by Penny Dee
I also grabbed some fresh produce for a green salad and a bottle of red wine for Caleb because I had a feeling he was going to need it.
I got home just after five and set about making the meatloaf while fighting off a wave of nausea. These days I was lucky to keep anything down besides peppermint or ginger tea, black coffee, and crackers. And I’d developed a weird craving for chopped up cucumber doused in vinegar. But today my upset stomach was more about nerves than morning sickness.
When the doorbell rang, I drew in a deep breath and then slowly exhaled. I was about to send Caleb’s life tumbling on its axis.
But when I opened the door, it wasn’t Caleb on the other side. It was Charlie.
Immediately, he started yelling at me. “What the hell, Honey. When were you going to tell me?”
He pushed past me to get into my apartment.
“What?” Was all I could manage to say.
“The baby! When the fuck were you going to tell me about it?” He put his hands on his hips and stared at me, waiting for an answer.
This couldn’t be happening. Not now. Not when Caleb was on his way over.
“Who told you?”
“I got a call from the doctor’s office this afternoon confirming your sonogram. You had me down as your emergency contact, and when they couldn’t get hold of you, they called me.” I briefly closed my eyes. Dammit. I’d forgotten to update my details. “But that’s besides the point. Is it true?”
I felt sick.
“Well, is it?” He pressed impatiently.
Standing there, watching him lose his temper and his usually cool demeanor, I wondered what I had ever seen in the cheating, impatient loser.
“Yes, it’s true,” I said.
“Goddammit!” He ran a frustrated hand through his perfect hair. “When the fuck were you going to tell me? Or were you planning to wait until it was born and then hit me up for money?”
I glared at him. “I don’t want anything from you.”
But he just looked at me like I was ridiculous.
“Of course you do.” His eyes narrowed. “Why else would you have it? We’re not together anymore. I don’t love you.”
It was crazy, but even after everything that had happened, his words still stung. Even though I hated him. They were a reminder of just how little I had meant to him over the past two years.
He pulled some money from his billfold and threw it onto the breakfast counter. “There’s my half of the abortion.”
I stared at him, my mouth agape.
“An abortion?” I said in disbelief.
“I’m not having you and some bastard child fuck things up for Samira and me.”
Apparently, his six-foot Amazonian girlfriend had forgiven him.
I glanced at the money and my blood boiled. I stomped over to where he had thrown it down, and scooping it up, I threw it at him. “How dare you come here and try to tell me what to do. Who the fuck do you think you are?”
“You’re pregnant and I don’t want it.”
“Good, because it’s not yours!” I yelled at him.
Something drew my attention away from my loser ex-boyfriend. I looked up, and to my horror saw Caleb standing in the doorway.
For a moment, he looked at me, a look of confusion on his face. But when he realized there was a guy standing in my apartment acting like an asshole, he charged in.
“Everything okay, Honey?” he asked, and even though it was me he was talking to, his bright eyes were sharp and firmly fixed on Charlie.
“Who the fuck are you?” Charlie barked.
Caleb glared at him darkly. “I’m the guy who’s going to throw you on your ass if you don’t back away from her.”
Charlie scoffed and turned back to me. “I don’t want this baby.”
I stood very still. My cheeks burned. I didn’t want it to come out this way but I wanted Charlie gone and this was a surefire way to make that happen.
“Like I said, it’s not your baby.”
But of course Charlie was too arrogant to think it wasn’t his baby. He balked. “I don’t believe you.”
I glared at him. “That’s your problem, not mine. But I assure you, Charlie, the baby isn’t yours.”
A weird look crossed his face. Like he could hardly believe I had been with anyone else. That I hadn’t been here pining over him, crushed and heartbroken because we had broken up. But the look was just a flicker and it was gone.
“You expect me to believe you’ve been with another guy? And you’re having his baby?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying, Charlie. Now you need to leave and don’t bother coming back.”
Charlie stared at me, his brown eyes gleaming with dark irritation.
“Fucking slut,” he muttered.
I didn’t have a chance to say anything because Caleb grabbed him by the collar and shoved him out the door.
“You heard the lady . . . you need to leave. And if you call her a name one more time, I swear to God . . .”
Charlie ignored him and gave me a murderous look through the doorway. “I should’ve gotten rid of you years ago.”
Before Caleb could do anything more to Charlie, I crossed the room and slammed the front door shut. It shuddered and then stilled, leaving Caleb and me standing there in a weird silence. Outside, a dog started to bark and I heard Charlie skid out of the driveway and roar down the street in his Mercedes.
It was Caleb who broke the silence.
“You’re pregnant?”
I closed my eyes and nodded. I couldn’t believe this was how he was finding out.
“With him?”
I had my eyes shut but I could tell he was looking at me. I shook my head and heard the hiss of his inhale.
“Is it mine?”
My throat felt like sandpaper, and my heartbeat was loud in my ears. He shouldn’t be finding out this way, and it was all my fault that he was. If I had just kept my legs closed and stopped having sex with him, this wouldn’t be happening.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. When I opened my eyes, I grimaced at him. “I’m so, so sorry.”
His brows pulled together. “Why are you sorry?”
“Because you shouldn’t be finding out like this. I tried telling you sooner. But…”
“But?”
“I got distracted by all the sex.”
His lips flickered, but then stilled. “Are you sure that you’re pregnant?”
I sighed and crossed the room to the couch. I pulled the DO WHAT YOU LOVE EVERY DAY cushion to my chest and hugged it.
“The night I met you I had walked in on my boyfriend getting a blowjob off another woman. Turns out it was his girlfriend of five years and I was the other woman.” I picked at the stitching on the cushion, unable to meet his eyes. “I went out that night to . . . I don’t know, get over him by getting under someone else, I guess. It sounds crazy when I actually say it out loud, but I was upset. And then I met you . . .”
I exhaled deeply and looked up.
“Two days before I saw you at the clubhouse, I had an ultrasound. I needed to know who was the father. The ultrasound was conclusive. The dates aligned. You’re the father, Caleb, not Charlie.”
Caleb nodded and sat down across from me. He leaned forward and played with the big silver rings on his fingers absentmindedly.
“So what does this mean for us?” he asked.
“It means we’re having a baby. It doesn’t have to mean anything else.” I felt sick. This wasn’t how I wanted this to happen at all. “I don’t expect anything from you. It doesn’t have to be a big deal.”
“You’re having my baby, Honey. That’s a big deal. ”
I shifted forward on the couch and hugged my cushion tighter, aware of my raging pulse in my neck. “We don’t need to figure this out now.”
“I just found out you’re having my baby.”
“Exactly. And that’s why we shouldn’t talk now. You need time to process it. I think you should leave.”
He looked surprised. “Leave?”
“You need to process the news. And that isn’t going to happen with me standing over your shoulder.”
He frowned. “I don’t think I should leave. We need to talk about this.”
My mind rolled back to when I was ten and my mom found out she was pregnant to some guy who worked the crap tables at one of the casinos on the strip. He said he was happy. Said he wanted to be a family. Talked about living in a house with a lawn and a swing set in the backyard. Two days later, my mom and I came home from doing the grocery shopping to find our TV and the roll of money we stashed in the freezer, gone. We never saw him again. And mom never had the baby.
I exhaled. Sadly, it wasn’t the only time my mom found herself in that situation. I didn’t have any brothers or sisters. And my mom never failed to remind me that it was because no man wanted an instant family. The world isn’t made up of Mike Brady’s, Honey. No man wants to take on another man’s responsibility. They don’t want you, so they don’t want me.
I didn’t know what man was responsible for me. I’m not sure my mom ever knew either. She was fifteen when he got her pregnant and then ran away. What I did know were the legion of unsuitable men who followed in his footsteps over the next eighteen years. The mechanic who moved us into his trailer and then kicked us out when Mom came home early from work and caught him in bed with the neighbor. The craps croupier with the lazy eye. The businessman who traveled a lot, but who actually had another family in another state. Then, finally, the one who decided he wanted to visit my room at night when I was twelve.
All of them made promises.
All of them broke them.
If my childhood taught me one thing, it was that rash decisions lead to heartbreak.
“We can’t talk now,” I said. “Not until you’ve processed it. If you stay, you’ll make promises you can’t keep because you’ve been caught off guard.”
His eyebrows came together. “I’m not in a habit of doing that.”
I stood up. “Please.”
For some stupid reason I felt like crying.
Maybe it was my hormones. Or maybe it was because I was throwing him out of the house, when really, I wanted him to stay and rub my feet and tell me everything was going to be okay.
Or maybe, just maybe, I wanted to cry because no matter how much I wanted to deny it, I really liked him.
CALEB
She’s pregnant.
It was the one thought rolling through my mind as I rode through the early evening light. I didn’t know where I was going, I just rode. Honey wanted me to process the news and she was right, I needed to work out what it all meant and how the pieces all fit together.
A baby.
It was so damn unexpected, I didn’t know what to make of it. I mean, I loved kids. And I always knew I’d have a family of my own one day. But now?
I’d never even had any close calls. I didn’t fuck without a condom. Not even with Brandi and she was the only girlfriend I’d ever had.
But now . . .
With the flick of my wrist, I rode farther into the evening. I considered dropping into Joe’s, one of the local bars, to see some friendly faces, but decided adding alcohol to the mix wasn’t going to make things any clearer. I thought about dropping in on Cade and Indy, but Indy was only weeks away from giving birth to their first baby and I didn’t want to impose. I thought about the clubhouse but I wasn’t in the mood for the usual suspects and their antics, so I headed toward Cavalry Hill.
At the top of the old army fort, I parked my bike and lit a cigarette. Below, Destiny glittered with the first lights of the evening.
I thought about Honey. I was really into her. But trying to establish something while she was pregnant wasn’t a good idea. There was more at risk now if things didn’t work out. What we needed to do was focus on the baby and then see what happened.
A baby.
The idea ignited something in me and it took me a moment to realize I was smiling. Then I started to laugh. Fuck yeah. I was going to be a father.
In a few months, I’d be holding my own flesh and blood in my arms.
And I couldn’t stop fucking grinning about it.
I drew on my cigarette. Was it a boy? A girl? Would he or she look like me, or Honey?
Fuck. A baby.
I laughed even harder and it echoed across the panoramic view of Destiny below.
I dropped my cigarette and crushed it with my boot.
What the fuck was I doing out here when the gorgeous woman carrying my baby was at home wondering what the hell was happening?
I climbed back on my bike and with a smile on my lips, I rode through the pink twilight back to Honey’s apartment. When she opened the door, I lifted her up and twirled her around in my arms. She squealed and laughed, and I started to laugh, too. When I let her down I took her cheeks between my hands and studied the face of the woman carrying my baby.
“Anything you need. Anything at all, I will give it to you.” My thumbs caressed her cheeks. “We’re in this together.”
“I don’t expect—”
I cut her off by kissing her, long and slow, savoring the softness of her mouth against mine.
It was the smell that ended the kiss.
Smoke.
“What’s burning?” I asked pulling away.
Honey’s eyes rounded. “Oh hell, the meatloaf!”
She ran to the kitchen. Smoke poured out of the oven when she opened the door, and the smoke alarm went crazy. After dumping the smoldering meatloaf onto the kitchen counter, she frantically waved the dishtowel in the air to disperse the smoke and to stop the alarm from screaming.
“Damn!” I said looking at the burnt meatloaf.
Honey shook her head and slumped her shoulders. “I told you I suck at cooking.”
I couldn’t help but grin. She was too cute. I slung my arm around her neck. “Come on. Let’s go get dinner. My treat.”
HONEY
He took me to a small, out of the way pizzeria in town with bread sticks on the tables and red-and-white-checkered tablecloths. I wasn’t able to keep anything down during the day, so by the time we got there, I was famished. Caleb ordered two large pizzas smothered in mozzarella and I tore into them.
“So what are we going to do?” I asked.
“We’re going to work together to give Bump the best start in life as possible.”
“Bump?”
He grinned. “Too lame?”
I smiled back at him. “No, I think it’s cute you’ve already come up with a nickname.” I rubbed my belly. Bump was hardly a bump yet, but you could definitely tell I was bigger than usual. With a deep exhale I looked up. “I think this thing between us has to stop.”
“This thing? Do you mean the incredible sex we’ve been having?”
I don’t know why I blushed but I did.
“I just don’t think now is the time to explore anything between us,” I explained, frowning as I focused on breaking apart the piece of pizza on my plate. “If we keep going the way we’re going, it will complicate an already complicated situation, don’t you agree?”
“Or it could bring us closer,” he suggested.
“But what if it doesn’t. What if someone’s feelings grow while the other person’s doesn’t? Inevitably someone will get hurt.”
“I’m not going to lie to you, I don’t want to stop having sex with you. I like the way things are between us.”
Lust pooled between my legs at his words.
“But if it turns sour, it could ruin everything. I mean, is now the right time to take that risk?” I shook my head already answering the question in my head. “My childhood was spent with a mother who continually took those risks. Moving from place to place. Hooking up with men who promised her one thing but always delivered something else. Dragging me back and forth, always chasing something but never catching it. She never put me first, and as a result I had a lonely and neglected childhood. I’m not willing
to take those risks. I’m putting our baby first because I know what it means if I don’t.”
Caleb watched me intently, his brow slightly furrowed. “It sounds like you had a rough upbringing.”
I frowned. My childhood was a lonely one because my mother indulged in one drama after another. And those dramas always involved men. Men who said one thing and then did another.
“My mom had me three days after her sixteenth birthday. I was born in a house for unwed schoolgirls, if you can believe it.” I hated talking about my childhood because the memories still sent a cold ache through me. “They advised my mom to give me up. There were plenty of couples who couldn’t have children who would raise me right, they told her. But my mom wasn’t going to do anything other than what she wanted to do. So she ran away with me, and so began eighteen years of her reminding me what a mistake she’d made by not listening to them. What she didn’t realize was that I felt exactly the same way. Just like her, I wished she’d listened to them.” I shook my head and held up three fingers. “My mom taught me three things. How not to be a mother. How not to trust men. And how people say one thing but then do the other. I don’t mean to sound like a Debbie downer, but I’ve seen what happens when parents put their own needs before their kids. I’m not talking about adult kids. I’m talking about the little ones. Their parents are their world. Their everything.”
I huffed out a deep breath.
“Let me ask you this, have you ever been in a long-term relationship?” I asked.
He thought for a moment. “Not long term, no. I’ve never really wanted the commitment. ”
“And the only relationship I’ve had was with a loser who made me the other woman for two years.” I sighed. “This would never work because you don’t do commitment and I won’t ever let myself be vulnerable again.”
He frowned and picked at the label on his beer bottle.
“Okay, then,” he finally said, lifting that vibrant blue gaze to me. “We’ll reset our relationship. Dial it back and start over.”
“You mean as friends?”