by Malcom, Anne
“I didn’t say you weren’t,” Wyatt snapped back at me. “But I’m also entitled to a say. To support my kid, and you financially.”
“Yeah, you communicated that entitlement pretty well with your shut-up check.” My voice was filled with venom. We hadn’t spoken about the check since I’d gotten back from Turkey, but then again, we’d barely spoken since I’d stormed out of the beach house. He’d called to ask when my next doctor’s appointment was. The only reason I hadn’t fought him on his insistence to come was because I’d been too busy throwing up at the time.
“That’s not what it was,” he argued.
“What else is a check from a rock star to a nobody he knocked up?” I demanded.
He blinked, shocked like I’d struck him. “Babe,” he said, voice soft. “You’re the farthest thing from a nobody there ever fuckin’ was.”
“Well no one has ever made me feel more of one than you did in that moment,” I admitted, hating the vulnerability in my voice.
“I fucked up,” he said, lower than a whisper. “I’m sorry.”
“I forgive you,” I said after a beat, not even quite sure why. But speaking was better than launching myself at him and having him fuck me right here on the paper-lined table.
Plus, it wasn’t logistically possible to stay mad at him forever, considering I was having his baby and all that.
“You forgive me?” he repeated.
I nodded.
“That easily?”
I raised my brow. “This seem easy so far to you?”
He digested my words. “How is this gonna work?” he asked, eyes moving down to my stomach and then back up.
“Well, if you don’t know that, I think your sex ed teacher was not great,” I muttered.
“No, you, me,” he murmured, entwining my hand in his.
“There is no you and me,” I snapped, snatching my hand away.
Wyatt raised his brow. “There will always be a you and me, Em.”
Luckily, the doctor chose that moment to come in and ruin a moment that I’d been waiting for forever. One that couldn’t happen again.
Her eyes flared slightly in recognition of Wyatt, but then she resumed her professional mask, smiling at me. “I’m Dr. Adams,” she said.
I’d seen another doctor before her, but I didn’t really click with her. And in my opinion, you had to click with the woman who’d have intimate knowledge of your vagina and who would be delivering your child. She was younger than I expected, her hair pulled off her face. Somehow it didn’t make her look harsh, only accentuated her fresh and clear skin and excellent bone structure. This was L.A. though, everyone was gorgeous.
Wyatt moved to shake her hand. “Wyatt,” he said, even though it was obvious she knew.
It must’ve been strange, introducing yourself when people already thought they knew you. I never really considered more of the subtleties of fame before now.
“I would shake your hand but considering you’re going full frontal with my vagina, I think we’re past that,” I said.
She grinned in response.
I was gonna like her.
* * *
I’d heard the heartbeat before, so I already had my embarrassing and tearful reaction privately.
Wyatt had not.
And he froze the second the sound filled our ears. Filled up the fucking room. He’d immediately snatched my hand.
I didn’t pull away.
Nor did I break any bones.
His eyes glittered as his gaze darted from the monitor to my stomach. He brought my hand up to his mouth, laying his lips on my fingers.
I shivered.
And I should’ve pulled away.
I didn’t.
His eyes met mine. “That’s our baby’s heartbeat,” he whispered.
I nodded.
“Been in a stadium full of thousands of people screaming so loud I almost popped an eardrum,” he said. “That sound makes the screaming sound like a whisper. And it’s so much more fucking beautiful than that.”
The words hit me.
Because he was right. I’d never heard anything louder or more beautiful than that sound. Or more terrifying.
I was going to be in charge of something that important. That life-altering. I was going to have a huge impact on whether that beautiful, pure and important thing was corrupted by my demons.
“Do you want to know the sex?” Dr. Adams asked after giving us a moment of silence, looking from the monitor to us.
“Yes,” I said at the same time Wyatt uttered “No.”
I snatched my hand back from his and glared up at him, thankful we had something to disagree upon to jerk us from the tender and dangerous moment.
“We’re knowing the sex,” I demanded. “I’m not having a fucking gender reveal party like those millennial assholes, and I’m not painting the baby’s room yellow and having to come up with two sets of names. There’s gonna be plenty of surprises when the baby comes, like what’s inside diapers and how much infants can cry, I don’t need any more.”
“We haven’t talked about the baby’s room,” he said instead of responding to everything else.
I was upset that his tone was still soft and weird and he wasn’t giving me the argument I needed.
“Well, it’s obviously going to have one, I’m not just going to dump it in a dresser drawer,” I snapped. “I’ve already organized movers to get rid of what I don’t need in my guest bedroom.”
His face twisted at this and he looked like he might say something, but instead he focused on the screen and the doctor. “I guess we do want to know since Emma has voiced her opinions on surprises and gender reveal parties.”
She grinned. “I think gender reveal parties are absolutely stupid too.”
Yeah, totally liked her.
She moved the wand around—not a great feeling—and peered at the screen. “Okay, so we’ve got a little girl in there.”
Wyatt froze.
So did I.
Likely not for the same reason.
I didn’t know why, but I’d expected it was a boy. I thought I’d do better with a boy. Somehow click better. It was so not in line with everything I believed about feminism and gender constructs, but I was too afraid of what I’d do with a girl. It was too close to what my parents had. What if I turned the girl into me?
“A girl,” Wyatt rasped. His eyes were wet.
He was fucking crying.
And it was the most beautiful thing...ever. The hardened rocker, crying over finding out he was having a daughter. It was his tears that chased away the worst of my fears. Because of the depth of that reaction, of mine. I doubted that my parents had quiet joy over hearing my heartbeat, or that I was going to be a girl. I highly doubted my mother even had an ultrasound.
This was going to be different. It had to be different.
* * *
“What about Arianne?”
“Wyatt, are you seriously calling me while I’m in the middle of a meeting to discuss a stupid fucking name like Arianne?” I snapped, chewing on a gummy bear and browsing Pinterest in my living room. He didn’t know I wasn’t in a meeting.
“You’re not in a meeting.”
I jerked up, looking around the room for some kind of hidden camera—I wouldn’t put it past him. “How do you know that?”
“Because you told me you refuse to go to the meetings that your boss tries to make you go to. You say they’re dull and pointless and if you’re gonna waste your time, then you would rather waste it watching an episode of The Kardashians.”
My gummy bear paused on its way to my mouth. “You remember that? I said that like three years ago.”
“I remember everything you say, Em,” he said, voice soft.
What in the actual fuck?
“Babe, I’ve gotta go, I’ve got some stupid fucking photo shoot then we’re recording,” he continued, murmuring with voices in the background.
I rolled my eyes and continued stuffing my fat, pregna
nt face with gummy bears while sitting on my sofa watching reality TV in my underwear and my...baby daddy was off doing photo shoots.
The gap between us was bigger than the Grand Canyon.
“Oh, yeah me too,” I said between bites.
He chuckled and I felt it right between my legs. Which was kind of normal, because he was Wyatt, he was hot everywhere, it just stood to reason he’d have a hot chuckle. But it hit me everywhere else too, my stomach, that area in my chest which I’d been so certain was completely empty.
Until I’d seen that plus sign. Until Wyatt had cried at the ultrasound.
“Babe,” he said, voice low.
“Yeah?” I whispered.
Fucking whispered. Like a sweet nothing. There was literally nothing sweet about me. But Wyatt made me forget that.
“Come over to the beach house this afternoon? There’s something I want to show you.”
The beach house. The place I both loved and hate. Memories of Wyatt and I were packed into that place. Not eroded by the salty air or taken away by the tide. They just...stayed, both the good and the bad. Like barnacles on the fucking house.
That’s what this was between Wyatt and I. These feelings. We were barnacles on each other’s souls.
“Babe?” Wyatt probed. I could hear people yelling for him in the background. “Will you come?”
No. I shouldn’t. It was a bad idea. The beach house. Adding more barnacles.
“Yeah,” I whispered.
* * *
“What am I doing?” I said out loud to the car.
This time I wasn’t drunk, and I wasn’t asking the question to an Uber driver. No, I was annoyingly sober, and I was speaking to no one but my unborn child.
I shouldn’t have come. I should’ve called Wyatt and canceled. But I couldn’t. And this was inevitable. Whatever this was going to be. I’d felt it. The build-up between us. Like the air before a storm. It was thick and heavy. Ominous.
The urge to run was strong.
Because there was only pain left between me and Wyatt. We were both too fucked up to work, but we couldn’t be rid of each other.
The proverbial rock and hard place. When someone wasn’t your oxygen, when they were suffocating you with their existence, but still, you couldn’t breathe without them
Also because this someone had planted a baby in me.
I got out of the car.
Knocked on the door.
He answered.
Shirtless.
I tried to keep my eyes up.
I failed.
Don’t judge me, I was pregnant and horny, and Wyatt was beyond hot, and the more pregnant and horny I got, the hotter he was. His torso was lean, sculpted from fricking marble, every muscle etched with precision. Since he’d arrived in L.A., like Sam, they’d taken care to grow those muscles and to ink designs all over them. I wanted to explore all of the crevices with my tongue, trail my fingers along the ink tattooed on his skin. My gaze moved lower to where his jeans were slung low on his hips. Way low. Low enough to see a dark scattering of pubic hair.
My hand twitched.
My panties were already fucking wet.
“Like what you see?” he asked, voice thick.
I snapped my head up, Wyatt was regarding me with the sort of heat that would’ve made sense if I was in lingerie and had my pre-pregnancy body, not with me wearing a oversized black tee as a dress and combat boots. “If what I see is a vain rocker trying to distract me with his abs, then no, I do not like what I see. Be more original, Wyatt,” I said, struggling to keep my voice bland.
He didn’t lose his grin. “Ah, that’s my Emma.” He stepped aside to let me in. I tried to give him as wide of a girth as I could, but the doorway was small, I was only getting larger, and he seemed to take up all the space.
I held my breath so I couldn’t smell him, though his heat imprinted itself onto my skin. He snatched a tee from somewhere and had yanked it over his head as I walked into the kitchen, though it was too late, the damage was done.
The damage had been done years ago, whether I wanted to admit it or not.
“Why am I here, Wyatt?” I asked, folding my arms on top of my stomach. His eyes traveled there, as they always did when he saw me. I hated that I got a feeling of warmth from the reverent way he regarded the growing swell in my stomach.
“’Cause you wanted to see me?”
I scowled. “You’re the one who called me and told me to come over.”
“And you’re the one that never does anything anyone tells her unless it’s something she wants to do,” he countered. “So you want to be here.”
I hated that he knew me so well.
I couldn’t think of a good retort, so I just pursed my lips, watching him stride over to me, guitar in his hands.
He was barefoot, wearing a ripped black tee. He had a beanie covering his blond hair and I usually hated men who wore beanies with short sleeves—they were almost always douchebags. And though Wyatt had the tendency to be a douchebag on occasion, it suited him.
More than suited him. My womb pulsated at the very sight of it.
Fucking hormones.
“I wanted to show you something,” he said, voice soft as he pulled a dining room chair out. “Sit.”
I didn’t move. “Why? Because I’m pregnant and couldn’t possibly stand on my own two feet without fainting?”
His jaw ticked, I wasn’t sure if it was amusement or impatience, with me he seemed to go between the two. “You do have a history.”
One time of me fainting apparently trumped a lifetime of me standing without falling.
I narrowed my eyes. “Fuck you.”
“Just sit, for fuck’s sake,” he snapped.
I had protested the assumption that pregnant women needed to sit all the time, but my ankles felt like the skin was about to explode they were getting that swollen. It probably didn’t help that my combat boots had a high and chunky heel, but no way was I going to start doing something crazy like invest in sensible footwear while pregnant.
And because even though I managed to hold my own facing off with some of the most morally questionable billionaires in the world, a harsh command coming from the rock star I was in love with did me in.
So I sat.
Wyatt gave me a cheeky grin that catapulted me back to when we were seventeen in front of Lexie’s garage.
Then he started strumming.
He didn’t sing.
He didn’t need to.
The notes, the chords, the way his fingers thrummed at the strings—it was music. No, it was art. Because somehow it was full of pain, of anguish, love. Us.
It was so beautiful tears sprang back to my eyes.
I wanted to dive into the music. Live in it.
I needed it to end. Before I convinced myself it—and Wyatt and I—could last forever.
“Stop,” I hissed, striding forward and snatching the guitar from his hands, wishing that I could snatch those words, those chords from the air.
From my fucking heart.
“Stop that,” I said, wanting to hoist the guitar through the window, and preparing to do just that when I fell short.
I was somewhat known for my temper.
And now, with all the hormones and shit, I was surprised I wasn’t on some kind of watchlist.
Throwing a guitar out the window in a rage wouldn’t be the worst thing I’d done.
Not ever.
Not even this week.
But this was Wyatt’s.
What his fingers had strummed that fucking song on.
I believed in the sacredness of art. The need for it to be protected, nurtured, preserved.
Never had I consider instruments to be in that category.
Wyatt changed that.
The asshole.
So instead of throwing the guitar out the window, I slung it onto the sofa where it bounced harmlessly onto the plethora of couch cushions that rich people always seemed to have.
“Tho
ught you might be preparing to throw my guitar out the window there, sugar,” Wyatt said, his voice a low and lazy drawl.
His eyes were anything but lazy. They were alert. Full of heat, of intensity. Full of that fucking melody.
“I decided that throwing an inanimate object out the window wouldn’t do sufficient amount of harm,” I snapped.
He regarded me. “You don’t need to throw anything to do harm, Em.”
My stomach dropped and I hoped that I wasn’t about to puke everywhere. “I said stop,” I hissed.
“Stop what?”
“You know what,” I replied. “You know this is not it.” I waved my hands between us. “This is not good. All we are and ever will be is a collection of mistakes. You can’t turn all of those mistakes and try and make them a fucked-up melody. It doesn’t work. Since you decided to be a part of this baby’s life, it’s been constant manipulation, control to try and force me into whatever role you think I should be playing. And that role is what? Your pregnant groupie?”
His jaw was hard. “You can be a real bitch sometimes, you know that?”
I jutted my chin up. “Yeah, and I’m proud of it. Because if a douchebag, alpha male rock star isn’t calling me a bitch then it means I’m not standing up for myself.”
“When are you gonna pay attention and see I’m not pushing you down?” He yanked off his beanie to run his hands through his hair in frustration. “I’m standing up for you too. Not everyone’s out to get you, Emma. To hurt you. You don’t need to protect yourself from me.”
I laughed. “That’s a joke. You’re the person I need to protect myself from most of all, Wyatt. The man who walked away from me when I was pregnant and terrified and left me that way for weeks while he partied up like the A-List douchebag that he was.” I hurled the words with venom, trying to fill the air with them, to wipe away the notes of that song.
It wasn’t working.
Wyatt’s hard expression never left me. “Emma, that’s not why I walked away, it has nothing to do with this life.” He threw his hands up to gesture at the house around us. “It’s about the life I’m trying to forget. Escape.” He paused. “My parents...” He trailed off.