That feeling she always seemed to raise in him, the one where he wasn’t good enough as he was, wasn’t worthy, reared its head, and for the first time, instead of acknowledging the possible truth in his feelings, he got just plain pissed instead.
“I’m not a damned kindergartner, El. I’m older than you are and quite versed in the ways of the world. And while, yes, I do have a tendency to like to take care of others, I also am quite proficient at taking care of myself. I’ve survived just fine for thirty-six years.”
“Life is about a lot more than surviving. I want to see you with someone who adores you. Who cares more about you being happy than her own happiness.”
The way Elaina and Peter had felt for one another.
“Point taken,” he said and looked back to the movie that had played on without them. “For the record, Cassie and I have decided, together, not to pursue a relationship between the two of us. I am not on the verge of being hurt. Now eat your popcorn.”
Wood went to bed that night without sending Cassie a picture of baby furniture. He did text to tell her goodnight, though.
Then he lay in the dark. Tossing and turning. Aching for a woman who made him happier than he’d ever been, and who, at the same time, left him feeling as though he’d never be enough.
Yeah, their situation was fraught with emotional upheavals that had nothing to do with dating or sex or romantic love. Yeah, it would be a bad time to start something.
But the bottom line was that Cassie didn’t trust herself to love him. Didn’t trust that what she felt might become love.
And he didn’t trust her to love him, either.
Wondering how in hell, when all he’d ever wanted to do was look out for those he cared about, his life had twisted so far out of control.
Chapter Twenty
Cassie looked forward to birthing class like she used to look forward to Christmas. Not only did it make the fact that she was actually going to have a baby of her own seem more real, and she was going to get so much information that would all be part of the process, all like little presents to her, but she was going to get to spend the entire day with Wood.
Their first ever.
She’d be happy with a healthy baby and days with Wood as her only gifts for the rest of her life.
She’d scheduled them for the first Saturday in September. She was roughly thirty-two weeks along, according to her latest scan, and everything was looking good. They’d done another impromptu ultrasound in the office just to confirm. She’d texted Wood as soon as she’d found out it was happening. And again when it was done. He’d responded in spite of the fact that he’d been on the job.
He still texted every night. They still met once a week for a meal. He was great when he was with her, but there was something different about him, too. She couldn’t place it. It wasn’t like before, when the tension between them had been building. But telling herself to quit borrowing trouble, and being thankful for what she had, she soaked up all of him that she was allowed to have.
She’d been gone for a weekend, too, to see her mom and Richard, and on another overnighter to San Diego when the monthly Sunday friend brunch was down there. Her workload was as steep and satisfying as ever, and her paralegal had made plans to throw a baby shower for her. Her college friends were throwing another. And her mom was having one at home, too, for everyone she’d known growing up.
All in all, life was better than she’d imagined it would be when she’d first set out on her quest to have a family on her own.
And still, her heart ached in a way she hadn’t known it could.
On her darkest nights, she cried some, wishing Wood could be with her. But she knew, even before the light of day came, that she didn’t have the right to upend his life when hers was in such flux.
She’d been told to dress comfortably for the birthing class and chose a pair of black yoga pants with a black tank and an oversize, lightweight white T-shirt on top. She’d debated about her hair the most, not wanting to lie back and have a ponytail knot to contend with, and ended up with a loose bun. Packed a bag with extra snacks and bottles of water, though the clinic was providing a lunch, and still she was ready to go fifteen minutes before Wood was due to arrive.
They didn’t talk much on the way there.
For the moment, it was enough. She was with him. And they were going to spend a whole day learning about the birth of their son.
A few seconds in the classroom, though, and Cassie wasn’t feeling anywhere near as calm about things.
“I’m by far the oldest one here,” she told Wood as they picked a spot to settle in.
“You look better than half of them,” Wood whispered, and she smiled, as she figured he’d meant her to. She didn’t really believe she looked better than anyone else in the class. But maybe...she looked as good as half of them. She’d never been a pretty girl. Interesting, people always said about her features. She’d never cared overly much. Until she sat in a classroom filled with pregnant women and their coaches with Wood beside her, wanting him to be glad she was the one of them he was with.
Don’t sweat over the things you can’t change, her father used to say to her. Save your energy for the things you can.
What those were at the moment, she wasn’t sure, but if the waves were giving her this day with Wood, then she was going to accept the gift. They’d bring bad along the way, but the way to deal with that was to enjoy the good.
So she would.
* * *
Halfway through the morning, Wood sat with Cassie on their floor mat, helping her practice different positions while in labor. The latest involved sitting on a rubber ball. Couples were laughing and talking. Cassie had chosen a mat on the end, so they only had someone on one side of them, two twentysomething women who’d been married a couple of years and were having their first child. They’d used some new technology at the Parent Portal that had enabled one of them to gestate the baby and then have it implanted in the other, allowing both of them to have grown it inside them.
As the women next to him laughed again, Cassie’s ball rolled, and she slipped. All the information he’d learned in class fled Wood’s brain as he grabbed for her before she took a fall to the floor. Lessons didn’t matter—keeping Cassie safe did.
Instead of falling, she settled back down to the ball with his hands planted firmly on her back and lower stomach, on the downward slope of the baby she carried, steadying her.
And just like that he was touching her in a way that made him hungry for things he didn’t want to want. An unforeseen rainfall.
He waited one last second to make sure she was good, and in that one second Alan said hello to him. Quite clearly, with a push right against his hand. Their first-ever high five.
“Did you feel that?” Cassie asked and then met his gaze. Apparently, the look on his face told her he had. Tears sprang to her eyes. She blinked them away, and the teacher gave the class further instructions.
Once again, without warning, he’d become someone different than he’d been. He’d become a father, biologically, legally, and now he’d officially bonded with his son.
* * *
By lunchtime, Cassie felt like she had a Christmas tree without lights, complete with presents wrapped in paper and topped with bows. Wood was there, but he wasn’t, too. He was perfectly attentive, considerate, aware of her, focused, even, yet there was part of him that seemed to be absent. She couldn’t explain it, so she couldn’t really ask him about it.
They’d all been given boxed lunches of veggie wraps, a fresh fruit bowl and a cookie. Some were eating on their mats. Others had moved to across the room. Cassie asked Wood if they could go outside to a bench that she’d seen when they’d pulled in that morning. Off to the side of the clinic, it sat alongside a six-foot-tall fountain with flowers and greenery around it. A gift, a plaque read, from the Randolph family in thanks f
or Jimmy, the child they’d conceived with help from the Parent Portal.
She was happy for the Randolphs. And eager to have some time alone with Wood. She wanted to talk about him feeling the baby move.
They talked about things they’d learned in the class. He asked if she was afraid of going into labor. She was a little nervous but not nearly as scared as she was of losing him. She didn’t articulate that part.
But when lunch was two-thirds of the way done, and she knew they’d have to get back, she couldn’t face the idea of wasting an afternoon with him as she felt they’d wasted the morning. He wanted to be there. She knew that. But something was wrong.
“Is it something you can talk about?” she asked, leaving her cookie wrapped and in the box.
“What?”
“Whatever it is that’s going on in your life.”
He didn’t deny that there was something. That fact hit her almost at once. If he couldn’t tell her, he couldn’t. She’d accept that.
“Elaina said something the other night—” He broke off. Glanced away, a frown on his face. “About moving out, mostly, but about life, too. It just got me thinking...”
Which explained nothing. And everything?
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.” He glanced over at her.
“Are you, maybe, still a little in love with her?”
“What? Are you kidding? Not at all.” The shock in his voice was evident. As was the truth in his gaze. “I love her. I’d have made the marriage work and found happiness there, but I was never in love with her. It’s hard to explain... I promised my brother, while he was dying, that I’d take care of her. With him gone, she had no insurance, would have had to switch to some expensive, six-month policy...we didn’t know, for a while there, if she’d ever walk again...”
He looked her straight in the eye as he told her he’d never been in love with his ex-wife, and she believed him.
Was sad, for no reason that made a bit of sense to her.
And was honestly relieved, too.
* * *
The highlight of Wood’s week became their Monday nights at the little diner outside town. By the third week in September, he was almost beginning to feel like he had his new normal. Mondays with Cassie, going through his routine and text messages to send him off to sleep each night. The furniture was going to be done in plenty of time. He’d been spending his weekends in his shed nonstop, except the one time he went out with Elaina and some of her friends. And he took whatever weeknights he had free out there, as well. Retro was getting to the point of heading out her doggy door as soon as Wood got up to do the dinner dishes, and she would be waiting by the shed door when he got outside.
Days on the job hadn’t changed, other than various guys he’d known over the years—electricians, inspectors, his contractor—coming up to congratulate him when they visited the site. He’d had no idea he was noteworthy enough for his news to spread so far, or so quickly. And the rest of his life...was in a state of calm. At least until something changed again. Like his son coming into the world.
Or Elaina telling him she was moving out.
That third week in September, he’d just finished off the one beer he’d allowed himself, had told the waitress she could take away what was left of his steak, and smiled at Cassie as she asked to have the rest of her chicken salad to take home with her. She’d ordered the family size and finished off more than half of it.
“What?” she asked, looking over at him. His knee had bumped hers under the table one night several weeks before, and she hadn’t moved hers away. He hadn’t, either. Ever since then, their knees met, and held on, for the duration of dinner.
“Your appetite seems to increase each week,” he told her.
“I know, but I’m not gaining as much as the doctor wants me to gain,” she told him. “I’m down about five pounds from where she wants me. But during the last month I’m supposed to gain a pound a week, and I can’t imagine carrying that much more weight around everywhere.”
She’d been getting a little more tired more easily, and he wished he could follow her home, rub her back for her. Do something to help her with the physical stress of carrying his child.
“It’s all in your belly,” he told her.
“That’s what everyone says.”
He wasn’t everyone. He noticed every curve of her body, and...
“I have to tell you something.” Cassie’s pronouncement wiped all other thoughts from his brain. No good news came from a beginning like that.
“What?” Was she moving away? Had she fallen in love with someone else? How would he know? He knew her favorite color, every food she liked and didn’t like, what movies made her cry, the name of her dog when she was growing up, but he didn’t really know anything that she did during the week. Except work.
Had she met someone? Started dating?
The whole idea just felt wrong. From the bottom up.
“My paralegal, Marilyn, asked me why we weren’t getting married. She thinks I’m in love with you.”
He stared, certain that he hadn’t heard her right. That the beer had been spiked and had gone to his head. The vulnerable look in those sweet blue eyes told him differently. He had no idea what to say. Wasn’t even sure what he thought.
Her expression crumpled, and she seemed to sink down into herself while insisting on holding his gaze and remaining upright. The obvious battle she was fighting called for more from him.
“Are you?”
Tears flooded her eyes. She swallowed so hard he could see her throat move with the effort. “I don’t let myself go there,” she said. “I don’t trust myself to know, for one thing. Not with everything else in my life so out of whack. But when she asked the question, my first response wasn’t even about me. It was about you.”
“About me?” He didn’t want to be having the conversation. Waited for it to be over so he could do cleanup duty. Make things better.
She wasn’t saying anything. He’d been left to get them out of it. “What did you say?”
“That you’re so helpful and attentive because it’s who you are, not because you have particular feelings for me. Other than this odd sexual attraction, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense that we’re just feeling that because I’m having our baby, which heightens our physical awareness and connection, and because we know we can’t have sex. It’s human nature to want what you can’t have.”
She sounded like the lawyer she was. Presented the case in the way it made the most sense.
“Am I wrong?” she asked while her words were still running through his mind.
He shrugged, needing to refute her but finding no clear evidence with which to convince her. Or himself.
She didn’t trust herself to know if she loved him. He’d already known that. But...not trusting his feelings for her?
“I’d marry you tomorrow if you’d have me.”
Tears sprang to her eyes. “You married Elaina, too. I don’t want to lose you, Wood. To lose your friendship. I don’t want things to be awkward between us for Alan’s sake. We’re already starting off odd, with you being my sperm donor, not my lover. I just... I don’t want to lose you.”
She didn’t want to lose him.
Leaning forward, he looked her straight in the eye. “You aren’t going to lose me,” he promised her from the very depths of him. “Not ever.”
* * *
Cassie was at work on Wednesday, the seventh of October, when her water broke. No warning. No cramping, just sitting at her desk at the computer, she suddenly felt the flooding sensation, like she’d wet her pants. She was only thirty-six weeks along. Still had another two to four to go until her due date. She hadn’t even had her first internal exam yet. Alan had been kicking up a storm, though. Had he broken something in there too early?
&nb
sp; Thoughts flew while her system processed, and then, still sitting there, she grabbed her phone. It was like she was frozen to the seat. Afraid to move, to make matters worse. She’d put her doctor’s office on speed dial when she’d first been inseminated, was put through immediately, answered the questions like an automaton and was told to make her way to the hospital. But she was told not to worry. Since she hadn’t even started contractions, it would likely be hours yet before she delivered, but...one way or another, she was going to be having her baby that day.
And then, still mostly numb, she called Wood. Didn’t text him, called.
He picked up on the first ring.
“Cassie? What’s wrong?” At ten in the morning, he was still looking at a full day of work.
“My water broke.” She’d meant to say more. To tell him what the doctor said, but her words just stopped.
“I’m on my way.”
She nodded. That was probably a good plan. “I’m scared, Wood. I know it’s irrational, but I’m scared. It’s too early.”
“You’re eight months along. A little early, but out of the serious danger zone. A lot of healthy babies are delivered at eight months.”
How did he know?
She remembered the reading material they’d been given in birthing class. There’d been something about that in there. He’d obviously read it all, too.
“Are you in your truck yet?” she asked, suddenly aware of what a mess she was. Of the fact that her hospital bag was at home. That she didn’t have a change of clothes with her. And that...oh my God...she couldn’t breathe...
“Cassie? Cassie? Talk to me.” She heard his voice but couldn’t get words out through the mind-boggling pain gripping her lower belly and back. She screamed instead.
Her Motherhood Wish (The Parent Portal Book 3) Page 17
