He’s avoiding the sex issue. “What else?”
Wyatt turned around, leaning against the sink and gesturing between them. “Obviously I’m worried about what this thing means.”
“This thing?”
“The plan. You, me and Fiona. I’m trying to go with the damn flow, but I’m worried that now that I’m better, now that we’ve done this, she might decide to leave anyway. I swear, if I knew what the California college has that this one doesn’t, I’d—”
“I wasn’t at the college.”
Thoreau turned his head in surprise to find a freshly showered Fiona wrapped in her favorite floral robe, standing in the door with her chin tilted up.
“You weren’t in California?” Wyatt asked in confusion.
“She was definitely in California. I picked her up from the airport myself. She’s saying she wasn’t there for a class.” What the hell, Fi?
She looked thrown by Thoreau’s response, but powered through. “The last time I was there to audit a class. The woman who took me in, the librarian? She’s a professor now and she invited me, so I couldn’t say no. While I was there, I got a job at a mutual friend’s company so I could support myself through that term. I only mention it because it has to do with where I was this time.”
“You have a job, Fiona. At Finn’s. And at Bellamy House, if you wanted to do more than volunteer.”
She nodded, pushing her hair out of her eyes. “I know, Wyatt, and I love working at both of them. Seamus pays me well, tips are fantastic and it still doesn’t make a dent in what I owe. I’m almost thirty. I don’t want to be in debt on top of… Well, on top of everything else.”
“Was that why you moved in with Thoreau that first time?”
When Fiona just blushed, Thoreau answered for her. “I wanted her here, and the roommate she’d been living with was getting a little Single White Female.”
“A little what?”
“Strange,” Fiona said, looking embarrassed. “She kept stealing my bras.”
Thoreau could see from the look on Wyatt’s face that she hadn’t given him those details either. Shit. “We’re getting off topic.”
Wyatt’s laugh was hard. “This feels on topic to me. Fiona demanding honesty and admissions and not giving any in return.”
“Damn it, I’m trying, Wyatt,” Fiona said, her voice rising. “Until now, I wasn’t sure if you even wanted to know. You were so focused on what you wanted for us that you proposed even after I told you I’d never get married. You’d already made your decisions. About us. About Thoreau and me. I didn’t want you to automatically decide that what I was doing was wrong without trying to understand why I was doing it.”
Thoreau stepped into the space between them to defuse the tension. He’d already known about the proposal, which was good, because everything else was coming as a total damn surprise. “We can talk about how not giving him a choice might have created more problems than it solved later, but first, why don’t you give us both that chance right now. Tell us what you were doing in California.”
She gripped her elbows and blew out a breath. “The first time I was working as a scheduling secretary and assistant counselor for an accredited LGBTQ surrogacy agency. I was helping connect young, healthy women with gay couples who were financially and emotionally ready to have a child.”
“Nothing bad about that,” Thoreau said, sending an encouraging look to the still fuming but silent Wyatt.
“This last time…” She shook her head, her eyes sparkling with the sudden appearance of unshed tears. “This last time I decided to join the program. As a surrogate.”
She wiped her damp cheek and sniffed, as if angry at the sign of weakness. “I’m healthy, and it would be my last year in the right age bracket to do something positive for someone while making the money I needed to pay off my student loans.”
Thoreau hadn’t realized he’d stepped back until the counter dug into his hip. “You were going to—”
“Carry a baby,” Wyatt finished harshly. “She left the home you shared and my bed to be a stranger’s incubator for nine months without telling us. Not just that. Lying to us.”
Fiona flinched.
No visits this time, Thoreau remembered her saying before she left. No video chats. “Oh, Fi. Why didn’t you tell me? If you needed money—”
“I don’t know, okay?” She collapsed into the nearest chair. “I didn’t want you or the Finns to magically sweep in and solve my problems with a rich husband or a computer hack.” She looked up at Thoreau. “This was my problem. Mine. I’d found a way to solve it and do something good for parents who would put their children first, no matter what. It made sense to me. I could do that, I thought, and no one would get hurt. It was the perfect solution.”
Thoreau was still assimilating the information when Wyatt knelt in front of her, taking her hands. “Perfect? For you to struggle alone through morning sickness and hormones and God knows what else? For you to leave two large families that had your back? To leave your friends, and put an entire land mass between yourself and help while you solved your own problems? Are we still that far away from earning your trust, Fiona? After everything we’ve been through?”
“She didn’t do it.” Thoreau cleared his throat, joining them on the other side and putting a comforting hand on her shoulder, though he was still thrown. “She was coming back before the fire, Wyatt. She told me that. She didn’t go through with it.”
Wyatt nodded, wrapping his arms around her and burying his face in her neck. “You came back,” he said, his voice muffled. “That’s all that matters.”
“Wyatt. I came back because—”
He lifted his head, eyes fierce. “No, listen to me first. I get that you didn’t have a family you could rely on, and I understand how important it is to you to make your own way. I’ll work harder to listen before I make snap judgments, but you need to try and be more honest with me. With us.” He swallowed hard. “And if you still want to do something like that, do it here, where we can take care of you.”
Fiona glanced over at Thoreau, a stunned expression on her face before she turned back to Wyatt. “You would be okay with that?”
He wiped her tears away and stared into her eyes. “It’s not my first choice, but if it’s what you needed to do to feel safe… Owen and Jeremy have been looking into that, you know. Can you imagine my cousin the quarterback as a parent?”
She laughed, traces of disbelief still lingering and Wyatt leaned in to kiss her again when his phone rang from the other room. “Shit, that’s Tanaka’s ring. He never calls me unless it’s important. I’ll be right back.”
Thoreau brought her to her feet and into his arms, hugging her close. He was the understanding one, he reminded himself firmly. He’d been her friend before they were lovers. He even understood the logic behind her decision. Or he was trying to.
But the lying was hard for him to stomach.
She pressed her cheek against his chest. “You’re being so quiet. Did Wyatt surprise you?” She took a breath and chuckled. “He surprised me.”
Thoreau leaned back and cupped her cheek. “He shouldn’t have. He’s been pretty up-front about how he feels, Fi, and so far he’s run through every gauntlet. Passed every test you’ve given him.”
Her brows furrowed and she looked up at him with hurt in her eyes. “You think I’ve been testing him? Testing you?”
His phone chose that moment to ring, and he silenced it without looking.
“Sorry about that.” Thoreau sighed. “I don’t think you’ve been doing it on purpose. You’d never hurt anyone if you could help it. But you need to start realizing that there’s a point when good, healthy skepticism can be replaced by cynical, self-fulfilling sabotage.”
He honestly couldn’t remember them having a serious fight before, but he saw a spark in her eyes that told him they might be headed in that direction. “First testing, now sabotage? I sound like a catch.”
She gave a frustrated little grow
l. “Okay, I’m sorry I lied, Thoreau. I knew you’d try to talk me out of it and he’d find a way to ground the plane and I just wanted to take care of it. To clean my financial slate and have the space to think about my future.”
“Your future,” he emphasized. “You are so damn good at helping other people, Fiona. I’ve never seen anyone more aware or empathetic, more in touch with human emotions. As long as they don’t belong to you or the two men in love with you. The men who’ve been trying to show you they want a future with you.”
“Wyatt is—”
“In love with you,” Thoreau said in a low voice, unwilling to back down. “Out of all of us, he’s done the most to prove that these last few years. To earn you. You’ve turned him away, challenged him, fought with him. You moved in with me. And he’s rolled with all of it. Not smoothly or easily, but unceasingly. And now he’s here. Putting in the time. Making peace with this—with us—to show you how much he loves you. Can you point to anything we’ve done to meet him halfway? To show him how much he matters?”
Fiona went so pale he worried she might pass out.
“Fuck.” He put his arms around her. “I’m not trying to fight with you, Fi. I swear. I’m trying to get you to wake up and see what we have here. What we could have, if you let us in all the way. If you tell us the truth.”
His phone rang again and he growled as he looked at the screen. “Sorry, it’s my sister and she’s not going to give up until I answer. Give me a second and I’ll get rid of her.”
She nodded, still looking stunned. “I have to get dressed anyway. This isn’t a bathrobe conversation. I’ll be right back.”
He let her go reluctantly and picked up. “Hey, Shell, I’m kind of busy right now. Can I—”
“This is important, Thoreau.”
“So is what I’m doing right now.”
“It’s about Fiona…”
He frowned. “What about her?”
“Well, I was helping Jake access something on his phone last night and saw some texts between him and Fiona—”
“Nope. Uh-uh. Stop right there, Shelley. That’s an invasion of their privacy and I want no part of it.”
“But you deserve to know—”
“If it’s something she wants me to know, she’ll tell me.”
“But—”
“Keep pushing and I’ll tell, Mama. Thanks for calling.” He disconnected with a disgruntled sigh. She’d always been nosy, but this was taking it to the extreme.
A second later, his phone chirped with a text.
Shelly: Fiona’s pregnant.
What the—
He called her right back. “The hell you say!”
“I thought you should know, that’s all. It’s, well, not yours. At least, according to what I read.”
Stunned, Thoreau slumped back against the dryer. It all made sense now—her exhaustion all the time. Her turning down beer. Her breasts.
“Thoreau, are you okay?”
“No. And if you don’t come clean with Jake, I will.” He couldn’t even think of anything else to say, so he disconnected the call and tossed his phone onto the dryer as all the progress he thought they’d made with her last night crumbled into dust.
He scrubbed his hands over his face. So much for trust. They were back at square one. Hell, even farther back than that, farther than he’d ever suspected they could go.
“Emergency meeting at my place.” Wyatt walked in, slipping his shirt over his head, already wearing his jeans and sneakers. His expression was inscrutable. “Tanaka said it’s about Noah.”
“We’ll come with you,” Fiona said as she came in behind him. “Give me five minutes and—”
“No.”
Even Thoreau winced at the harsh denial, and Fiona went so pale he worried she might pass out again. And she actually might, because she was pregnant.
“Wyatt,” he warned.
“No,” Wyatt repeated, softer now. “Noah needs me. I need to deal with this on my own. I’ll come back later.”
He looked at Fiona bent head as if he wanted to stay more, then shook his head. “I’ll be back. I’ll even take your car, if that’s okay—you’re parked behind me, aren’t you?”
“Of course. You know where the keys are.”
After he left, they looked at each other for a long moment. Thoreau wanted to throw something. Break something. Do something. Everything had fallen apart so fast....
“Are you all right?” she finally asked.
No point in beating around the bush. “Are you pregnant? And please don’t lie to me this time.”
She looked like he’d slapped her, and for a moment he had hope that Shelly had been wrong.
Deny it. Please.
But then she nodded slowly. “How did you find out?”
Shit, this was going to kill Wyatt.
“Does it matter?”
“I suppose not.” She sighed, crossing her arms across her waist. “God, I’m sorry you found out this way. I should have told you sooner. I was going to tell you. Tell Wyatt…”
“Before or after you went back to California?”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Isn’t that where the baby’s biological parents are?”
“I told you, I didn’t go through with that.” She was shaking visibly. “I couldn’t go through with it, because I was already pregnant when I got there. With Wyatt’s baby.”
“Are you sure?” he said. “Because right now I’m wondering if anything about you is true.”
She gasped. “I wouldn’t lie about something like this, and you know it.”
“Then why doesn’t the father know?”
“Because I wasn’t ready, okay!” she cried, her eyes brimming with tears. “I was trying to tell him before he left, even though I still have no idea what I’m going to do. And you’re not helping by treating me like a criminal.”
“What you’re going to do. God.” He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “Doesn’t Wyatt get any say in it? Does he even matter to you at all? Do I?”
The answer he was waiting for never came, and he opened his eyes to find her staring at him with an expression he couldn’t define.
“Why did you come back here?” he asked numbly. “Did you just want to play Florence Nightingale for a while, maybe have that threesome you always dreamed of, before you flew away again?”
Tears streaked down her cheeks, and she opened her mouth, but no sound emerged before she closed it again.
Well, guess he had his answer after all.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
“Yeah, me too.”
“I’ll go.”
He pressed his palms to his eyes again. The deep well of hurt inside him wanted to hit back and say, Yes, go, Fiona, and this time don’t come back.
But he loved her. Hurting her was never something he wanted to do. “No, don’t go. Neither one of us had enough sleep last night, and we’re both too upset to think straight right now. We need to cool off before we decide where to go from here, okay?”
Her “okay” was so thick, he could hardly make it out.
Thoreau sighed. “I think it’s my turn to take a shower, and you need to eat something,” he added, his gaze dropping to her stomach. “You’ve got to keep your strength up.”
She nodded stiffly. “I will.”
“Good.” He started to walk out but then he heard her sniffle and stopped. “You know, Wyatt’s not the only one in this house who loves you, Fiona,” he said without turning around. “I don’t know how many ways I can show you, tell you before you finally believe it.”
Her quiet sob broke his heart all over again. But he needed a minute to cool down before he said more things he knew he’d regret.
Taking a deep breath, he walked down the hall to the bathroom, forcing himself to close the door quietly behind him.
The plan was fucked.
Chapter Ten
Wyatt
He heard the flap
ping of a tire as he pulled up in front of the townhouse he shared with Noah and groaned.
Getting out, he found the rear tire on the driver’s side flatter than a pancake. Yeah, that made sense. “At least it didn’t happen on the freeway.”
Knowing Fiona, she probably didn’t even have a spare. He smiled a little when he thought about her reaction to that assumption. “Don’t be sexist, firecracker,” he muttered.
Opening the trunk with her key fob, he tossed aside a bag printed with bright cartoon animals and pulled up the carpet. “That’ll work.” There was a mini spare, and it looked to be fully inflated. Putting in on could wait until after the meeting, but at least he knew it was there.
As he dropped the carpet back in place, he jarred the bag and a slip of paper fell out. He reached to shove it back inside and froze when he realized it what he was looking at. A copy of a sonogram.
“What the hell?”
Fiona’s name was at the top.
And the date said it was taken two weeks ago.
She’d said she hadn’t gone through with the surrogacy. That she couldn’t. Had she lied again?
Then he noticed the small line of print at the bottom.
12WKS DUE: 30DEC2019
His hand started to shake. He didn’t even have to do the math—he knew, to the day, when Fiona had left for California.
She’d been pregnant already.
With his baby.
A primal scream roared up from the depths of his being, and only the knowledge that half his family was no doubt waiting for him inside the townhouse kept him from letting it loose. Instead, he slammed the trunk and walked around, swearing viciously at the flat tire as he kicked the living shit out of it.
“Wyatt.”
The soft call barely registered over his blue streak.
“Wyatt. Cut that shit out.”
Noah?
He blinked and raised his head to look over at the townhouse.
“Over here.”
His brother stood by the backyard gate—not theirs, but their neighbor’s—wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a sling on his left arm.
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