by Alice Ward
The super nodded at the table by the door. “Mr. Sommerfield also wanted me to let you know that he wrote you a letter.” She smiled, and her gaze dropped to my bulging stomach again. “Well, there’s actually several of them in that drawer.”
Stepping over to the drawer she indicated, I pulled it open and my heart squeezed. Indeed, there were many. A whole drawer full of them. My name and the date on each envelope.
“Well, I’ll give you some privacy.”
I smiled at her. “Thank you so much.” My eyes began to burn. “For your kindness.”
She patted my hand and left, closing the door softly behind her.
Feeling overly warm, I shrugged out of my coat and smoothed my shirt over my belly. Unable to wait, I pulled the letters out. There were at least thirty, I realized, taking them over to the sofa to read.
I began with the oldest. It was difficult to read. His normally neat handwriting was a scrawl across the page.
Where are you? Are you okay? I’m going insane.
The next few letters were similar, and my heart squeezed hard in my chest, forcing me to bend over to help with the ache.
After a couple months, the handwriting was less urgent, and the letters became more thoughtful.
The moment I first saw you, right here in this apartment, I knew something special had come into my life. And it scared me. Terrified me. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing anyone… I’ll tell you more about it another day… so I tried to hold you at arm’s length. It wasn’t possible, so I forced myself to be okay with you dating others. It gave me a buffer for my heart.
When we expanded our relationship to include Nash, I thought that was a buffer too. On the day you left, I had wanted to tell Nash that I couldn’t do it anymore. The open relationship. I wanted you to be mine alone. What I now believe you overheard was Nash and I joking about me buying you off. Because I have paid other women to do so. But I wouldn’t have done that to you. Never you.
I’m not a religious man, but I pray every day to see you again.
Tears streamed down my face as I opened one letter and then another, and then the next. Jasmine came to sit beside me, but she didn’t ask questions. She just lent her loving support.
“Let me rub your back,” she said. “You keep holding it.”
While Jaz rubbed, I continued to read. Some letters spoke of the lengths he was going through to find me. Some just mourned my loss. In one he told me of losing his family on his birthday so many years ago. He told me of the guilt he’d carried. How he couldn’t open himself up to loving anyone again because of it.
Until you.
I wish I were saying these words to you personally, but they’ve been living in my heart for too long now.
I love you.
And if I ever get to see you again, please let me show you how much.
By the time I got to the last letter dated yesterday, I didn’t think I had any tears left. I was wrong.
This morning, hope filled my heart for the first time in months. You’re free. I saw it in the news. I don’t know how that will look. I don’t know when you’ll be released to live your life without this threat hanging over it. But when you do… please come back to me.
I need you.
I need Jasmine.
Please, Journey.
I love you. Let me love you both.
When I pressed the letter to my chest, Jaz asked, “Is that the last one?”
My head was in my sister’s lap, and she was rubbing my back with one hand, stroking my hair with another. “Yeah.”
My belly squeezed, and I closed my eyes against the pain. I was dehydrated. I needed something to drink. But I was just too tired to get up. To move. To do anything but think.
Would Grant still feel the same when he saw me like this? Although I’d carefully applied coco butter, I had stretch marks. And boobs. Maybe that would make up for them.
“Are you going to call him?”
“I need to.”
When I was under protective custody, it was easy to not let Grant and Nash know one of them would be a father. Contacting them was potentially very dangerous, and I couldn’t put them in that danger.
But now…
Groaning, I pushed myself up and rolled off the sofa to waddle over to the phone in my purse. My lips were so dry they felt like sand on my face.
Pulling out my new cell, I eyed the fridge, wondering if there was at least one bottle of water to help with this burning thirst.
When the door banged open, it sounded like a shotgun going off in the room. I whirled and would have fallen if the chair hadn’t been there for me to hold on to.
Grant rushed in, his eyes wide and frantic. They locked on me just as Nash ran in behind him.
The super must have called him. I should have expected that.
Both men just stared at me in all my heavily pregnant glory.
And as if on cue, my water broke.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Nash
Holy mother of Jesus.
When the supervisor of Journey’s building called and told Grant that she was back, I honest to god thought the man was going to have a heart attack.
I guessed he was.
The news had attacked his heart, that much was for sure.
It had taken a few seconds to realize it wasn’t a prank. That what the supervisor told him was true. Then we were running. I mean running in a full out sprint all the damn way to her place.
No… he didn’t want a car because the traffic would only slow him down.
No… he didn’t want to change shoes.
This was a man on a mission, and as his wingman, I was on a mission too.
As we ran, I called Wayne and told him to meet us outside her building. I didn’t know how long we would be or what shape Grant would be in when we left. But if this turned bad, I didn’t want to have to carry his ass back to his penthouse.
And this was bad.
Bad-bad.
Pregnant!
A whole hell of a lot pregnant.
I didn’t know much about expectant mothers, but I knew enough to know that this one’s water just broke.
I flipped the pages of a mental calendar.
It was February now. We fucked in May.
Damn. We all fucked in May.
As realization sank in, I stared at her.
I could be a father.
Grant could be a father.
And from the looks of things, one of us was going to be a father real soon.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Journey
The stunned silence broke when Jaz jumped up from the sofa. “Oh no! Baby. Baby. It’s time for the baby.” She’d been reading a lot of “how to take care of babies” books so she could be “the best aunt ever.”
A contraction hit me, nearly taking me to my knees. Some of those books had said that labor could go from zero to a thousand quickly. Those books would be correct.
Grant moved first, coming at me in a rush, nearly falling as his shoes skated over the water, nearly taking me down with him.
“Oh my god. Journey. It’s you.” His hands went to my stomach. “How?” I raised an eyebrow, and he quit talking and pulled me into his chest.
“We’ve got to go!” Jaz yelled, running around the puddle on the floor to get my purse.
Nash gave his head a hard shake. “What do you need us to do?”
I hadn’t planned on needing my overnight bag when we came here, so I had nothing with me. Then I remembered I was in my old apartment. I waved at my closet. “Can you get me some of the fattest clothes you can find?” Then I remembered he was a man. “Never mind, can you just find me a towel.” My yoga pants were soaked.
Grant held on to me as I made my way to the closet. Pulling out some things I thought might work, I held them to my face. “They still smell good. Unbelievable.”
Grant took them from me and stuffed them into a bag. “I have them freshly laundered every month.”
I melted. Just melted.
With the hysteria of everything that happened in the past two minutes, I hadn’t been thinking. Hadn’t stopped to just look at him.
“Grant…” Stepping so close that my belly bumped into him, I reached up to hold his beloved face in my hands. “I don’t know whose baby this is.”
His hands cupped my stomach. “I don’t care.”
“You say that now, but—”
“I don’t care because this baby is part of you, which means it’s a part of me whether it’s my DNA or not.”
My throat clogged, and I stroked his scar with my thumb until I was able to talk. “I’m sorry about your family.”
“Me too.”
“Thank you for telling me. And for telling me about what I heard that day.”
He closed his eyes but continued to stroke my belly, which had started to tighten again and… “Owwww.”
Jasmine stomped her foot. “People, we need to go!”
She was right.
When the contraction had faded, I grabbed some pants that I thought might fit and headed to the bathroom. “I need to change.”
Jasmine rolled her eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
I was grateful when Nash headed her way and asked her to help him collect some things.
Grant was right behind me, closing the bathroom door, ready to get his hands dirty.
“You don’t have to do this?” I said as he stripped the wet pants and hideous maternity panties down my legs.
“Hush it.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Hey… I thought you were trying to win me back.”
He tossed the pants in the tub, grabbed a towel, and started drying me off. “How am I doing?” He grinned, showing off the little chip.
My throat clogged again. “Really well, now that you ask.”
The smile got bigger as he began helping me into the pants. “I know that I’m still probably suffering from more than a little bit of shock at finding you pregnant like this. I honestly don’t know if I’ve had brain flow in my head since Susan called to tell me you were here, and especially not since I walked through that door. I know we have a lot to figure out. I know there’s a ton of question marks hanging around us. I know we’ve not even properly dated and there’s baggage around us both and all kinds of shit that we’ll need to wade through and clean up. But dammit, Journey, I want to wade through it. I want to clean it up. And if I have to change diapers while I’m doing it, whether this baby is mine or Nash’s, it’s just another human I get to love.” His dark eyes burned into me. “Because I’m ready to love.”
My nose was burning. My entire face was in flames. “Why? Why do you want to do that?”
He blew out a breath and placed a hand on my chest. “Because our hearts are cracked in the same places. Remember?”
I nodded. “I remember.”
“I love you, Journey. I think I have since the first moment I saw you.”
“I love you too, Grant.”
His entire body seemed to relax at the admission. “What about Nash?”
I considered the question. Gave it the respect it deserved. “I love him too. But more like a friend. A really fun friend who makes me laugh.” My belly started to tighten again, but I needed to say, “I can’t be responsible for breaking up your friendship with him.”
I groaned as the contraction hit, and Grant waited until it was over. “Our friendship is solid. Remember, we’ve had eight months to talk through all this.” He touched my belly again. “This still needs to be discussed, but lots of people co-parent. It just gives a child more people to love and love her.”
I smiled at that, but deep inside, I wanted this to be Grant’s baby. But I would take what I could get. I was deeply in love with my baby already, no matter what.
“Him.”
He gazed at my stomach in wonderment. “Are you sure?”
I held out a finger, wiggled it up and down. “Yep.”
Grant stood and held out his hands. “Ready to meet him?”
I grunted my way to my feet. “Yes. We better go before Jazzy kills us.”
Wayne’s face as he stood by Grant’s car was a picture of stunned if I’d ever seen it. He looked from Nash to me, then finally to Grant. “Never a dull moment around here.”
Kayden Walker Last-Name-To-Be-Determined was born six hours later, Grant holding one hand, Jaz holding the other.
I’d invited Nash to stay, but he declined. “I’ll be right out there in the waiting room if you need me.”
When I asked, “Are you sure?” he nodded.
“I’m not saying this to run away from the responsibility of having a child. My mama would beat me with a shovel if I even thought about it. Plus, after the initial shock, I think I kinda like the idea of having a kid. But, whether this baby is mine or not, you two belong together. I’d still like to be the best friend, but if that’s too uncomfortable, I’ll back away from that too.”
I’d given this some thought, and Grant had been right. Lots of people co-parented. Many married people divorced and got along well for the sake of the children.
Relationships were only as strong as the participants in that relationship were committed to making it.
It didn’t matter how it looked. It mattered how it loved.
And I committed to loving my child enough to allow all kinds of love in his life.
“You are the most handsomest baby in the universe, yes you are?”
I smiled at Jaz as she crooned to her nephew. She really was going to be the best aunt ever, I could already tell.
There was a knock on the door, and Nash came in, that big grin on his face. He had a huge bouquet of flowers, complete with “It’s a Boy” balloons, and he sat it down on a table next to Grant, who was passed out in a chair, all his limbs sprawled out as he snored softly. I lifted my phone and took a picture.
Nash came over and sat down on the side of my bed, covering my hand with his. “I meant what I said before. Whether I’m the father or the fun uncle, I’m there, day or night, if either of you need me.”
I smiled because I couldn’t not smile when he did and gazed into those beautiful eyes. “Thank you for helping me tackle that purse snatcher that day. Thank you for all the fun times. Thank you for allowing me to explore outside my comfort zone with no judgements. What you gifted me with can’t be measured and will never be forgotten.”
He winked and waggled his eyebrows. “I won’t forget it either.”
I laughed and slapped him on the arm. “Stop it.”
He slapped me back. “Nope. Never.”
“Hey, quit abusing the woman I love.”
I smiled up at Grant as he side hugged his friend. He looked better for having had his twenty-minute nap.
Nash stood, and they did that little manly chest bump thing most guys did. But then they hugged, a big, fierce hug that brought tears to my eyes. I took a picture.
When Nash wandered off to check out the baby, Grant took his place. “How are you feeling?”
“Exhausted. Sore. Stretched out. Starving. And absolutely amazing.”
He leaned forward and kissed my forehead. “Wayne is picking up dinner. I can fix the starving part soon.”
“Steak?”
“Of course. And a burger for Jaz.”
“Chocolate cake?”
He looked offended. “Of course.”
After all these months, I didn’t think he’d forgotten anything.
“I hope you ordered for you too.” I poked his lean belly. “You’ve lost weight.”
He lifted my fingers to his lips. “Yeah. I’m sure I’ll pack it back on now that I can eat again.”
A soft knock came on the door, and my nurse, Scarlett, poked her head in. “Hey, is now a good time for the tests?”
My stomach churned, but I waved her in. Grant rubbed his hands down his pant legs and stood. Nash looked a little sick.
Scarlett had both men sign a consent form, then I signed one for the ba
by.
I blew out a breath and met her gaze. “I can’t even imagine how this looks to you.”
She grinned, her pretty face lighting up. “This isn’t my first rodeo with a DNA testing swab. Remind me to tell you about my twins before you leave.” She winked. “Now, that’s a story you wouldn’t believe if it was in a novel.”
She began to fiddle with one of the tests when Grant clapped his hands together, making me jump. All eyes turned to him.
“I want to say something before we do this.” He looked at Scarlett. “If I can have a few moments.”
“Sure.” She nodded and backed into a corner, giving us what bit of privacy she could.
“I just want to say that, no matter what those test results say, I’m in this one hundred percent.” He dug into his pocket and pulled something out, closing his fist around it.
Oh no. He was going to propose. It was too soon. I wasn’t ready. We weren’t ready. My heart started beating out of my chest.
He looked at me and laughed. “I knew you’d have that reaction, so take a deep breath. I’m not proposing.”
I literally melted into the bed.
“What I am doing is offering you my commitment.” He opened his fist and I gasped. It was a ring, but not an engagement ring. This was a band of what looked to contain every colored stone in existence.
“It’s beautiful.”
He grinned. “This ring represents my commitment to you, Journey. To you and this baby, no matter what.” He slipped it on my right ring finger. “I’m reserving rights to the other ring finger at a later date.” I was smiling like an idiot. “Journey, will you commit to me?”
I couldn’t talk. But I nodded like a crazy person. He leaned down and kissed me. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
And just when I didn’t think the moment could be any more perfect, he turned to Jasmine and dug into his other pocket.
“Jaz.”
My sister blushed but didn’t drop her chin. “Yeah.”
“I want to make a commitment to you too.”
She blinked at him. “You do?”
He nodded and moved closer to her. “I sure do. I want you to be my sister-in-law one day, so this…” he opened his fist, and Jasmine’s hands flew to her mouth, “is to prove my commitment to being your brother-in-law when Journey is ready.”
