Neither could she decide if telling Xander had been a good move or not.
Of course she would have had to tell him at some point. That wasn’t even a question. But as much as sharing the truth had helped her in the moment, it seemed to have backfired. She couldn’t stop thinking about him. Wondering what he was doing—when he wasn’t texting her, of course, which happened about six times Friday night alone. Wondering if he’d meant it when he said he was happy. Wondering how the weekend might have been different if she hadn’t had Millie and he hadn’t had Cady...if she would have ended up staying longer at his place...if they might have tumbled into other ways to survive the hours...
Yeah. It was definitely better this way.
Her need for distraction faded a bit, however, when Millie pulled a work sheet from her school backpack and handed it over with inordinate glee.
“We have our first project, Mom, and it’s awesome. We get to build volcanoes!”
“Guess she wanted to start the year with a bang, huh, Mills?”
Millie rolled her eyes, even though that wasn’t supposed to start until the teen years.
Heather sighed and squinted at the assignment sheet.
“So let me get this straight. You’re going to build a volcano, and it has to have a well in it so you can do a chemical reaction at school.”
“Right. Mrs. Wilcoxin said that it’ll foam up and be really impressive. We can put food coloring in it if we want, too, to make it look like real lava.”
“I still have no idea where you got your science gene. I’m lost at this, and Daddy isn’t much better.”
“He has to know some of it. To fix things in the cottages.”
“True.” But the knowledge that Hank required for his cottage rental business was far more hands-on than Millie’s fascination with astronomy and chemistry.
Heather grabbed an apple slice from the plate in the middle of the table and frowned at the instructions again. They could do this. She could do this.
“Okay. It looks like the first thing we need to do is decide what materials you want to use.” She scanned the list of suggestions. Papier-mâché, chicken wire... Those were all closer to Hank’s area of expertise than hers.
“Tell you what, Mills. I’ve never made anything like this, so let’s do some research over the next couple of days. When you come back on Wednesday, we’ll decide what sounds best.”
“Okay.” Millie made a careful note in her school planner. “Hey, Mom. You know what Wednesday is?”
Heather couldn’t see anything past the giant cliff that was Monday, at least not at the moment. “Tell me.”
“It’s the fourteenth. The day before the fifteenth, which is exactly forty-five days to my birthday.” Millie grinned and held up her planner.
Oh Lord.
She had to talk to Hank. Time had slipped away, carried along in the rush of the past month, but here they were. Just a little over one month until Millie’s birthday.
How many months until the next possible birth?
“Daddy and I are supposed to get together this week, sweetie. I’ll talk to him then.” Because that was exactly the carrot she would need to get through whatever else Monday delivered. Oh yeah. Absolutely.
Parenting Truth Number 3: Things can always get worse.
* * *
XANDER WOKE UP Saturday morning with one thought in his head: bulbs.
It was an incredibly stupid thing to focus on, but there it was. Somewhere in the night, the swirl of baby and Heather and tubes and future coalesced into that one coherent thought. He was going to plant flower bulbs.
“Cady girl, how would you like to have flowers in the spring?” he asked as they pulled up in front of the bulb display at the gardening store.
“Fowers?”
“That’s right. Pretty flowers for you to pick.” He squinted at the names above the baskets of things that he thought looked more like onions than potential blooms.
Amazing how that worked. How little seeds and bulbs grew and changed and became bushes or carrots or... “Tulips,” he announced. “What do you think? Red ones? And some daffodils? And maybe some...what are these? Purple crocuses? These will be pretty.”
“Pitty.”
He dropped a couple of the net bags into the cart. “We’ll plant them now, then in the spring, they’ll pop up and be flowers. And you can smell them. Just make sure there’s no bumble bees around to go bzz bzz bzz.” He dive-bombed her in the cart, pretending to be a bee on the attack, sending her into a fit of laughter. Every giggle was like a whisper inside him, telling him it was going to be okay.
Maybe even miraculous.
Totally ridiculous, he knew. And whenever he thought of Heather, and what she must be going through this weekend, he felt like a selfish jerk. Because his possible miracle was coming at the cost of her plans and dreams and her whole freaking life.
He frowned. It wasn’t too high a cost, was it? Surely not enough to make her run again.
Right?
As soon as the thought crossed his mind, he shoved it aside. She wasn’t the same scared kid she had been back then. She was one determined mother. All it took was a look at what she was doing to try to get joint custody to know how committed she was.
This time would be different.
When he blew raspberries on Cady’s cheek as he buckled her into her car seat, he imagined delivering another set of them.
When he doled out animal crackers to keep Cady happy while he grabbed a few minutes to read about planting bulbs, he imagined telling her to keep an eye on her sister—brother?—for a minute.
When he opened the door and yelled to Lulu that they were going out in the yard, he imagined himself turning and telling Heather that they—
He stopped on the back step.
How had Heather landed in this fantasy?
Well, obviously she had a part in it. A major one. But he hadn’t expected her to play such a close role.
Or one that felt so damned right after the shock wore off.
Or one that made his next move so amazingly clear.
* * *
NO MATTER HOW often Heather told herself that it would be much easier to go through the sonogram without Xander, she couldn’t deny the rush of relief when she pulled into the parking lot and spotted him leaning against his car.
“Hey.” He greeted her with a smile and a squeeze on the shoulder as soon as she approached. “How was the blood test?”
“They came, they saw, they poked me with a needle and sent me on my way.”
“Okay. How are you doing?”
“Right as—” She bit back the auto reply. This was Xander. She didn’t have to pretend. “Um, about the same as I was when you texted me an hour ago. Or last night, or yesterday afternoon, or—”
“What can I say? You were on my mind.”
And he had been on hers as well, but she didn’t want him to think that she was only thinking of him now, when there was a complication involved. Or think that this meant that they were back together. Because she was pretty sure they weren’t.
Not that she was certain of anything these days.
Still she couldn’t help but welcome his steadying hand on her elbow as she filled out paperwork. Just as she was grateful for his bad jokes about hospital gowns as she disappeared into the changing area. And when the technician breezed into the exam room with a cheerful, “Good morning,” it was kind of nice to have him at her side, his hand resting over hers as she lay on the table, hoping she could stop shaking long enough to get this done.
“All right now, Heather.” The tech bustled to the foot of the table, pulled out the stirrups and gave Heather a sympathetic, woman-to-woman smile. “Your doctor told you that this would be an internal sonogram, right?”
Oh God.
“I...yes. Yes, she did.” Not that Heather had remembered it in the flurry of everything else that the doctor had said all those aeons ago, but yes. This had been explained.
Xander positioned himself at her side, one eyebrow raised as he looked down at her.
“Internal?”
Blushing would be totally ridiculous at this point.
“Now, Heather, would you like to put it in by yourself, or would you prefer that I do it?”
She met Xander’s horrified gaze and burst into giggles.
The mood shifted abruptly when the wand was in place and grainy, indecipherable pictures began to appear on the screen. Heather craned her neck even though she knew she wouldn’t be able to make sense of the blobs and blurs.
“What’s that?” Xander asked, as the tech clicked on the image.
“That’s an ovary.”
“I think we were pretty sure I had at least one of those.” Heather wasn’t sure where that came from, but it felt good to say something. Anything. To maintain what control she could over the situation.
“Can you see the baby? Is it in the tube?” Xander gripped her hand tight as he leaned forward, squinting at the screen.
Heather shook her head. “We won’t know that yet,” she said softly.
“What? But it’s all up there. I mean, what if it’s in the tube and ready to rupture? We should know now!”
The tech stayed serene as she continued clicking the mouse with one hand while shifting the position of the—ouch—wand with the other.
“It has to be read by the radiologist, and the results sent to your doctor.” She spared Xander a smile. “Sorry, Dad.”
Heather’s gaze met his. She gulped. He squeezed her hand even harder.
Maybe he really had been right to insist on coming along.
So when the exam was finally done, and she was back in her clothes, ready to return to the doctor, she wasn’t at all surprised that he insisted on joining her. Nor did she try to discourage him.
“I’ll drive.”
“No, that’s okay. I’ll need my car to run some errands and—”
“Heather.” He gripped her shoulder. “I know you can do this. But I would like to take care of you. Just a little.”
She still would have said no. But she understood, too well, that need to feel he was doing something.
And the truth was, she was the tiniest bit distracted.
“Okay.” She started toward the passenger side, stopped and turned around. “Xander?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m glad you’re here.”
There was nothing forced about his smile. “Wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, babe.”
The drive was quiet, save for the light jazz on the radio and his occasional comments on the other drivers, none of them flattering but all of them funny. She wouldn’t have expected to spend this trip in laughter. She had to admit, it felt good.
As he killed the engine, she reached for his hand and gave it a fast squeeze. “Thanks for the distractions.”
“Just doing my job,” he said with a wink.
Twenty minutes later she was in another gown, on another table, waiting for the doctor while listening to Xander share stories from his weekend with Cady. He really was a great dad.
“...so she shoved the toast in the dog’s mouth and said—”
“You want this baby, don’t you?”
He glanced at the door before focusing on her. “You want to have this talk now?”
“I don’t want to have it at all.”
“Understandable.”
“But if...if this is really... I mean, if it isn’t...”
“Yeah,” he said softly. “This isn’t the way I’d want it to happen, or the circumstances, or anything like that. But if you want the truth—”
She nodded.
“Yeah. It doesn’t make sense and I know it’s complicated beyond belief, but when you strip away the rest of it and get down to the heart of the matter, then yeah.” He placed one warm hand on her abdomen. “I want this baby.”
She had no idea what to say and wasn’t sure if she could get through any words without falling apart. She settled for curling her hand over the one resting on her stomach and tilting forward, letting her head sink into his shoulder. Maybe some of his certainty could flow into her.
She was still leaning into him when the door opened and the doctor walked in.
“Hello, Heather.”
Heather jerked back, searching Dr. Jackson’s eyes for any clue, but the medical poker face was firmly in place. The doctor introduced herself to Xander and shook his hand while Heather shredded the exam table paper with her fingernails.
“Good to meet you, too.” Xander dropped the doctor’s hand. “Is Heather okay?”
Being remembered felt good.
“Well,” the doctor said, turning back toward Heather, “your hormone levels have risen exactly the way we would expect at this point in the pregnancy. More importantly, the sonogram didn’t show anything in the fallopian tubes. We still need to monitor you extra carefully, especially for the next few weeks, but right now, I would say that this pregnancy is viable.”
Viable.
Pregnancy.
A baby.
Some strange sound pierced the pounding in her head. Some strange pressure on her hand made her wince and brought her back from the edge of panic.
Xander. Xander’s hand was wrapped around hers in a steadying—if slightly jittery—grip. Xander’s ragged sigh of relief still echoed in the small room.
He really wanted this baby.
Or he had been really worried about her.
Maybe both?
She tried to shake the away the barrage of thoughts so she could focus on what she was feeling. Or should it be the other way around?
“Heather.” Dr. Jackson’s voice was low but firm. “I know this isn’t something you were planning, but is this good news?”
She stared blankly at the doctor’s kind face, focusing on light winking off dangling earrings. It took forever for the words to penetrate the fog wrapped around her, another century or two for her to comprehend what the doctor was asking.
Is this good news?
“I don’t know.”
Xander ran a steadying hand over her forearm.
“I understand,” the doctor said. “You’ve had a lot to process. You still have some time to decide how you want to proceed.”
“I don’t...”
Her uncertain words were waylaid by a sudden memory of infant Millie in her arms. The warmth in her embrace. The unmistakable scent of baby shampoo. The scrunched up eyes that gazed up at her and made her understand that she was this child’s whole world.
“Thank you.” She risked a glance at Xander, who was holding himself rigid as he watched her. “I don’t think that...stopping this...would be an option.”
Xander’s hand tightened on her arm before slipping around her shoulders. She let herself lean against him. Just for a minute.
“All right,” the doctor said. “Then we’ll get you back here in a couple of days and make sure everything still looks okay. If anything changes on your end, just say the word. But for right now, everything looks good for you to plan on delivering in about seven and a half months.”
Heather nodded. She may have even said something to acknowledge the doctor’s words. None of it registered. She had disappeared into a cottony haze, floating on a cloud of disbelief. It wasn’t a bad place to linger. Not at all. She nodded and smiled and drifted along, watching from a distance as the doctor said something to Xander...who nodded and spoke very quietly...then the door opened and closed, and the doctor wasn’t there anymore, and it was just her.
And Xand
er.
And a baby.
She gasped for air as reality broke over her like an icy, stinging wave. A baby. A real, crying, hungry, needy, life-changing baby.
“No,” she whispered, but the words were swallowed up by Xander’s chest as he pulled her close, wrapping his arms tightly around her, rocking her slowly from side to side.
A baby.
Xander’s baby.
She sagged against him, throat burning, chest tight. What was she going to do? She couldn’t have a baby.
She couldn’t not have it.
“Hey.” Xander’s voice was low and warm against her ear. “Why don’t we blow this Popsicle stand and get some lunch?”
Lunch?
Some of the fog had blown from her brain. She plucked at the gown.
“Why did they make me get changed?” Stupid question, but all she could manage.
“I’ll tell you after I go to medical school.” He winked. “Take your time getting dressed. I’m going to see if there’s such a thing as a men’s room in a gynecologist’s office.”
She put her clothes on mechanically, her brain vaguely aware that Xander had probably left to give her a minute alone. Because of course she needed her privacy. It wasn’t like he had ever seen her naked. Or had hot monkey sex with her in the grass. Or got her pregnant.
Her mind skittered away from the thought, but this time, she forced it back. She had spent the last nine years teaching herself how to face the truth. She’d be damned if she would let her work be undone by something that was currently smaller than her Millie-painted pinkie.
Not that it would stay that way for long.
“No.” She tossed the gown on the exam table and stepped into her pumps. No freak-outs allowed. She was strong and tough and a lot more together than the last time she found herself in this position. She would find a way through.
She could do this.
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