone from her unresisting hand, put it on speaker, said, “Doc, we’re both here.”
“Sarah?” Dr. Snyder said in his slightly gravelly tone. “I need your permission to share your medical results with Abe.”
“Yes,” she whispered, then coughed and answered more clearly. “I’m here, Dr. Snyder. Please tell us both.”
“There’s no doubt—you’re pregnant.”
Sarah’s knees buckled. Only Abe’s quick response, the arm he had around her waist locking tight, stopped her from crumpling to the floor. She was barely aware of him thanking the doctor and promising to get back in touch; the noise inside her head was a swarm of angry bees.
Shivering, stunned, she only snapped back to herself when Abe swung her up into his arms. “Abe, I—”
“I’ve got you.” His grip tightened.
Sarah hadn’t been afraid he’d drop her. Abe carried her like she weighed nothing, and she wasn’t a small woman. She’d been about to say that she was better, could walk. But seeing the hard line of his jaw, feeling the rigid strain of his body as it moved against her, she kept her silence until they reached the sofa and he sat down with her in his lap.
Scrambling off to curl up at the other end, her arms around her knees, she forced herself to ask, “Are you angry?”
“What?” His eyebrows drew together over his eyes, his body angled toward her. “No, of course I’m not angry. I’m worried—about you.”
“Oh.” She swallowed, tried a wobbly
smile. “Can’t blame you when I nearly pulled a Scarlett O’Hara impression.”
Abe stretched out one arm on the back of the sofa. “So.” His tone said he wasn’t about to be distracted. “We’re having a kid together.”
Sarah’s hand crept over her abdomen, her terror as brilliant as the sudden burst of love in her heart. “I’m no good at keeping babies alive, Abe.” Hot and wet, the tears locked up in her throat began to fall. “They die inside me.”
“Sarah, sweetheart, don’t cry.” He hauled her back into his lap.
She didn’t resist this time and he held her close, stroked her hair, her back, whispered things she didn’t hear, his voice a deep rumble against her as she fell apart.
SARAH’S HEARTBROKEN SOBS DESTROYED ABE. He wanted so much to take away her pain, fix things, but he could do nothing except hold her safe while she splintered into a million pieces.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” she said after a long time, her voice a thin whisper.
A deep ache in his chest, he cupped the back of her head. “I’ll back whatever you decide.” That was all he could say, Sarah’s pain too violent for any other response.
She didn’t answer for a long time. When she did, it was another punch to the gut. “What if my body can’t hold on to our baby?”
Abe didn’t know how to ease Sarah’s hurt, but he couldn’t stay silent when the guilt in her voice was a heavy, suffocating blanket. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said. “You did everything right.” He knew that without having been there for her second pregnancy, because during the first, she’d religiously followed all medical advice. “You hear me, Sarah? You did all you could. Some things in life we can’t control.”
Sarah didn’t answer.
It wasn’t until maybe an hour later that she stirred. Sliding out of his arms, she left without a word; he wanted to follow, see that she was all right, but he told himself to give her space. She knew he was here, his shoulders ready to help her bear this weight.
She returned after five minutes, having washed her face and redone the knot into which she’d twisted her curls. “We need to work out the logistics.”
Abe wasn’t surprised by her sudden calm. Sarah had always liked to organize things, had found serenity in ticking off items on a list. Back at the start of their marriage, she used to make lists for what he needed to pack when he went on tour. He’d find the list beside his phone, smile because she’d always add smiley faces next to stern warnings about essentials he couldn’t afford to forget if he didn’t want to be caught short. Those lists had been for fun anyway—Sarah had ended up packing for him more times than not.
He could still see her standing alone in the doorway, waving good-bye as he left her before that last tour. It would’ve been easy to convince himself that he didn’t know why he’d left her behind rather than bringing her along, but Abe was through with self-deluding lies. He hadn’t taken Sarah on tour because she’d meant too much to him. He’d been in no headspace to love anyone as much as he’d loved this sweet, smart, beautiful woman who’d tumbled unexpectedly into his life. So he’d tried to keep her at arm’s length.
He’d been a coward and she’d paid the price for his spinelessness.
“I want to be there,” he said today. “For the whole deal.”
Sarah walked into the kitchen, busied herself chopping up ingredients for a salad. “We can work out visitation for after the baby is—”
“No, Sarah.” Having followed her, he took a seat on the stool directly opposite her, only the speckled gray of her counter between them. “I want to be there for the pregnancy too.” If she’d made a different decision, he’d have gone with her then too. “The scans and the vitamins and all that shit.”
Sarah’s knife stopped moving on the carrots she’d cut into teeny, tiny slivers. Huge, dark eyes lifted to his. “What?” Open disbelief.
He didn’t look away, didn’t flinch. It was time for him to man up and step up. No more hurting her because he was so fucking scared of how much she could hurt him if he let her in. No more being so terrified of losing her to death one day that he’d rather push her away. No more being an asshole who left her alone.
“I want to be there to drive you to the doctor’s,” he said, “and I want to be there when you find out if it’s a boy or a girl.” He took a deep breath, his chest shuddering with the force of his emotions. “I might have been a failure as a husband, but please give me the chance to be a good dad.”
Sarah blinked really fast, then returned her attention to the pale wood of her chopping board. Scraping the demolished carrot into a bowl, she picked up an orange bell pepper and, slicing it in half, began to clean out the seeds. “What about your music?”
The sharp words bit hard. But Sarah had more than earned the right to demand an answer, demand certain promises. “We’re not planning to tour again for at least a year or two, and any other appearances that come up, I’ll check first with you to make sure it doesn’t clash with baby-related stuff.”
Sarah began to cut the bell pepper into thin, rectangular pieces. “The others won’t mind? Fox, Noah, David?”
“Hell no.” He rubbed his face. “It was never about them, Sarah. You know my behavior was my responsibility.”
The magnificent Amazon who was his ex-wife continued to slice the bell pepper, her expression difficult to read. “It’s not a short-term commitment, Abe.”
Putting down the knife at last, she placed her hands on the counter and took a deep breath. “If… if this baby makes it”—one hand going to her belly—“he or she is going to need you always. Do you understand that? It doesn’t matter if life gets hard or if your addictions start howling, or if something horribly sad happens, you still have to be a dad.”
She held up a hand when he would’ve spoken. “I know losing Tessie hurt you. So much.” A thickness in her voice. “But what if your mom dies or one of the guys in the band? Would you still be able to maintain?”
Taking a quick breath, she continued. “Because if you can’t, if you have even the slightest inkling that you might break, then you need to walk away.” No anger in her tone, nothing but a passionate conviction. “I don’t want my child exposed to a father who’s here one minute, gone the next. I won’t have a little boy or girl heartbroken because their daddy disappears for weeks or months at a time.”
Abe took the quiet verbal blows without attempting to defend himself. Hell, those blows were far softer than he deserved. “I’ll maintain,” he vowed. “You can trust me.”
No response.
Panic knotted his gut. “Give me the pregnancy to prove myself. That’s nine months—”
“Four weeks less,” Sarah corrected, a sudden heat in her face as she stole a glance at the counter where they’d come together in naked passion.
Abe’s blood pounded. “Right, eight months, give or take.” He coughed past the roughness in his throat, damn glad she couldn’t see his lower half. Now was not the time to be sporting a rampant cock. “That’s two-thirds of a year.”
He waited until she met his gaze. “If I prove myself to you in that time, promise me you’ll let me be a dad to our baby.” He knew he could take her to court, get visitation, but Abe didn’t want that. He wanted to be an everyday part of his kid’s life, feed their baby a bottle, change a dirty diaper, sing him or her to sleep.
To do that, he’d have to become a part of Sarah’s life.
Abe didn’t think Sarah had realized that yet. She was thinking only of the baby. But Abe, he’d been thinking of Sarah for a long time. From the way she laughed, to the way she danced, to how she’d looked at him once, before he’d tried his fucking best to snuff out that rare, beautiful light inside her.
“All right,” she said slowly. “Let’s see how it goes.”
It wasn’t the most ringing endorsement, but Abe would take what he could get, work with it. This time around, he’d be the man Sarah deserved.
CHAPTER 19
LYING ALONE IN B
ED THAT NIGHT, Sarah thought of the way Abe had pulled out his phone and made the call for her follow-up appointment with Dr. Snyder. Because of her history, the doctor would be monitoring her closely throughout her pregnancy. He’d also told her he’d be referring her for specialist scans at a far earlier point than he did with most women.
Sarah had no argument with any of it, just wanted her baby safe.
Appointment made, Abe had promised to return at ten the following day to take her to the first visit. Sarah knew that if he kept his word about wanting to be there for everything, the media would sniff them out sooner rather than later. However, the possibility that had horrified her only days ago was no longer her primary concern.
She stroked her belly.
If it meant her baby would have a father, a real father, then she’d suck it up and find a way to weather the harsh glare of fame. “Stay,” she whispered to her belly. “Please stay. I promise you I won’t ever hurt you. Please don’t go.”
Her eyes grew hot, her chest agonizingly tight.
Turning over onto her side, she stared out the window she’d left slightly ajar to let in the night breeze. Her bedroom was on the second floor and the window had a security latch, but she couldn’t actually fall asleep until she’d closed and locked it. Even after all these years, she still didn’t trust the night.
Bad things happened in the night.
Today she had no reason to get up and shut the window, her mind wide awake. Picking up her phone, she went to message Lola to see if her best friend was up, hesitated. She wasn’t ready for anyone else to know about this pregnancy, which meant the only person she could talk to was Abe.
She scrolled to his name in her address book, hesitated with her finger hovering over it.
I want to be there for the pregnancy… The scans and the vitamins and all that shit.
Setting her jaw, she decided to take him at his word and made the call. To her surprise, he picked up almost at once. “Sarah? What’s wrong?”