Rock the Cradle: An Mpreg Romance (Silver Oak Medical Center Book 6)

by Aiden Bates

  He cried himself to sleep. He'd expected more or less the reaction he got, and yet he was still disappointed when he got it. Obviously there had still been some tiny, naive part of him left that thought, or hoped, that Alex wanted him too. Derek still didn't necessarily want the baby, but if Alex did he'd learn to accept it. He'd let himself think the kind of family he saw on television sometimes was within his grasp.

  He'd never make that mistake again. He didn't need that stuff anyway. There might be a baby inside of him, but he was just an incubator. It was an accident. He'd make sure it never happened again and he'd move on.

  When he finally fell asleep, he dreamed about a little cave out in the forest. There were no people around. He didn't even have an Internet connection, but there were squirrels.

  They spoke to him in his father's voice.

  He woke up again when someone opened his bedroom door. He sat bolt upright, ready to fight, but the intruder was only Ayla. "Are you okay?"

  Derek leaned back against the wall. "I'm fine."

  She lifted her eyebrows. "Carmela called."

  Derek glared at the wall. "Carmela shouldn't have done that. I'm fine."

  Ayla sat on the chair near Derek's bed. "You don't have to be fine, Derek. Not for me."

  Derek shook his long hair over his shoulders. "I'm done crying for him." He stretched his back. "I'm done crying in general, I think."

  "Really." Ayla leaned forward and rested her chin on one hand. "I haven't been done crying in years, no matter how hard I try."

  "I don't have the energy to waste anymore. I was stupid. I put a lot of faith where I shouldn't have, and it got me into a bad situation. I deserve it. I'm not letting it happen again." Derek forced a grim smile onto his face. "I'm worth more than sitting around and waiting for some guy, and being available because he makes me feel good and that's what I can get."

  "Good for you." Ayla patted his arm. "Now, what do you say you come out of here and we all have some dinner? I know you've got a bean casserole in there somewhere."

  Derek emerged from his refuge. He put on a brave and smiling face for Ayla and Carmela. At the end of the day, Carmela was one of the reasons he was taking a stand. He'd be horrified if she let someone treat her the way Alex treated him.

  Of course, once dinner was over and everyone else was gone, Derek listened carefully at the thin wall between his and Alex’s condos. He could hear Alex pacing, if he tried. At least something about this whole mess troubled Alex. It wasn't Derek, or the baby, or whatever might happen to either of them, but something troubled him.

  Part of Derek might want to go and soothe Alex, but he stayed right where he was. He was done soothing for now. He wasn't going to waste his time.

  ***

  Alex paced back and forth in his condo, alone.

  Derek, he knew, was not alone. Alex wanted to think that Derek had called Ayla, but he knew better. Derek wouldn't have reached out in that way. He'd have just hunkered down, or maybe called Amadi. Carmela was more likely to have called Ayla, which made a lot of sense. Carmela trusted her.

  He didn't have to eavesdrop to figure out what they would be talking about.

  Everything had gone downhill so quickly. Sure, it had been wrong for Derek to hide the facts from him. It had been wrong for Derek to think he knew how Alex would react. Of course, Derek had been proven right. Alex had reacted exactly the way Derek feared, and Derek had been justified in kicking Alex out of his space.

  Would Alex ever be allowed back in there?

  Right now, even Alex could admit he didn't deserve it. He'd been an ass. Derek had blindsided him with the news. Alex, in his shock, had gone on the defensive and had lashed out. It had been a bad situation all around with no good solutions for anyone.

  Alex thought about the baby in Derek's belly. Alex’s baby, Derek's baby, their baby. The baby would be cute, of course. Alex and Derek were both attractive guys, they'd probably turn out a good looking kid. It would be smart, and tall, and it would have Derek's sunny personality.

  How often would Alex be allowed to see his firstborn?

  He headed to bed. His dreams were filled with cold sweats and images of supervised visitation, angry separations and cold meet-ups. Would Alex’s husband even be willing to tolerate a child by a previous partner?

  Why couldn't he marry Derek, and just be done with the whole thing?

  Sure, Dad objected. ALS dementia didn't take away the memories. It took away more subtle things, things that helped a person get along in society. ALS dementia patients tended to act inappropriately around caregivers and loved ones, or lost the ability to recognize the feelings and needs of others. Dad would still demand that Alex marry one of the omegas he'd chosen, and he'd be louder about it too.

  That wasn't a ringing endorsement for stepping away from Derek.

  Mama's concerns carried greater weight. She was right. Alex’s family would treat Derek like absolute trash. They were already receiving Ayla with rather less joy than Alex would have hoped. Alex thought he could love Derek enough to stand up to his dad's family for him. He would absolutely love his own child enough.

  And a man couldn't value family, couldn't place family above all else, and not want to keep his own child close by. That just wasn't how this worked.

  If his brain had been on slightly better processing speed, or a little less hung up on Dad and Joey and Mama and Veronica, he would have been able to say that during their fight. Instead, he'd just gotten defensive and let Derek kick him out. He hadn't tried to correct Derek's impression of him. He'd just gone ahead and argued with him.

  On Sunday morning, Alex fretted. He didn't know who he could turn to. Dad was out of the question. Mama, too, had to be avoided, but for completely different reasons. Ayla had left him three texts, all unintelligible. If Ayla was pissed, she'd probably already spoken to Ivy, and Ivy was most likely sharpening her steak knives.

  Alex stared at his phone for a moment, and then he dialed a different number.

  Rick Wade answered the phone. "Alex. How's it going, buddy?"

  "It's going." Just hearing Rick's friendly Texas twang made Alex feel like a huge weight had been taken off of his chest. "I need some advice, and I'm not sure where else to turn."

  Rick slurped something into the receiver. It was probably coffee. "Well, why don't you come on out to our place? Dylan's dying to see you, and you can meet little Sammy."

  "I'll be over. Can I bring anything?"

  "Maybe a little bit of that vodka only you know how to find."

  Alex laughed. He bought that stuff by the case, for just such occasions. "Will do."

  The Wade home was large, and set on a decent sized parcel of land. It was also surrounded by a large stockade fence, a new addition since the last time Alex had been here. He had to wait for the gate to open before he could be admitted, but once he was he relaxed. Rick knew how to steer him right.

  Inside, he passed off his bottle of Russian vodka over to Rick, greeted Rick's husband Dylan with a smile and a handshake, and even made happy faces for the baby. Alex wasn't exactly a stranger to babies. He knew how to handle himself around them. Of course, it was different being around them for a few hours in the ER and being around them twenty-four hours a day.

  "How's it been?" he asked, passing Sammy back to Dylan. "You know, with the baby and all?"

  The dads glanced at one another for a second, and then they laughed. "Sometimes it's awful," Rick said frankly. "All those people who sit there and tell you that you don't mind the poopy diapers and crying jags at three in the morning because oh baby and oh isn't he precious, they're full of crap. They're screaming on an octave that makes your brain rattle around the inside of your brain pan like I don't even know what." Rick winked. "And that's a technical term."

  Dylan cuddled his son close to his body. "I didn't think it was possible for so much feces to come out of such a small person." He made a face. "He had a blowout that filled his basinette. Just filled it. We had to throw it out
and buy a new one."

  Alex rubbed at his belly. "That sounds delightful."

  "Don't tell me you're thinking about taking the plunge, there, Stodgearooni. I mean you? You organize your shoes in alphabetical order. You're just not going to be able to handle all the chaos that a baby brings into your life." Rick chuckled to himself. "Go on, you want to hold Sammy again and get that stuff out of your system?"

  Alex hesitated. "Er, when was that blowout again?"

  "Maybe it's better if I just put Sammy down for a nap," Dylan said, and disappeared up the stairs.

  "What's really going on here?" Rick tilted his head to the side. "You've never had interest in kids before. Unless you could use them as lab experiments, I mean."

  "That was one time," Alex muttered. "I, ah. My neighbor's pregnant."

  Rick blinked a few times. "Okay, well, he's a hottie. And an omega. These things happen. Tell him congratulations and that he should probably make an appointment upstairs." He winced. "I hope his due date doesn't fall during Carter's paternity leave."

  "I'm not sure. But anyway, Yeah. My hot neighbor is pregnant. By, ah. By me."

  Rick blew out a long stream of hot air. "Okay, that's a fish of a different stripe. That's the kind of thing where you have to… oh hell, Alex, I didn't even know you were seeing him."

  "I wasn't." He took a deep breath. "We were kind of messing around, and it got a little more complicated."

  "A baby's pretty damn complicated. What are you, seventeen?" Rick shook his head. "All right. So what does he want to do, and what do you want to do?"

  Alex blinked. "What do you mean, do?"

  "Does he want to surrender the baby for adoption? Keep it? What? Which would you rather? Judging by the fact that you weren't actually dating him I have to assume you'd rather he surrendered it."

  Alex recoiled. "No. Hell no. That's my baby. I can't stand the thought of someone else getting that child, that little piece of me."

  Rick nodded, lips twisted. "Okay. Now, how does Derek feel about it?"

  Alex swallowed. "No idea. He didn't say." He clasped his hands together, between his knees. "I can't imagine he'd feel all that differently. The guy doesn't have a family. How could he think about handing over the only real family he'd ever have?"

  Rick shrugged. "I don't know. I come from a big, close-knit family myself. But Dylan, he doesn't. He was a little less enthusiastic. He didn't have great memories when it came to family, and what it boiled down to with him was that he'd do it for me, but it wasn't something he was all that into. If the circumstances were different, if our relationship was a little less solid, I can imagine he'd have surrendered Sammy."

  Alec doubled over. "Can we not? I mean I'll raise it if he doesn't want to. I can afford a nanny. It won't be a problem."

  Rick scratched his head. "So neither one of you is thinking of trying to make a go of it, huh?"

  "Well." Alex squirmed. "I was kind of thinking of it, but we never did."

  "Why?"

  "What we had was working." Alex cradled his head in his hands. "We were both getting what we wanted, and we didn't need more than that. At least I thought we were, you know? But when we fought yesterday, he kept coming back to this idea that I won't be seen with him in public. Which, I mean, we haven't. I can't let my family know we've been sleeping together."

  "They'll figure it out when the baby gets here, dumbass." Rick scoffed. "What's really eating at you about this. Do you really not like the guy? Does he have hairy toes? Snore? What?"

  "My family hates him, but I don't want that to matter." Alex rubbed at the back of his neck. "I just—with everything going on right now, I don't think now is the right time to antagonize everyone. I don't want to sit here and bring in a new drama, you know? Dad's got ALS, and he's got ALS dementia. He's gotten very, ah, aggressive, about a lot of things. I don't want to drag my pregnant boyfriend into a fight with my dad. And I don't want to put him into a situation with a bunch of people who will be simply awful to him."

  "You know they'll be awful to him?" Rick licked his lips. "You predict the future now?"

  "Hell yeah I do." He swallowed. "When I—when Ayla was taken, you know my uncle was the one who sold her."

  "Yeah. I know you mentioned it." Rick nodded and leaned back. His gray eyes burned into Alex.

  "Well, after the cops arrested him, my grandmother—Dad's mother, my uncle's mother—decided the whole thing was my fault. As her older brother, I shouldn't have let Ayla go to my uncle's. I should have somehow known that she was in danger, and of course a thirteen-year-old boy could have done something about it in those days anyway."

  Rick scoffed. "Yeah, no. But no one believed their nonsense."

  "Oh, that's where you're wrong. Everyone other than my mom, Dad, and Ivy believed her. They would call the police and demand I be investigated, because I obviously 'knew' where she was. Every time I walked into a room, they turned their backs. Some of them still do. That was kind of devastating for a kid my age, you know? It didn't help with some of my less stellar tendencies."

  "No, it wouldn't." Rick sat up a little straighter. "And you think they'll treat him badly because…"

  "Because he doesn't come from money. Because he didn't go to college. Hell, probably because I love him. I just—with everything else going on for both of us, is it right to put him through that?"

  Rick smirked. "Is it right to take the decision out of his hands? Alex, if he was upset that you never took him anywhere in public, he wanted something more than to be your go-to guy."

  Alex’s cheeks burned. "You make it sound so crass."

  "If the shoe fits." Rick cracked his knuckles. "Look. Maybe, if there wasn't a baby involved, you could wait and take things slower. Ease people into it. As it is? No, no way. You have to decide now. Can you love this man enough to support him? Even if it means not spending time with the people who turned their backs on you?"

  "It's not that easy." Alex shook his head. "They're family. Dad's sick. If I'm responsible for his care, how can I bring someone around who he hates? Dad knows who he is, he knows what's important to him. He knows what he cares about is continuing the family line. Can I really put an heir in front of him that came from a guy that makes his blood pressure rise by thirty points every time his name is mentioned?"

  Rick snorted. "Hell yeah you can. Because your dad is still cognizant, just having some new difficulties with processing a few things, you can absolutely do what's right for you and for your family. Your family, Alex, because no matter what happens going forward this child is still part of your family. It has your DNA, your blood, your heritage. It is your responsibility to take care of."

  Alex nodded. "Okay. Yeah, you're right. I just—I can imagine a future with Derek in it. I just can't imagine getting to that point, you know?"

  Rick laughed. "Oh, buddy. If it were that easy, we'd be no different from the animals, and the entire entertainment industry would collapse. Have you ever seen a blockbuster movie that didn't have a romance subplot? Or a book? Never mind the billion-dollar romance novel industry."

  "Seriously?" Alex scratched his head. "Why do you know that?"

  "I know lots of things. Plus I treated a romance novelist the other day." Rick waved it away. "The point is, none of this is supposed to run smoothly. You're talking about bringing two separate people together. It's not something that just goes. Everyone's got their fears, their fantasies, their quirks. Finding a way to fit them together so they don't chafe too badly is where all the work comes in."

  "Hey, you're the one who keeps leaving bloody socks on the floor," Dylan challenged from the stairwell.

  "And if you wanted to marry someone whose socks weren't bloody sometimes, you probably should have married an accountant." Rick smiled at his husband.

  "Not an accountant." Alex held up a hand. "I had two guys in the other day, they got into a really intense fight about the general ledger."

  Rick recoiled. "Yikes. Were there staples involved?"

&nb
sp; "And the staple puller. It was bad, Rick. I filed the report."

  "I haven't read it yet. Sorry. Anyway, that's the facts. If you want it—want him—enough, you'll find a way to make it happen. And if not, well, at least you'll have tried."

  Alex nodded, digesting Rick's words. He did want Derek, and he wanted Derek more than he wanted his extended family's approbation. The only question was, did he want it enough?

  Chapter Seventeen

  Derek sat beside Carmela in the cruiser, holding her hand. Her pulse raced, and his raced right alongside it. "Have you ever had to go to court before?"