One shoulder pops up. “I just know.”
“Oh, okay. Like that helps.”
Smiling, he adds, “You found out you were pregnant and didn’t hesitate to take charge. You didn’t curl up and cry or hide.”
“Well, I did cry.” I let him know.
He waves my comment off. “That’s assumed. I mean, you didn’t stay curled up and crying. You also went to your parents and told them right away that you were pregnant and didn’t hesitate in doing that.”
“Dragging it out wouldn’t have done any of us any good.”
“That’s how I know you’re stronger than you think. You did the hard thing by yourself and didn’t think it was hard. You’ll be amazing, Ashley. And where you fall short, I’ll pick up the slack, and vice versa because Lord knows I’ll fall short in areas, too. We aren’t doing this alone, Ashley. This is us together.”
“I gotta say, I picked a good one to have a one-night stand and end up getting pregnant with.”
His eyes flare and turn molten. “Even if you’re just trying to be a smart ass, that’s easily the best compliment I’ve ever been given.”
“Not being a smart ass at all. Simply being honest with you. Remember, that thing I promised I’d always be?”
“I don’t know if you remember this from the night at the bar, but I told you my almost fiancée never told me that she didn’t want to be a wife or mother. That’s why she turned me down. She said she never wanted it, knew that I did, so she said no. But here’s the thing: I’ve been wracking my brain and wracking my brain trying to remember a point where she made it clear that she wasn’t about long-term, committed relationships. Know what I found out?”
I’m almost afraid to ask. “What?”
“Absolutely nothing. She never gave me indication of that. She was, for lack of a better word, faking it.”
Shit. That’s not good. It’s a miracle he has any trust in me at all if he feels like I’m the same as his ex. “Like I was?”
“I guess. Though, my guess is she realized she was doing it whereas, from my understanding, you didn’t. You just morphed into a different person because you wanted so badly to be accepted. It probably goes all the way back to when you were little and were trying to fit in with your big sisters but you never felt good enough. As you grew up, I’d dare say that you did the same with a lot of your friends. Pretended to be someone completely opposite from who you are so they’d stay friends with you. It’s crazy, now that I think about it, how much our childhood can affect our entire lives.” He pauses as if he’s reflecting, shaking his head slightly as a humorless laugh escapes him. I don’t think it’s at my expense, though.
My heart is beating so fast and my palms are starting to itch. My legs, too. They’re restless and I stand up to move around the small space to help alleviate some of the discomfort. Once they’re settled some, I stand in front of Nik, staring down at him. He looks drained. Probably because he just spent thirty-three years inside my brain and figured me out. I’d be tired, too. “Did you take a lot of psychology classes in your downtime? Because that was deep. Not just deep for a hospital waiting room conversation, either. That was like, get into your head and pick it apart for you to put back together deep. I feel like I just sat through a three-hour therapy session.”
“What do you mean?”
“All that back there. The realizing that I was playing pretend in most of my relationships and friendships because I have this longing to be accepted, which is all my sisters’ fault.”
“I didn’t say…”
“Oh yes, you did,” I taunt. “You just said it. All my current life problems are because of my sisters tormenting me growing up.”
“I said no such thing.”
“Did, too.”
“Did not.” He narrows his eyes at me and I grin. “You’re being a shit,” he recognizes.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because it was getting far too intense in this little room. Between my freak-out and your new career as a waiting room therapist, I was feeling stifled. It’s a happy day. We have a long time yet to figure out why I’m screwed up.”
“You’re not screwed up.”
“Ehh. Depends on the day. I think we’re all a little mad, right?”
“Did you just quote Alice in Wonderland?”
“Did we just become best friends because you knew it was from Alice in Wonderland?”
“Did you just quote Step Brothers? Then yes, yes we did.”
We’re staring at each other for one beat, two beats, three… and then we both burst out laughing.
Doubling over, laughing over something that is hardly funny at all, but in our current exhausted state, it seems mega hilarious. If he’s anything like me, the last week has been a whirlwind, trying to keep up with the idea of a new reality. Because of that, I haven’t been sleeping that well. When I lay my head down at night, my mind kicks into overdrive.
I’m wiping a tear from my eye and holding my side when Dean comes rushing in.
“He’s here!”
Nik and I whip our heads in the direction of the doorway to see Dean radiating a kind of happiness I didn’t know existed in the world. Nik stands abruptly, and because I was close to him already, we’re now just inches apart. His hand automatically goes to me, holding onto me under my forearm. His nearness makes me sway on my feet. His scent is so intoxicating, I want to press my nose to his skin and breathe him in.
“He?” Nik whispers and Dean beams. He squeezes my arm and even if I wasn’t staring directly at him, I would be able to see the emotion written all over his face. “Josie okay?”
“Both are perfect. She was a champ. Yelled at the doctor to do better, and when he came out, she told him he was the best doctor she could have asked for. He said it was completely normal.”
The corner of Nik’s mouth ticks up. “Sounds like her.”
“Details?” I ask, because that’s what women do. They want to know about the baby.
“Big boy. Eight pounds, twelve ounces, twenty-one inches long. Tons of dark hair.”
“Name?”
“Josie wants to tell you. Ready to come meet your nephew?”
“Hell yeah.”
I had planned on staying here in the room, wanting to give this time to them as a family. But Nik has other plans. He’s dragging me right along with him.
As we enter the room Josie is staying in, I hear a soft humming to the tune of “You Are My Sunshine.” We sanitize our hands at the station next to the door.
“Hey,” Nik says, his voice cracking.
She looks up at him and smiles. “Hey, you. Come meet Jay Nikolas.”
Nik gasps. “Josie,” he whispers. “Dad would have…” he trails off and his hold on my arm grows stronger. “Dad would have been honored to have him as his namesake.”
“And you? Are you okay with him taking your middle name?”
“Stupid questions don’t deserve answers,” he jokes.
“You want to hold him?”
“Of course.”
Nik takes little Jay in his arms with such ease, if I hadn’t already been pregnant with his child, I would have gotten pregnant just from watching him hold his nephew. He bends down, whispering into Jay’s ear and nuzzling kisses into his cheek. Holy crap, it’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. Nik holding a baby is the stuff of fantasies. My breathing goes a little shallow and water pools in my mouth.
Nik is quite literally mouth-watering right now.
Just as the thought stays locked in my brain, he looks up at his sister and smiles. His bright white teeth are beaming. “He’s perfect.”
No. I cannot be expected to handle this. The urge to take a trip down memory lane and remind ourselves what it was like when we made our little bundle is strong. It’s more than just my hormones working overdrive. I think it’s too soon in the pregnancy for that side effect.
Josie doesn’t realize that I’m in the middle of a mental breakdown over her
e, doing my best to resist the temptation to climb him like a tree. She’s just babbling on about their baby as if everything is normal.
“I know. We’re totally having a litter of kids. Look what we made on our first go-round. It would be doing a disservice to the world by not populating it even more with lookers like him.”
“Did you not forget the last few hours of your life, babe?” Dean asks, chuckling.
She waves him off, much like Nik did to me earlier. “Already forgotten.”
Nik moves closer to me, his clean scent overwhelming in my current state. I didn’t need to add that to my already heightened desire. But just like Josie, Nik’s completely unaware of my struggles. He simply looks down at his nephew and signals to me that he’s about to let me hold him. “Your turn, Ash.”
He passes the tiny little bundle over with such gentleness and care and then I’m holding a newborn baby in my arms. I stare at him, perfectly round cheeks. Puffy face from going through a traumatic experience, that of pushing his body through a hole the size of a walnut. His arm jerks, whipping back and forth, little wrinkly fingers spread apart.
“Hi, little guy.” He makes a cooing sound and I coo right back. How could you not? This baby is so pretty. Josie wasn’t wrong about that. “You are certainly a gorgeous baby,” I tell him. His eyes are closed, already bored with me. I take the moment to lean down, inhaling that soft baby scent. Only… well, he doesn’t smell all that great. And he has some white stuff on him. And now he’s beginning to get fussy, not full-on crying, yet. I bounce on my knees, swaying him gently side to side. “It’s okay, buddy. Are you getting hungry? Is that what the fuss is all about?” I use a voice that I don’t recognize as my own. It’s a little high pitch and sickeningly sweet but I don’t care. “You’re so precious, aren’t you?”
I look up to see Nik watching me closely, heat crackling in the space between us. I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing I was when I was watching him hold Jay.
Jay begins to fuss a little more and it’s clear I’m not capable of giving him what he needs. Dean must see it, too, because he walks over, rubbing Jay’s cheek with the back of his pointer finger. “Not your mama, Jay. You’ll have to go back to old weepy eyes over here for what you’re looking for,” Dean teases.
“Shut up, Dean! He’s just so perfect and look!” Josie wipes tears from her eyes and points to her newborn. Or is she pointing to me? I can’t really tell. All I know is that the moment Nik and I were sharing, brief as it may have been, is now broken by the whimpers of a newborn baby who seems to be hungry for his first meal outside the womb.
Reluctantly, I hand over Jay to his daddy who hugs him closely before bringing him to Josie just as a nurse walks in. After sanitizing her hands, she makes her way to Josie.
“Ready to try this feeding thing? I heard him getting a little upset so I figured it was time,” she tells Josie.
“Yeah.” Josie nods but looks a little worried. I don’t blame her.
And that’s our cue to leave. Neither Nik nor I want to stick around to watch Josie learn to breastfeed her baby so we say our goodbyes, leaving the family alone so they can have some privacy.
“We’ll leave you be. Congratulations, baby sis. You done good.”
He kisses her on the cheek and gives Dean a hug, grabs my hand, and we walk out of the hospital room.
Chapter Twelve
Nikolas
I don’t want to release Ashley’s hand as we make our way through the quiet hallways of the hospital. Seeing her hold my nephew did something to me but it started before that. Really, it started the night she and I played darts and conceived a child. Is that normal? To have this immediate need of protecting the person who’s carrying your child? I certainly hope so.
If we weren’t in the middle of a hospital room, surrounded by my sister and brother-in-law just now, I would have had a hard time not kissing her. The way she talked so sweetly to Jay was doing me in.
Neither of us say a single word as we continue walking, all the way to my pickup where I open her door and let her inside.
When I join her in the cab, I start it up and let it idle for a few minutes before looking over at her. She’s staring straight out the windshield, her chest rising and falling.
“Your place or mine?” I ask, hoping my instincts aren’t completely wrong here.
When she groans and drops her head, I panic for a second. Then she looks at me and smiles. “Thank goodness you asked. Yours. Quickly.”
“Got it.”
The drive to my house is thankfully short, only long enough for two country songs to play on my satellite radio. The first song is all about finding yourself in a bar, and if that isn’t an anthem for how we got together, I don’t know what is. I glance over at Ashley and she returns my smirk. I almost laugh out loud with how perfect it is for us. But the second song? This one has me pushing the pedal down a little harder.
The song starts out innocently enough, but the lyrics quickly turn to pleasing a woman, taking it slow, and giving her what she wants.
Somewhere through the song, I begin singing along and grab her hand. I don’t even realize it until I feel her other hand close over ours.
I wish we were already at home so I could dance with her in my living room, holding her tight against me while singing softly to her.
That’s one of the fondest memories I have about my parents growing up.
They danced.
All the time. When I was little, I loved it because it would make me laugh. Then I became a teenager and thought it was stupid. Then I got a little older and realized that it wasn’t stupid at all. It was one of the ways they showed each other love.
It wasn’t just slow dancing, either. They’d two-step all over the house, it seemed. Dad would spin Mom out and right back into his arms without either of them missing a beat, their feet moving to the music with ease.
A memory hits me hard and sudden of my dad talking to me about dancing with my mom.
“It might seem corny, and trust me when I was young I thought so, too. But then you’ll find the girl and that thought will go straight out the window. It’ll click. Trust me, when you find the girl, it’ll all fall into place.”
“The girl?” I ask.
“Yeah. The girl you want to dance with. Under the stars, in front of the kids, in the bed of your truck, in the parking lot of Walmart. Any time she’ll let you take her in your arms, you’ll grab the chance and hold her tight because the idea of letting her go isn’t an option.”
“Dad…” I protest, thinking he’s completely full of it.
“Listen to me, Nik, and listen to me good. This is the point where your father gets to dole out his advice and you get to soak it all in. When you find the woman you want to drop everything to dance with. The woman you want to hold hands with wherever you go. The woman who you want to go for a Sunday afternoon drive with or sit on the porch and watch the sun rise. The woman who turns you inside out with a single look. That’s the woman God put on this earth for you, Son. You don’t let her go. And you don’t settle for anyone who doesn’t fit that description.”
Luckily, I’ve driven home enough that I can make it there on auto-pilot because I have no recollection of how I make it home, my mind on other things. I park in the garage and Ashley doesn’t give me the chance to open her door, she’s already hopping out and following me inside.
After we remove our coats and shoes, I flip on the kitchen light, grab the Brita jug of water out of the fridge, pull out two glasses, and fill one for each of us.
“You worried I’m dehydrated?”
Over the rim of my glass I meet her eyes. “After what I have planned for us? Yes.”
“Oh my,” she breathes, setting her glass down on the counter with a trembling hand.
“C’mere, Ash.”
She floats over, not hesitating to wrap her arms around my waist. “You called?”
I waggle my eyebrows and grin down at her. “Could get used to that…
you obeying my commands. Should I request that you call me Master, too?”
She struggles against me and playfully hits my chest, trying not to laugh. The corner of my mouth ticks up and I bend down, kissing the tip of her nose. “Just playin’ with you,” I murmur.
“Know that, Nik. You don’t need to treat me with kid gloves. I like being teased. I like being playful. I like that you joke around with me.” She leans up and kisses the shell of my ear then whispers, “I also like it when you boss me around, remember?”
Bending my knees, I let my hands fall to just below her ass and lift her up. She wraps her legs around me and I plant her on the counter.
Growling, I tell her, “Good to know we’re on the same page there.”
“Yes,” she replies.
“Need to tell you something, Ash. These last few weeks have been weird and I know that we need more time to get to know each other. We jumped way ahead of ourselves that night but I’m not sorry. I also don’t want to freak you out by telling you this, but even before I knew about the baby, I hadn’t stopped thinking about you. If you’re feeling it, I want to have a discussion about exploring what it is that’s between us.”
Ashley’s eyes dance when she says, “So you have a crush on me, huh?”
“Fuckin’ smart ass.” I grin before crushing my lips to hers. Whatever we needed to discuss can be said later. Right now, I plan to use other methods to show her how I feel about her. Or, rather, how my body feels.
Right now, the future is on hold.
We’re just two people giving in to our desires.
Only…
That’s not true at all.
Logically, we shouldn’t work. We were both in serious relationships when we met. Heartbroken. Drunk. Angry.
But somehow, none of those things matter because the time I’ve spent with Ashley trump all of the ugliness before.
Our kiss is desperate, aching, possibly dangerous and a bit reckless if we don’t figure out what we are. Maybe that’s why it’s so damn good. Because what comes next doesn’t matter. At least not in this moment.
Together: A Surprise Pregnancy Romance Page 12