“Darby.” I swallowed. This was not the conversation I thought we’d be having after the appointment. It sounded like she was dumping me, and my mind floundered for a way to save myself. I tried to respond in the most rational way I could. I tried to breathe evenly and not to panic. “Just to be clear…I’m hearing you say I’m the only one who really wants this. Who wants us. Is that…what you’re saying?”
She blew her nose and shook her head. “No. Not at all. I’m saying I’ve been scared and unappreciative of this perfect little girl and the man who loves us both. I don’t deserve either of you.” She covered her face. “I’m a terrible person.”
I sighed in relief, letting my head fall back to the headrest while adrenaline absorbed back into my body. When my hands stopped shaking, I reached over, pulling her over the console until she was in my lap.
“Why do you love me so much?” she asked, barely able to look at me. Her shame radiated off her, and all I wanted to do was take it away.
“You know why. This little girl has two people who already love her—a mama who did something most people won’t to keep her safe, and a man who is desperate to be her daddy. What I saw at Dr. Park’s today? I can’t begin to explain to you how it made me feel. I’m not jumping ship, Darby. I love you.” I took the pictures from her hand. “And I love her. I’d take a bullet for both of you.”
“I know you would,” she cried. “Any decent person would be thankful for her and for you. I’m ashamed that, even for a second, I wasn’t. I’m a coward. I’m so sorry.”
I pulled her closer, kissing her cheek. I’d never been so relieved to be told I was unwanted. I was just glad she didn’t feel that way anymore. “You’re so hard on yourself. An unexpected pregnancy would scare anyone, and so would letting a new man in her life after what you’ve been through. Darby, you might have been afraid, but that just makes you brave. You were unsure about me, and that makes you responsible. I’d only change one thing about you.”
That got her attention. She looked at me, her mascara wet and flaking under the pool of tears under her eyes.
“I wish you would love yourself as much as I do. This little girl…she needs to see that. You should practice before she gets here.”
She leaned her temple against my forehead, sniffing a few times while her body wound down from crying. “You’re right. I have to forgive myself for a lot of things.”
“You’d forgive someone else.”
She thought about that. “You’re right. I would…okay. From now on, Bean gets the old me. But better. I guess that means she gets the new me.”
I smiled.
“She needs a name,” Darby said. She wiped her eyes. “We can’t keep calling her Bean.”
“I like Bean.”
“We…we could think of one on the way to Kansas.”
I leaned back to gauge her expression. “Kansas.”
“You said you were in this.”
“All the way.” I used my thumb to gently wipe away the smeared mascara under her eye.
She touched my cheek, her fingers running over the stubble on my jaw and then down my neck until her hand settled on my shoulder. She mulled over whatever she was about to say. I physically ached for her to say she loved me. “Me, too.”
She didn’t say she loved me, but I was just going to go with it on the hope that she still did. As I held her, I rationalized that she wouldn’t have agreed to meet my parents until she was sure her feelings for me were real, and I believed her beyond any creeping doubt when she said she was in this, too. I had to. The alternative was just too fucking painful.
Chapter Twenty-One
Darby
I tapped out a reply and then handed Trex’s phone back to him. Just as he let it lie in his lap, it chimed again. He laughed and handed it back. “Just keep it.”
“I’d forgotten how fun it was to have a phone,” I said, reading what Zeke had to say. He was still in Colorado Springs. “He met a girl.”
“Good,” Trex said with a smirk. “I don’t have to worry anymore.”
“You never had to worry,” I said, smiling down at his phone as I typed out a reply. One by one, as the hotshots found out about the pregnancy, they used Trex’s phone to check in on me and the baby. Word had spread once Stavros found out. Ander told me too late that his older brother was terrible at keeping secrets. The entire Alpine crew had shared Trex’s number and sent texts every day for weeks.
What’s her name? I typed out, and pressed Send.
Nope. Not making the mistake of giving you a name. You see what happens when we hear news. It’s like a prayer chain.
I laughed out loud.
I’m glad you’re happy. Trex is a good guy.
Thank you. I typed. I’m glad you’re happy, too.
If you need anything, call me. Trex has my number. Get a damn phone.
Trex’s works just fine.
Call me. I can be there in an hour or less if I don’t get pulled over.
I will.
As soon as I handed Trex his phone, it rang.
“Trex,” he answered.
He got quiet, listening intently and then speaking vaguely about corridors and assignments. He mentioned names like Sloan, Martinez, Harbinger, and Kitsch, and one name I recognized—Naomi.
He hung up and glanced at me, clearly uncomfortable at having to talk about work next to me. “Sorry,” he said, clearing his throat. “So, where were we before Zeke started blowing up my phone?”
“Stuck at H.” Half an hour outside of Colorado Springs, Trex suggested we go through the alphabet, choosing names we liked best starting with each letter. It took us half the trip to get to H.
“Your turn,” Trex said in his deep voice. I decided I liked taking road trips with him. He seemed so serene, and he drove with his wrist at the top of the steering wheel, making his forearms tense when he made any adjustments. His forearms were sexy. Well, all of him was sexy, and now that I’d been with him in that way, that was all I seemed to think about.
“Hannah.”
“I like Hannah.”
“I,” I said.
“Hmmm…that’s a tough one. Uh…Isabelle.”
“Isabella?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“J. Jasmine? Jillian? Justine? Jenny? Juliet?”
“Juliet,” he said, certain.
I nodded in agreement. We continued until we got to Z, only passing on a few letters. Z took us half an hour.
“Zara,” I said with a smile.
“I like Zara.”
“Okay,” I said with a sigh. “That’s it. Do you remember them all?”
“Adeline, Blake, Charlotte, Dillon, Evangeline, Finn, Grier, Harbor, Isabella, Juliet, Kennedy, Lydia, Madeleine, Nina, Olivia, Pacey, Quinn, Remy, Sunday, Tegan, Umber, Violet, Wren, we skipped X and Y, and Zara. Now you just have to pick one.”
I frowned. “I didn’t think this through.”
“Can I offer my favorites?”
“Please do.”
“Maddie, Grier, Quinn, and Wren.”
“Maddie?”
“I figured we could call her that. Short for Madeleine. My best friend…his name was Matt. It was Naomi’s husband. He died a few years ago.”
“We have to do it,” I said. “We have to name her Maddie.”
“Yeah?”
I smiled at him, bouncing as the truck went over a few bumps in the highway. “Yeah.”
“Naomi is going to love that.”
“We should ask her permission. Just in case.”
He nodded once. “Good call.”
“We need middle names, too.”
He blanched and I laughed. “What’s your middle name?”
“Solomon.”
“Scott Solomon Trexler. It sounds nice all put together.”
He reached over, putting his hand on my thigh. “What’s yours?”
I wrinkled my nose. “It’s awful.”
He playfully squeezed. “Tell me.”
�
�Rose.”
“Darby Rose Cooke. It’s absolutely not awful. My mom used to say she named us if it sounded good when she yelled it out the back door,” he said with a smile.
“In that case, it’s perfect.” I let my last sentence hang in the air while I decided whether or not to correct him, and then it took me a solid minute to get up the nerve. “Trex…speaking of names…remember when I said at the doctor’s office that I should tell you something?”
“I thought we had that conversation.”
“No, it sort of went in a different direction than I’d intended.”
“Oh.”
“It’s something I haven’t told you yet. Shawn’s brother is a programmer for the government. If Shawn wanted to look for me, Derek could find me the same day he was asked. I’ve had to stay off-grid as much as possible. That’s why living at the hotel makes it so easy. Nothing that required my social security number. Stavros agreed to pay me in cash.”
“Okay…?” he prompted.
“My last name isn’t Cooke. It’s Dixon.” He frowned and began to speak, but I cut him off. “I’m sorry I lied to you,” I blurted out. “It wasn’t to purposefully deceive you. I was just afraid—”
“It’s okay,” he said, his voice raised. When he saw the hurt look on my face, he reached for my hand. “I didn’t mean to yell. I just don’t want you to apologize. I”—he sighed—“I already knew your real name.”
“What? How?”
He winced. “I have a friend at the FBI.”
“You…what? Did a background check on me?”
“No! I was worried about you, Darby. I realize how it looks, but…”
I pulled my hand away. “You don’t know what you’ve done. Derek probably gets notice every time someone looks up my name! Shawn probably knows where I am!”
“The FBI system is secure…”
“Nothing is secure! You can’t be that naïve!” I leaned against the door, pressing the fingertips of my right hand against my forehead. “When? When did you have the FBI look?”
“Remember when I helped Ellie? I put in the request then, but Val had already done a search.”
“Who is Val?” I asked, my tone getting higher with each question.
“She’s a federal agent. She and I…it’s a long story.”
“Oh my God. Oh my God! So not only is my ex looking for me, yours is, too?”
“That’s not what it was. Darby, please calm down.”
My cheeks burned, and the heat spread to my entire body. I fidgeted with the AC and then sat back again, breathing hard. “That’s illegal! When did she do it? And how? You didn’t even know my real last name.”
“I’m not sure exactly when. It’s extremely hard for an untrained person to go off-grid. There is facial recognition used with traffic cameras, business cameras…She knew where you currently lived, so she could have pulled it from anywhere. Darby, I’m so sorry.”
I wanted to crawl out of my skin. Shawn could have known where I’d been for a long time. He could be watching me. I had no idea. “You should have told me, Trex. You don’t understand…” I sighed.
“Darby, the baby. You have to calm down.” He reached for my stomach, but I pushed his hand away.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Babe,” he half pleaded, half scolded me.
I crossed my arms, pulling inside of myself to think like I used to do when I lived with Shawn. “Turn around.”
“What?”
“You have to take me back. I have to get my things. I have to move.” My eyes filled with tears.
“Darby, stop. Just…think about this for a second. If you truly believe Derek has the same access as the FBI, he could have looked up the cameras at the bus station. It’s possible they’ve known where you are this whole time. If you move, I can’t protect you. Besides, if he hasn’t come for you by now—”
“There are three scenarios. Either Shawn has stopped looking for me, he knows where I am and doesn’t care, or he’s waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
My face crumbled. “The right time. I humiliated him when I stood him up at the wedding. He’s not going to let that go.” I bent over and grabbed my stomach, a sharp pain running around my side, down my back and my legs. “Ugh,” I grunted.
Trex jerked the wheel to the side of the road and stopped, running around to the passenger side. He unclipped my seat belt and brushed my hair from my face. “Baby? Breathe. Deep breaths.”
I did as he instructed, leaning my head back against the headrest and stretching my legs as far as I could. He was right. I couldn’t get all worked up, even if I was afraid. Everything I felt affected my daughter. I worked to stay calm, to slow my heartbeat.
“Darby, I would never let anything happen to you,” he said. Worry weighted his facial features. Feeling powerless was not something he handled well. “Please don’t…” He swallowed. “Please don’t leave me.”
“What happens if he comes for me when you’re at work?” I asked.
He thought for just a few seconds before he answered. “I’ll put a call in. We’ll keep an eye on him. Make sure he stays in Texas.”
I covered my eyes with my hand, my bottom lip quivering. “You don’t know him. He doesn’t think like a normal person. He’s not…he’s not afraid of anything, Trex. When he’s angry, he’s not human.”
“Fear is just as powerful, Darby. The only thing I’m afraid of is you getting hurt. And I’ve been through some pretty scary stuff. I’ll handle it. I promise.” He gently cupped my jaw and pulled my face to the side to meet his gaze. He lowered his chin. “I swear on my life.”
I backed away from his hold, hating that I didn’t know which scenario would play out: if Shawn was planning to kill me or take me. “I want your promise that you’ll protect the baby. No matter what. If I end up one of those women found dead with my baby cut out of me, you’ll go get her. You’ll make sure she’s safe no matter what.”
His nose wrinkled. “Darby, Jesus Christ.”
“Promise me!” I screamed.
He cupped my cheeks, desperate to keep me calm. “I’ll keep you both safe. I promise.”
“How?”
“The house. If you move in, I can. I’m installing a state-of-the-art security system. I can be there in less than ten minutes. A police station is four minutes away. The neighbor four houses down is a police officer for that station. He patrols the area several times during his shift. It’s the safest place for you.” He released my cheeks and turned me to face him, resting his hands on my knees.
I shook my head and laughed once. He wanted me to move in with him after he’d just told me he’d violated my privacy and kept yet something else from me. I had to decide how many more secrets I was comfortable with him keeping, and if that outweighed his ability to protect Bean and me. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Trex said, mirroring my expression.
“I don’t know, Trex. Maybe when you realize there is an actual baby inside of me who will eventually come out, constantly crying and filling diapers with the worst-smelling filth you can imagine, and our lives and relationship will be forever changed, maybe you’ll decide you don’t want me so badly after all.”
“That’s insulting,” he said. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
“No one expects for relationships to end when they start. We have to be realistic, because I don’t get to bail.”
“Neither do I. Is it that you just don’t want to move in?”
“I…” I sighed. “You’re doing background checks on me without my permission, and possibly alerting my psychotic ex of my whereabouts. You violated my privacy when we weren’t living together. I can’t imagine how far you’ll go when we are. The security system isn’t a comfort. I don’t want someone watching me all the time. I moved to Colorado Springs to get away from that.”
He frowned. “It wasn’t a background check, Darby, and that wasn’t my intention. I was looking into Shawn, n
ot you.”
“No one asked you to do that!” My sudden anger surprised us both. I’d sacrificed so much and tried so hard to stay hidden, and Trex was the one person who made me feel safe. I realized just knowing him had made me vulnerable.
“You’re right. I shouldn’t have told Val about you. But moving now won’t keep you any safer. It would be the opposite. Have you considered that Shawn has stayed away because of me?”
“There’s too much I don’t know about you. There’s too many secrets.”
He reached for me. “Honey, I can’t help that.”
“Some of it you could help. I don’t really know you, do I? And you want us to move in together?”
That made him angry. “You know me better than anyone else, Darby. I might have a few things about me that are classified, but you know me.”
“I don’t even know your birthday!”
“June fourth.”
I blinked. “Really? That’s the first day I moved to Colorado Springs.”
“Happy birthday to me.”
“Do you know mine?” I asked.
He nodded. “March twenty-second.”
I frowned. “What else do you know about me?”
“That’s it. I didn’t pry.”
“No, because that would be a total violation of my privacy. And you want me to move in with you? With cameras? You’re insane.”
He was angry again. “You’ll know where they all are. It’ll be just like the hotel but with significantly better security. If you’re that against it, sleep in a different bedroom. We’ll be roommates.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“So is me buying a five-bedroom house in the perfect neighborhood and you insisting on living in a shitty apartment.”
“No one asked you to buy a five-bedroom house!”
He craned his neck to look at me for a few seconds before glaring down the road instead. The cars were ripping past us down the highway. The wind was blowing the bushes that crowded Trex’s boots. We were out in the wide open, but the world was closing in on us. “Do you think I would kick you and the baby out? Do you honestly believe I’d do that, Darby? Trust me, there is a better chance of Stavros going bankrupt and you losing your room in the hotel than that.”
From Here to You Page 25