by Amy Vastine
“Bear with me,” Ruby said. “I need to look at a bunch of things and take lots of measurements, but I promise to point out all the good stuff.”
Piper stared at the black-and-white screen, hoping to make sense of shapes that seemed to morph one into another. Ruby pushed the wand a little harder.
“Okay, here we go. Can you tell what this is?” She pointed to what clearly looked like the baby’s profile. “Here’s the baby’s head, nose, lips.” She moved the wand a little. “Oh, and there’s an arm right above the face there.”
Piper was completely mesmerized. Tears appeared in the corners of her eyes as her bottom lip quivered. There was her baby. Their baby. As scary as it had been to find out she was pregnant, seeing this living being inside her stirred up nothing but the anticipation of holding and caring for him or her.
“And there’s a thumb. Looks like he or she is trying to get that in its mouth.”
Sawyer was transfixed, as well. He asked questions and pointed out things he saw as Ruby moved the wand around. “What was that?” he asked. “Is that a foot?”
Ruby showed them their baby had ten toes. She gathered the information she needed and answered all of their questions. She stopped to zoom in on the baby’s chest.
“Here’s the heart.” She took some measurements. “It looks good and strong.”
The lump in Piper’s throat made it impossible to speak. The baby’s tiny heart pumped so fast, it was like her little one was running a marathon in there. Ruby assured them it was normal for the heartbeat to be much faster than an adult’s.
“Can you tell if it’s a boy or a girl?” Sawyer asked. They had agreed that if she could tell, they wanted to know.
Ruby had to move the wand around and press it into Piper’s belly a bit. Piper couldn’t tell what she was looking at. Ruby grinned as she froze the picture on the screen.
“I know it might be hard for you to tell, but we are clearly looking at a little boy right here.”
“A boy?” Sawyer wiped his eyes and gave Piper a kiss. “We’re having a boy.”
A boy. Piper had been hoping for a boy. It meant he’d be the big brother to however many more came after him. She had always wanted an older brother, someone to look out for her the way she tried to look out for Matthew.
“Congratulations,” Ruby said, wiping the gel off Piper’s stomach. “What an exciting start to your family.”
Ruby printed out some pictures for them. Piper showed them off to Lana and her father, who had been in the waiting room. Piper flipped through the images when they got in the car, unable to stop staring at him. He was so tiny, only the size of a banana, according to Ruby, but he already sucked his thumb and got the hiccups. He was the perfect start to their family.
Sawyer had bounced all the way to the car, singing “Having My Baby” but changing the words to you’re having my baby boy. “I don’t know if I should call my sister or wait to tell her in person,” Sawyer said.
“Tell her in person so you can see her face. She’s going to be so happy for you.”
“For us,” he said, threading his fingers through hers. Piper’s heart skipped a beat. “I’ll have to call Harriet after I tell Faith.”
He was so happy. This moment was the one she had dreamed about. It made all the heartache in the beginning worth it. Everything was going to work out better than she’d hoped.
Their driver took them straight from Ruby’s office to the K104 studios for their interview. Nancy, the production assistant, set them up in a greenroom before they went on air. Heath and Lana left to go over the approved question list with Kelly while Piper and Sawyer stayed behind.
“You want to bet me ten dollars I can’t shove a whole bagel in my mouth?” Piper joked, making light of the last time they had been here.
“That was the day you found out you were pregnant.” Sawyer placed his hands on her hips. “And here we are after finding out we’re having a boy. This place is always going to remind me of our little buddy in there.”
Fourteen weeks ago, tensions were so high. Today, Piper had hope for the future.
“So, I’ve been thinking about what my dad said last night.”
“I’ve been thinking about that, too. Is there a reason why he hates me so much?”
“He doesn’t hate you.”
“He still wants us to call off the engagement.”
Piper ran her fingers along the pearls around her neck. “Well, what if it wasn’t a fake engagement?” She whispered the last words. “What if we picked a date and made this a real engagement? We could tell Kelly the good news.”
Sawyer’s hands dropped to his sides. “Piper.”
“What? I know you like to argue with my dad because you feel like he calls all the shots, but maybe he’s right about this. Maybe we should set a date.”
Instead of jumping at the chance to make this family legitimate, Sawyer stepped back. “Piper, I am having the time of my life and my feelings for you get stronger every day, but I’m not ready to say ‘I do.’”
“I don’t understand. For the last couple weeks, you’ve been talking about where we should live once the baby’s born and how you can’t wait to spend a quiet Sunday lounging around the house together, watching football.”
“I am thinking about those things. I want to be in a normal relationship with you. I want to see what it’s like to be together without all the people and chaos around us all the time. But that doesn’t mean I’m ready to get married.”
Feeling desperate, Piper tried to compromise. “I’m not saying the wedding has to be tomorrow. We can set a date for a year from now, for all I care.”
Sawyer shook his head. “You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Letting what your father wants carry more weight than what I want.”
“What do you want?”
“I want you to stop pressuring me. I don’t want there to be some kind of deadline hanging over us. Marriage is forever. I need to be sure—you need to be sure.”
Piper felt the blood drain from her face. He didn’t know if he wanted to be with her forever. There was nothing left to say.
Nancy came in with a smile on her face and Heath and Lana right behind her. “We’ll be ready for you in the studio in five.”
Piper couldn’t do it. For the first time since she’d found out she was pregnant, she was going to use the baby to get out of something. “I’m so sorry, Nancy. But I’m suddenly not feeling well. I hate to do this to Kelly, but I think I should lie down and let Sawyer handle this on his own.”
“What’s wrong?” Her dad stepped forward, his face full of concern.
“It’s probably nothing, but Ruby said it’s important to pay attention to when my body is saying it needs a break.”
“Should we call her?” Lana asked, pulling out her phone.
Piper’s stomach hurt only because she was causing them unnecessary worry. “No, I just need somewhere to rest.”
“Piper...” Sawyer said with a heavy sigh.
“I’ll see you at the show,” she said without looking back at him. There was no way she would let those pretty brown eyes convince her to stay.
Once they made it to the car, Heath had the driver put on K104 so they could listen to Sawyer’s interview.
“Is there something going on that I need to know about? When we got here, you two were celebrating parenthood and twenty minutes later, you’re asking to leave. What happened?” her father asked.
“How did you know Mom was the one? Did you know right away? Or did you slowly figure it out over time?”
The corners of her father’s lips curled up the way they always did when he thought about her mother.
“After my second date with your mom, I I felt pretty confident I was in love with her. Your mother is the most amazing woman I have ever met
. But I decided I wouldn’t tell her until we had been dating a month. I thought that sounded like a reasonable amount of time to wait. Of course, the next time I saw her, I blurted it out in the middle of dinner.”
“What did she do? What did she say?”
“I believe she said, ‘Can you pass the ketchup?’” His smile broadened at the memory.
Piper chuckled, picturing a younger version of her parents having a moment like that. They were once scared and awkward, too. Unsure of themselves and afraid of their feelings not being reciprocated.
“When I took her home that night, she kissed me goodbye and whispered that she loved me, too. Those were the best three words I have ever heard. I thought I’d blown it, but she loved me back. I’ll never regret telling her when I did.”
Maybe Sawyer was like her mom and she was like her dad. Perhaps there was still a chance. This wasn’t her second date with Sawyer, though. She was having his baby. The entire world thought they were perfect for each other. If he still thought it was too soon to know how he felt, maybe he was waiting for a feeling that wasn’t coming. Maybe this fake engagement was doomed to end with a very real breakup.
The interview with Sawyer began on the radio. She listened to them chitchat.
“Well, I had a whole bunch of questions for Piper, but now that it’s only you and me, we can toss those and get to the good stuff,” Kelly said. The sound of crumpling paper could be heard in the background.
“Unbelievable,” Heath groaned. “We are never going back there. She can’t follow the rules.”
“When’s the big day? I want to make sure to clear my calendar in case you want to invite your favorite Sawyer-Piper shipper.”
“You were definitely one of the fans who caught on early,” Sawyer said, carefully sidestepping the question.
“So, when is it?”
“Honestly, I have no idea. I leave stuff like that up to Piper. Brides have way more say in the whole wedding planning thing than the groom does.”
“Ha!” Piper let out a bitter laugh. He had asked her to tell him what she wanted and when she had, he’d shot her down and made her feel like she was her father’s puppet. She wanted to set a date. Piper pulled out her phone. Maybe she’d regret this, but she needed to tell Sawyer how she felt. The rest would be up to him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“YOU’VE BEEN ON the road now for over a month now—how’s the tour been going?” Kelly asked.
Sawyer was grateful for the easy topic. He began to tell her all about life on the road, but Kelly was busy checking things on her computer. Her eyebrows rose and a huge grin appeared.
“I don’t mean to cut you off,” she said. “But looks like your bride-to-be doesn’t want to be left out of the interview after all. My producer is telling me we’ve got Piper Starling on the phone.”
Sawyer’s stomach knotted. What in the world was she doing?
Kelly flipped her dark hair over her shoulder. “Piper, Sawyer was telling us he’s not too involved in the wedding planning. Is that true?”
“Well, he does leave a lot of things up to me. It’s hard when we’re juggling the demands of a tour at the same time as planning a wedding. But he’s better at making decisions than he’s saying.”
“He told me you were picking the date,” Kelly said. “So when is the big day, Piper?”
There was no way Piper had called to talk about a wedding date. Not after the argument they’d just had. Sawyer scratched the back of his neck.
“Well, I want a summer wedding,” Piper said. Sawyer couldn’t believe she was doing this. “We really want to be married before the baby comes. It’s important to me...to us.”
It was a good thing Kelly was focused on asking Piper questions, because he was speechless. She had drawn a line in the sand. The question was, would he cross it?
The rest of the interview was a blur. Sawyer would not stand by and let Piper back him into a corner. He’d thought she had more respect for him than that. Getting to the venue was the only thing on his mind when he finished with Kelly.
Outside the arena, Piper had eleven buses that carried around the 150-odd people who toured with her. Sawyer and his band had one. Piper’s was in the middle of what she liked to call Bus City.
He waved to her driver to open up the door. He climbed aboard to find Heath and Lana sitting in the front living room section. Piper had to be in the back, hiding.
“She’s resting before we have to head over to the perfume unveiling,” Heath said, standing in Sawyer’s way.
“I need to talk to her.” Sawyer tried to muscle his way through. Heath held his ground.
“It’s been an extremely stressful couple of days. She needs to rest. Let her be,” Heath said.
Sawyer would not give up. She owed him an explanation at the very least. “Piper, I want to talk to you!”
Piper came out of her hiding space. She had changed into comfortable clothes and her hair was down. In her oversize T-shirt, her baby bump was barely noticeable.
“I’m writing a song. I could use your help,” she said, as if she hadn’t told everyone listening to K104 today that they’d be getting married before the baby was born. “Let him through, Dad.”
She turned around and disappeared into the back of the bus. Heath puffed out his chest and fixed the collar on his shirt, which had flipped up in their tussle. He moved aside and motioned for Sawyer to pass.
The living space in the back of Piper’s bus had a sectional couch that included a pullout full-size bed. The bed was open and Piper sat cross-legged in the center of it. With pencil in hand, she was hunched over a notebook.
“Can you explain to me why you would call in to the show and say that after I told you how I felt? If you don’t care how I feel, then I know for a fact that we shouldn’t get married, because caring about each other’s feelings is a nonnegotiable must in a marriage.”
Piper wrote something down, her pencil gliding across the page in haste. “What’s another word that means the same thing as ‘devoted’?” she asked as if he hadn’t said a thing.
Frustrated, Sawyer sat on the bed and snatched the pencil from her hand. This was the emotional shutdown he couldn’t handle from her. “I’m not kidding, Piper. You want me to trust you and then you go and do something like that? Did your dad tell you to do it? Was that the plan all along? I bet you chickened out when you realized you’d have to do it to my face. That’s why you left.”
Piper took her pencil back. “My father didn’t tell me to do anything. I made a choice and now you have to make one.”
“Marry you or what? Break up? You’re giving me an ultimatum?”
“No, it’s a fake wedding plan for a fake engagement. The plan was never to get married. You made it clear that was never your intention.” She continued to write in her notebook, refusing to look at him.
“And when summer comes and we don’t get married like everyone expects?”
Piper shrugged her shoulders. “You’ve made yourself clear and I think I’ve done the same. I won’t play house. I’m not going to date you for the next ten years while you figure out how you feel about me. I won’t do that to this baby. He deserves to know how his parents feel about each other.”
“I never said it would take ten years. I’m asking for a little time to be with you before we make a once-in-a-lifetime commitment.”
She put the pencil down and lifted her eyes to his. “I love you, Sawyer. I was falling in love with you while we were recording ‘You Don’t Need Me.’ Maybe my dad talked me into walking away. Maybe I listened. But you have to understand, when I do something, I put my whole heart into it. I didn’t think I could give you all of me, which is what you deserved. That’s why I walked.”
Sawyer was stuck on the first three words she’d said—I love you. How did she know? Why didn’t he? What was wrong with him? What
was he so afraid of?
“Now there’s a baby and everything has changed,” she continued. “I see us together as a family, Sawyer, but I can’t make you feel the same way. Maybe you will, maybe you won’t. I won’t wait forever, though.”
“Piper needs to get ready to go,” Heath said, standing in the doorway with her hair-and-makeup team behind him. “We have to be at Thornberry’s in forty minutes for the signing.”
Someone always needed her for something. She was usually being pulled in ten different directions. Maybe that was what scared him the most. What if one of those things eventually pulled her away from him?
* * *
“IS YOUR BABY going to wear this perfume?” The preteen waiting for her signed poster picked up the display bottle of Starlit on the table.
Piper couldn’t tell her the baby was a boy. She wasn’t ready to share that information with the world yet. “Well, not right away. I love the way babies smell. I wouldn’t want to cover that up.”
The young girl’s face scrunched up. “My baby cousin does not smell great when he needs his diaper changed.”
Piper handed her a signed Starlit poster and thanked her for the advice. The line ran all the way through the department store, and she only had ninety minutes to get as many fans’ posters signed as possible.
Thornberry’s was a large chain with stores all across the country. They were the biggest sponsor of Piper’s tour and would exclusively sell the Piper Starling perfume brand.
The Nashville Thornberry’s had rolled out the red carpet for Piper’s arrival. There were Starlit banners hanging all over the store and bouquets of lavender roses, stalks of purple and lavender gillyflower, and bunches of fresh purple statice decorating the signing table to match the purple bottle of perfume.
“You look so pretty. Even prettier in person,” the next girl said as she waited for her poster.
Piper appreciated the compliment. The purple off-the-shoulder dress she wore was a tad tighter than it had been when they’d bought it. All she could think about as she’d posed for pictures with the Starlit bottle before the signing was her baby bump.
