Little Secrets--Holiday Baby Bombshell

by Karen Booth

  She leaned against the wall and looked out the window. He could see the gears turning in her head. “Honestly? This is worse than I imagined.”

  “How could it possibly be worse?”

  “Because we’re arguing about why I kept the secret. You haven’t said a single thing about what this is really about. I messed up. I made a huge mistake and I’m incredibly sorry. But you haven’t even mentioned the baby. Not a single word.”

  A dark and dense silence fell on the room. He didn’t want to admit that she was right. The beast inside him that refused to lose was determined to take the course where he won this argument and showed her just how much she was in the wrong. “What do you want me to say?”

  “I want you to tell me how you feel. About the idea of becoming a dad.”

  That word was a dagger to his heart. It brought up every negative connotation he could imagine, but it wasn’t as simple as hating his father. Michael’s greatest successes in life and his fierce determination had come from his dad. Some of it was genetics. Everything else had come by sheer force. His dad had brutally pushed both his brother and him. Their dad accepted nothing less than perfection. His sons were going to be champions, and they would stand on that Olympic podium and raise their hands in victory after the gold medal had been placed around their necks. Their dad had pursued that at any cost—he’d thought nothing of withholding love and approval. If anything, he’d seemed to think it was precisely what they needed.

  It took twenty-three years for Michael to learn that his father’s expectations extended well beyond the pool. He expected it in everything, and when Michael dared to put his own feelings first and break up with his fiancée the night of their engagement party, all hell had broken loose. Michael had failed in spectacular fashion, according to his father, and for that he deserved disdain and blame. The look of disgust on his father’s face was permanently etched in Michael’s memory. He’d witnessed it the few times he’d seen his dad since that night. After a lifetime of doing absolutely everything his dad had wanted, Michael learned that night that it would never be enough.

  He sank down onto the couch again. “I never saw myself becoming a dad. I don’t know that I’m capable of it.” I’m terrified I’m going to ruin some poor kid. “When I told you that I wasn’t prepared to give you what you wanted, it wasn’t to hurt you, Charlie. It was to give you an out so I wouldn’t end up hurting you.”

  He looked up to see the color drain from her face. “And now I’m going to have your baby. So what do we do now?”

  “I need time. I need time and space to process all of this. It’s a lot to heap on someone at one time.”

  * * *

  Time? He needs time? Charlotte could hardly believe the words coming out of his mouth. And she didn’t care to hear too many more of them today. “Sure. Take all the time you need.” Just don’t expect me to care whenever you finally sort this out in your head. She stalked into her room.

  Michael followed. “Look, I have to go back to my place. My brother is over there all by himself. I should go be a good host.”

  A good host? They were never going to get on the same page. It was time to put things on her terms. She wasn’t about to let Michael dictate everything. “Good. Goodbye. I’m finding it hard to look at you right now anyway.” That last part was such a lie. Even when she was hopping mad at Michael, she still wanted to look at him.

  “I don’t really want to look at you, either, if we’re being honest.” He thrust his arm into his sleeve and began buttoning his shirt in a fury, his hair flopping to the side as he stared at her in anger. Charlotte paced in her room as a storm of sadness and regret churned in her head. She embraced her feelings, something for which she had quite a talent. If she was going to be miserable, might as well go all in. As much as she hated to see things end like this, at least the man was showing some damn emotion. For once, he wasn’t being so closed off. He didn’t even bother to put on his shoes. He simply scooped them up from the floor, grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair and stuffed his wallet back into his pants pocket. Without a word, he stormed out of the room and headed straight for the front door.

  “So that’s it, then?” She really didn’t like hearing those words come out of her mouth. They bore too much resemblance to her final utterance the first time they broke up. At least she wasn’t sobbing this time.

  “For now, yes.” He didn’t even look at her. He opened the door, waltzed through it and let it slam behind him.

  Charlotte stood there like a statue, staring at the back of her door. She loved this apartment—she loved the Grand Legacy—and she’d already had so many daydreams about what it would be like to bring the baby home here. But maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. The thought of running into Michael in the lobby, the hall or, even worse, in an enclosed space like the elevator was horrible. Having to see his handsome face, breathe his beguiling smells and know that he hadn’t wanted to be part of her future would be too much. How would she ever heal? She wouldn’t. And that wasn’t fair to her, nor was it fair to the baby.

  She flung open her door and took off down the hall. Thank goodness no one had moved in to the other two units on their floor, the empty ones between them. Thor yipped behind her. The escape artist was again at work. She rounded the corner and Michael was a few steps from his door.

  “Michael, wait.”

  “What now?” He whipped around, slicing into her with the frustration on his face.

  “I can’t live in the same building with you anymore. Not if this is the end between us.”

  He threw up his hands. “You not only think the absolute worst of me, you can’t stand the sight of me, either?”

  “It’s too painful. I won’t do it. Whoever sells their units first gets to stay. The other person has to move out.” Even though it was a slightly insane idea, she was pleased that it came off sounding like something the ever-confident Michael would say.

  He turned to her and shifted his armful of jacket and shoes to one side. “You don’t want to do that. You love the Grand Legacy. If you make this deal, you’re going to be the one who has to leave. I only have one more unit to sell and I already have a buyer on the hook. Another day or two and I win.”

  Of course he phrased it in that way. He thought of little else. “If that’s what happens, that’s what happens. I just want something resolved. For good.”

  “It’s Christmas tomorrow. You want me to basically hand a pregnant woman an eviction notice at Christmas? I’m sure you’d love to be able to tell the world that I truly am an ass, but I won’t do it.”

  “Stop assuming you’ll win. I only have two units to sell. There’s still a chance I could beat you. And no matter what happens, it was my idea. I fully own it.” She felt good about dictating the rules of the game for once. She’d take any shred of control she could right now. This was progress.

  He shook his head slowly and deliberately—classic dismissive Michael. “Whatever you want, Charlotte. But I still want you to at least give me some time to think. Don’t go calling Chad from Hunks with Trucks.”

  “I’m not making any promises. I’m not going to sit around and wait forever.” She patted her leg three times and Thor rushed to her side. She walked down the hall, trying her damnedest to muster an air of victory, waiting for her sense of accomplishment to kick in. As she opened the door to her apartment and Thor sidled past her inside, she realized that there was no way to win in this impossible situation. Either Michael loved her and wanted to be father to their child, or he didn’t. He didn’t know. He needed time. It might be cold or heartless, but something deep inside her said that wasn’t good enough.

  For Charlotte, love wasn’t a question. It was an answer. She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t felt like that. It was her strongest need, a thirst that wouldn’t go away, and she’d been working so hard to get past that, to
get to a point where she didn’t need so much of it. But when she thought about living her life being the sort of person who didn’t need it so desperately, the future narrowed to a dark and unhappy point. She refused to accept that. She wouldn’t live like that. It was okay to be who she was. It was okay that she would have love and she would give it. Every day, just as she’d always wanted. That love would be for her baby, and she would give it until her last dying gasp. Everything that had been bottled up inside her would finally come out, and she wouldn’t stop until it was spent and gone.

  And somewhere else in this city would be Michael, walking around with a chunk of her heart, completely oblivious to everything he had missed.

  Twelve

  Michael woke up at seven thirty on Christmas morning, feeling more than a little hungover. He and Chris had stayed up late, playing cards and drinking. Not smart, but Michael had been nursing his wounds. He scrounged around in the covers until he found his phone, which was tucked under the pillow on the other side of the bed. He dared to look at it—no response to his many texts to Charlotte last night.

  Can we talk? The first one had gone unanswered for an hour before he sent his follow-up.

  You there? I’d like to talk about this. He’d sat on that message for two hours. Then he’d gone down to her apartment and knocked on the door. She never answered. So he went home and made another plea.

  You have every right to be mad, but please just answer me. She hadn’t had anything to say to that one, either. Charlotte always had her phone on, and she always had it with her. The only time she ever failed to respond was when she was mad. She’d done it the other day, when he hadn’t left a note. For now, he was fairly certain he had his answer. Go away, Michael.

  He rolled out of bed and Abby followed him into the kitchen. He filled her food bowl and started the coffee. It was hard to get past the feeling that this Christmas was going to suck. Michael didn’t pin much on the idea of some days being more special than others, but Christmas day was at least supposed to be happy. It had been over the last several years, when Chris and Michael spent the holiday together. Of course, it hadn’t been the case when Chris and Michael were growing up.

  Christmas had always been a strange day in the Kelly household. Dad was nice on Christmas, almost too nice. But as was typical for him, he had a very strong sense of the way things should be, and Christmas was tailor-made for him since it was supposed to be perfect. Dad liked perfect and hated everything else. He was affectionate with Mom on Christmas, putting his arm around her and kissing her on the temple. She soaked up every minute of it, probably because it was not their normal dynamic at all. Christmas was essentially a day for a cease-fire. His parents’ marriage seemed more like a hostile business arrangement, a constant negotiation and a relentless power struggle. The only thing that kept Dad in line was that Mom held the purse strings.

  Most of the family’s money came from an inheritance Mom had received from her aunt when Michael was eight and Chris was six. Before that, finances had always been tight. In some ways, they’d had a happier home life before the money came along. Dad worked, which meant their exposure to his short fuse and perfectionism was lessened. Swimming was an activity driven by the boys, fueled by their love of being in the water and competing. But when the money came, Dad quit his job and he funneled every waking minute into Michael and Chris.

  They were plucked from their schools and their friends, the family moved from a modest ranch in rural Maryland to a massive historic home in Bethesda. Dad had the entire backyard ripped out, two-hundred-year-old trees and all, just so they could put in a pool. A private swimming coach was hired, but only one who was willing to let Dad attend practice and micromanage everything. Their old life, which wasn’t perfect but was manageable, became a distant memory. Their new life became a living hell because the bar had been raised significantly. Their parents had changed everyone’s lives in order to create two Olympians. Any result short of that would be an utter failure. The pressure was on. If Michael and Chris hadn’t had each other, he wasn’t sure they would have made it.

  Michael poured himself a cup of coffee and wandered into the living room, sinking into the couch cushions and getting lost in his view out the window. It was a gray and overcast day with more snow predicted. After a while, he wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting there, only that his coffee had gone cold. Abby was curled up with her head on his lap, sleeping fitfully, her nose and front paws twitching. “Chasing rabbits in your sleep, sweets?” he asked, smoothing his hand over her silky fur.

  “You talking to the dog again?” Chris shuffled into the room, his eyes about half-open.

  “I would’ve been talking to you, but you’re the one who decided to sleep in.”

  Chris rubbed his face and squinted when the sun peeked out from behind a cloud, flooding the room with light. “We drank too much last night, dude.”

  Michael was still feeling rough, but apparently not as bad as his brother. “I had to give you a chance to beat me at cards. I didn’t want you going home with your pride completely destroyed.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Chris waved it off. “We could’ve played without doing shots until midnight. That was your idea.”

  I was drowning my sorrows. “Coffee’s on.” Michael nodded toward the kitchen and Chris ambled off.

  His brother returned a minute later and plopped down at the other end of the couch. “It’s been a full twenty-four hours since you came back from Charlotte’s apartment. We successfully avoided the subject all day yesterday, but I think your reprieve is over. You want to tell me what in the hell happened? Because you seem just as bummed out this morning as you did all day yesterday.”

  What in the hell had happened? Michael still couldn’t make sense of it. Everything had snowballed so quickly. He didn’t make a habit of spilling his guts to his brother, but Chris was a great listener and he really needed someone to help him sort this out. “As long as you’re sure you want to hear this. I’m pretty sure I messed up and I’m not sure how to fix it.”

  “I will always listen, but especially if it involves you messing up.” He bounced his eyebrows and took a long sip of his coffee.

  “Well, things were pretty intense after you left the party the other night.”

  “I know I probably shouldn’t have said anything, but she’s the only woman you’ve talked about since the engagement and she cares about you a lot.”

  Michael wasn’t sure that could be true, or at least not anymore. The disdain in her eyes had come from such a pure place yesterday, and he wasn’t sure he blamed her. “I’m not so sure after yesterday.” Michael craned his neck to work out a kink. The whole story was tumbling around in his head—every mistake he’d made, the way he kept stubbornly clinging to his own baggage. “But I’m glad you said something. As much as I didn’t want her to know about my past, I do feel like it broke down some barriers between us.”

  “Good. That all sounds great.”

  “When we woke up yesterday morning, it felt like we were in a different place. A much better place than we’d been when we were together the first time.” Just thinking about waking up next to her stirred up emotions that were most often foreign to Michael—optimism, hope, peace. Charlotte was such a positive force in his life when they were on the same trajectory. Little had he known he was throwing it away by being so damn shortsighted.

  “Again. This all sounds good to me.”

  “It was.” Michael clunked his empty coffee mug on the side table next to him. “Then she took her dog for a walk and I found prenatal vitamins on her bathroom counter. She’s pregnant.” Michael looked over at his brother, and watched the news sink in.

  “Wow. Who’s the dad?”

  Michael recalled this part of the conversation with Charlotte. He was starting to wonder why he’d ever thought he was the smart one. “It’s me. She got pregnant wh
en we were still together, but she didn’t find out until after we broke up.”

  Chris ran his hands through his hair, shaking his head. “Oh, wow. That is so harsh. Finding out you’re pregnant by some guy who told you he had no interest in being serious? That had to hurt.”

  Michael had spent much of last night tipsy and trying to imagine how Charlotte must have felt right after their breakup and during her time in England. She’d been suffering and he’d been going on with his own life, missing her, which had seemed like a big step forward in his own emotional growth. Little did he know she was running laps around him. “Yeah. I’m guessing it hurt a lot. But that didn’t really occur to me yesterday. I was too mad at her for keeping it from me.”

  “Are you serious? Mad?” He turned on the couch, facing Michael more directly.

  “Yes. I’m not proud of it. At all.”

  “So did she give you the heave-ho? Is that why you’ve been in such a terrible mood?”

  “Not right away. I told her I needed time to think about it, she got mad, which is understandable, and I left.” Michael sighed and shook his head. What an idiot he’d been. “But then she went after me in the hall.” Michael went on to explain Charlotte’s ultimatum about one of them moving out. Abby woke up and nudged Michael’s hand with her nose. “Human relationships are too complicated, Abs. I like what we have. I feed you, take you for a walk, you’re excited when I get home from work. Easy.”

  “Look, Dad did a number on both of us,” Chris said. “I know that everything with your engagement convinced you life would be easier if you didn’t get serious with a woman, and I understand that, but you need to get your priorities straight. Charlotte is amazing and she’s going to have your baby. Don’t sit in your apartment petting your dog and talking to your brother. That’s not you. You should be down the hall working this out with her.”

  “I tried. I keep texting her and she doesn’t answer. I went down to her apartment and knocked on her door last night when you ran out for more beer, but there was no answer.”