With Brave Wings

by Cara Dee

  "I'm here, I'm here, I'm here." Noah ran over and jumped onto the couch, jostling Sophie and Daniel. "Danny-man texted me. Come to Uncle Noah, honey."

  "Oh…" Sophie whined and whacked him on the chest.

  "And so the violence starts. It's okay, we love you anyway." Noah was having way too much fucking fun with this. "By the way, didn’t I call it?"

  "Shut up," Sophie growled.

  "She's so cute," he told Daniel. "Like a kitten."

  Daniel chuckled. "She's got claws. I wouldn’t piss her off."

  "How about we don’t talk about me like I'm not here?" Sophie straightened in her seat and rubbed her eyes. "Okay. Deep breaths." She took her own advice and drew in a breath, releasing it slowly. "No need to panic. I'm just growing a boy like I'm some tree."

  "You're having a boy?" Noah smiled, and it was fucking sweet.

  It made Sophie wanna cry again, but she'd run out of tears for the moment. Instead, she nodded weakly and snatched up one of the sonograms for him. She'd gotten like ten, and she'd tucked away a handful for herself. And Tennyson, she guessed.

  Ugh.

  "Twenty weeks," she said quietly.

  Noah grinned down at the little photo. "So cool. Can I keep this?"

  "Sure." Sophie smiled slightly at that. "It doesn’t feel real yet, but the doctor said I might start showing soon and that's supposed to help."

  "Well, your rack's bigger," Noah said frankly. "I speak for the straight men when I say we appreciate it. A lot."

  Sophie looked down at her boobs and shook her chest a bit. Just to see. Hmm. Maybe. They jiggled more than they usually did.

  "Damn. Do that again."

  "That’s enough out of you," Daniel told Noah, chuckling. "Sophie, what do you want for dinner? Brooklyn and Maliah are coming over, too."

  "Oh?" She looked up. "Since when?"

  "Since I texted them. I know you, darling." He touched her cheek. "You're gonna wanna mope and close yourself in and think you're all alone. But you're not. You've gained a weird little family here. All right?"

  Sophie blinked then found out her tears hadn't run out at all.

  *

  It took her a few days, and then Sophie was slowly adjusting to the fact that she was expecting a baby. She rested a lot, read even more, cuddled with Max, cried rivers, and began looking at her body in a new light.

  Her belly was poking out.

  Aside from a meeting with the animators for the next movie, the only work-related appointment she'd had was with her publicist. Sage agreed when Sophie said she wanted as much privacy as possible for this. Sophie wasn’t ready to go public with anything, and it wasn’t a priority, anyway.

  Contacting Tennyson, however… Yeah, priority.

  Pacing in her sparsely decorated guest room, she held her phone in a tight grip as she tried to picture a crib and other baby furniture in here.

  It was the room next to her bedroom, so it made sense. The third bedroom was across the hall and was currently a dumping zone for things Sophie didn’t know where to put. Gifts from designers, a yoga mat, a couple boxes of childhood things, and leftover furniture.

  "Okay, quit stalling," she whispered to herself.

  Scrolling down to Tennyson's number, she pressed Call and waited.

  She wasn’t too surprised when he didn’t answer because she remembered he'd told her he was going off the grid. So she left a message.

  "Hi, Tennyson. It's Sophie." She cleared her throat and looked down, lifting her top to see her somewhat flat stomach. "Um, I need to talk to you about something. Give me a call when you get this? Bye."

  *

  Los Angeles

  "I can have my assistant do this for you, Sophie," Daniel said soothingly.

  She shook her head and wiped her cheeks. "I have to learn. I don’t want others running my life better than me."

  So she continued studying the materials she'd printed out. Home economics, DIY projects, making your own baby food, breastfeeding—yea or nay?—babyproofing the loft… There was so much, but she was determined.

  *

  Los Angeles

  "Who knew I could look so delicious?" Sophie grinned, seated in the screening room as the studio showed the actors the sketches of their animated characters. In a movie about foods escaping a restaurant, she would play an adorable French fry appropriately named Frenchy.

  Would her son one day giggle while watching this movie?

  "I'm hotter." Mary, a costar, winked at her. And Sophie supposed she was right, considering Mary's character was a jalapeño.

  Chapter 4

  A month of solitude in Mendocino had kick-started Tennyson's heart after working around the clock to finish Unrecovered. He'd indulged in sleeping late, eating good food, reading scripts, as well as some fiction and autobiographies, running along the beach, and enjoying the sunset with a scotch in hand.

  Reenergized and ready for some adventure, he drove to San Francisco—where Asher had been visiting one of his dog shelters—and the two brothers got on the first of their flights to Albuquerque.

  "You built some muscle." Asher scowled as he fastened his seat belt. "Did you buy new gear, too? I saw the size of the bag you checked."

  "Of course I did." Tennyson frowned. "Rock climbing isn't like riding a bicycle, Ash. We haven't climbed in fifteen years."

  "Now you're just making me feel old." Asher sighed and pulled out his phone. "I'll get new stuff when we get there, and we'll find a bolted route for novices."

  "We'd be doing that, anyway." Tennyson shook his head. "I don’t want to carry you through a desert again."

  Perhaps that was an exaggeration, but the memory was enough for Asher to wince. When they were twenty-one and twenty-two, they'd gone bouldering in Utah one summer. Hours into the hike, they'd found a good spot, and Asher had been cocky as hell.

  He'd taken on more than he could handle, and not only had he fallen to the ground, but he'd missed his crash pad and broken his foot. Tennyson had been forced to support Asher all the way back to camp.

  Asher hummed, though he was focused on something else now. "This is the third time Sophie's canceled an interview, and we need to promote Barcelona Quarter more."

  "I hope nothing's wrong." Tennyson dug around in his jeans to find his own phone. He hadn't checked it in a month, having redirected all his work calls to his assistant. The plan was to catch up on the outside world in between hikes and climbing. "Where the hell did I put it?"

  "Put what?"

  "My phone." Tennyson stood up to check his pockets, but it wasn’t there.

  "Sometimes you're ancient, Tee. I couldn’t function an hour without my phone."

  "That makes you sound like a thirteen-year-old girl," Tennyson told him. He sat down again and unzipped his backpack, wondering if he'd put it there.

  He had nothing against technology, but sometimes he needed to unplug. He got headaches too easily, and always being available wasn’t fucking healthy. So it was without shame he switched off his phone the rare times he got to spend at the only place he felt at home.

  If anyone wanted to reach him, they could forward their messages to his assistant, who sent him an update once a week. Then there was the landline, though only a handful of people had that number, and he'd unplugged that one too this time.

  He was used to working on productions where he had at least six months of editing, and then an additional few months of promo before the premiere. In short, when filming began, it was usually about a year before the red carpet.

  For Unrecovered, he'd worked with less than half of that.

  There was no way he'd apologize for the month he'd taken to recharge.

  Had he given Sophie his assistant's number, though?

  He couldn’t remember.

  "I can't fucking find it." He was annoyed but not too bothered by it. Maybe he'd packed it, maybe he'd forgotten it at home. He doubted he'd missed anything other than his mother's incessant messages about skipping Thanksgiving.


  Christmas was merely days away now, and the only reason he'd be getting out of that holiday was because his parents were going away.

  The plane began taxiing out on the runway, so Tennyson pulled his hoodie over his head and folded it into a pillow.

  "What the fuck? Tennyson, you got a tattoo?"

  "Oh. Yeah." He looked down at the underside of his forearm, seeing the grayscale feather with drops of splashed paint near the end. "This one's a few months old, though. I got another one last month—on my leg."

  Asher looked at Tennyson as if he had grown three heads. "Show me."

  There was plenty of legroom in business class, so he leaned forward and pulled up the denim to reveal his right calf. Waves crashed up against a lighthouse he'd had inked right before he'd gone home to Mendocino.

  "What's gotten into you?" Ash smiled strangely. "You're different."

  "Don’t be ridiculous." Tennyson pushed down his pant leg again and sat back. "I'm only trying to return to the land of the living."

  "Huh." Asher shook his head. "So who're you hoping to guide home with that lighthouse?"

  Tennyson didn’t reply.

  *

  It was warm for December, even for southern New Mexico, and Tennyson wiped sweat off his forehead once he'd reached the top of the rock. With Asher being completely unprepared, climbing had flown out the window, so Tennyson had found them a good crag for bouldering outside of Las Cruces.

  This was the second day they were coming to the City of Rocks to blow off some steam and get stronger.

  "I'm getting too old for this," Asher groaned.

  Tennyson shook his head, amused, and peered down the boulder where his little brother was trying to find a good grip. "What's wrong with you? You gotta tape up for those cracks. They're sharp."

  Asher shot him a glare and then jumped down onto the pad to start over after taping up his hands.

  Tennyson glanced out over the open desert and slid on his shades. It was fucking beautiful out here. The City of Rocks was just that, an area of boulders sticking up from the ground, a meadow-like desert surrounding them.

  The crag was popular for bouldering, and it was easy to find smaller boulders to climb without hiking for hours.

  Looking down again, Tennyson asked Asher if he wanted him to climb down to be his spotter. The problem—the boulder—was some fifteen feet high, which didn’t sound like much, but the landing was anything but soft.

  "You're"—Asher panted—"making me…look bad." He swung his foot to get a good foothold into a crevice. "Hhhungh." With a grunt, he pushed himself up slightly and managed to slip his hand into a crack.

  "Make a fist," Tennyson encouraged. "Jam it."

  Asher grinned even though he was clearly exhausted, but Tennyson got a kick out of it. Because he could see the fire returning in his brother. Fifteen years had passed, but memories were coming back. Memories of cuts and scrapes, fierce determination, strengthening bodies, and burning muscles.

  It was invigorating.

  *

  They shared a hotel room in the small town of Deming, located between the City of Rocks and Las Cruces. It was on the third day Tennyson began to regret the sharing part. Because as much fun as they had during the day when they climbed, the evenings were all about work for Asher, and Tennyson heard every phone call.

  Coming out of the bathroom after his shower, he fastened his watch and tapped it pointedly for Asher to get off the damn phone. Tennyson would've been more patient if it weren't for the fact that this was his vacation and he was hungry as fuck.

  Asher nodded and held up a finger. "Okay, that’s great," he told whomever he was on the phone with. "No, I was only surprised because she's worked so hard. But it's good that she's not canceling." There was a pause, and Tennyson wondered if they were discussing Sophie. "Rescheduling is fine, and have the interviewer fly out if she wants to stay in LA for whatever reason."

  By the time he wrapped up the call, Tennyson had dressed in a pair of jeans and a hoodie, and he sat down on the edge of his bed to find his eye drops in his toiletry bag.

  "What's up?" he asked.

  Asher's brow furrowed and he scrolled down on his phone. "Sophie. I need to call her tomorrow. Remember I thought she was canceling a bunch of appointments?" Tennyson frowned and nodded, and Ash went on. "She's not—but she's rescheduling, and I don’t know why."

  Tennyson didn’t know what to say, other than he was worried. Ever since she'd put her diva antics and princess behavior behind her, she'd been nothing but accommodating. She always pushed herself to be her absolute best.

  "You ready to go eat?" Ash asked.

  "Yeah." Tennyson ducked into the bathroom real quick to insert some drops into his eyes, and then he grabbed his wallet before they left.

  On the way to the restaurant, he made a mental note to call Sophie when he got back to the hotel. If something was wrong, he wanted to be there for her.

  The desert town was lit up for Christmas, but it didn’t really feel like the holiday had arrived.

  "Hold on." Asher grabbed Tennyson's shoulder as they were passing a bodega. "What the fuck is this?" He walked over to a newsstand and snatched up a magazine.

  Upon seeing it was a tabloid, Tennyson rolled his eyes. "Since when do you read gossip?"

  Asher turned and slapped the magazine to Tennyson's chest. "Since I learned your ex is pregnant."

  What?

  Tennyson held up the magazine and saw the headline.

  "The Party Princess is Pregnant!"

  Having lived and breathed the industry for years, Tennyson was ready to brush it off as bullshit, but then he saw the grainy photos. Three of them on the cover, one with a circle around Sophie's belly. Then a centerfold that was all about her. Several photos of Sophie, Max, Brooklyn, and Maliah on the beach.

  Sophie was wearing what looked like cotton shorts and a bulky sweatshirt, but at some point, she had unzipped it. And it was clear as day. Her snug top underneath the hoodie hugged a small, yet very distinct baby bump.

  Photo after photo. Sophie and Maliah were tossing a tennis ball for Max to chase, and the wind blew the shirt aside. So many angles of proof. She was pregnant.

  Tennyson swallowed dryly, queasy all of a sudden.

  While he'd been irrationally jealous at the thought of Sophie sleeping with someone else, he'd never once considered she would fall in love and find the man of her dreams. Not this fast. Not this seriously—that it ended with a fucking pregnancy.

  He shouldn’t feel hurt, but he did.

  "I'd say our vacation is over," Asher said. "I'll check flights for tomorrow. Guess we're spending Christmas in LA."

  "Why?" Tennyson replied numbly.

  "Isn't it obvious?" Asher scowled. "You need to talk to her."

  "Why the fuck would I do that?" Tennyson snapped irritably. "Let her spend the holidays with…" He waved a hand and returned the tabloid to the stand. "Whatever his name is."

  He'd never been this conflicted, but he knew what he wanted—or rather, didn’t want. He didn’t want Sophie with anyone. It was incredibly juvenile and insane to think that, but Tennyson wasn’t in control of his feelings. He needed to rebuild his life and knew she was supposed to do the same; he wasn’t ready for a relationship. But he wasn’t ready for her to be with someone else, either.

  "Jesus Christ, Tee." Asher stared at him in disbelief. "No goddamn wonder you took that route, you jealous bastard. You're insecure. But maybe you should consider the fact that this could be your fucking child."

  Tennyson blanched.

  Chapter 5

  Los Angeles

  While Sophie waited for the dispatcher to connect her call with the radio show she was being interviewed by, she set up her laptop on her kitchen counter and went online to find cookbooks.

  Brooklyn was a great teacher, but Sophie couldn’t always depend on her.

  "You there, Ms. Pierce? We're ready for you after the commercial."

  "I'm ready."

 
; *

  Los Angeles

  Practicing lines for an animated comedy would probably be easier if Sophie weren't a hormonal mess, but it had to be done.

  "Oui, oui, we will start a revolution!" she said, reading her script. "Follow me!"

  Zane had been kind enough to help her, so he read the other lines. "Can someone inform Frenchy over here she's not really French?"

  Sophie let out a horrified gasp. "Sacre bléu! What do you know—you are nothing but a common sack of rice! I bet you are cheap too, made in China." She sniffed derisively.

  "Well, duh." Zane chuckled and then covered for the next character. "Frenchy, I hate to break it to you, but you're from a factory in Buffalo."

  "No, no, this cannot be!"

  *

  San Francisco

  "Thank you for coming, Sophie."

  "Thank you for having me." Sophie grinned and waved to the audience.

  "First of all, congratulations on your success in Unrecovered. It's certainly changed things in your career, hasn’t it?"

  *

  Los Angeles

  "Let's go!" Brooklyn hollered. "And quit whining, Pierce. If you're not working your ass off, you're hiding. We're gonna go down to the beach and relax a little. No fucking argument!"

  "But my stomach—"

  "Here. Wear this." Brooklyn threw a hoodie at her.

  *

  "You could name him Noah," Noah suggested.

  "Or Daniel," Daniel said.

  Sophie snorted and left the guys in the baby's room. They'd forbidden her to go in while they were painting, in case it wasn’t good for the baby.

  Daniel and Zane were like wedding planners¸ but for a child—who was less than four months away from joining the world. And Noah… Christ, Noah was almost worse. He'd come home from Italy yesterday, though he'd fly back after the holiday, and he wanted to turn the baby's room into a man cave for Penguins fans.

  Heading back to the kitchen, Sophie joined Brooklyn and Maliah.

  Sophie opened the oven and took a whiff of potato skins with garlic butter. "Delicious."

  Christmas was one of those holidays where two meals could be prepared at once. Lunch was almost ready, but most of the focus was on dinner, and soon the place would smell like turkey.