by Kent, Julia
The nurse looked around the room, first at Dylan, then Mike, then Josie. Finally, she jotted something in Laura’s chart and looked at her patient. “I’m going to leave now so you can rest, but a medical assistant will be in within an hour to check on you and take a few stats.” Laura caught a good look at her now; almond-shaped brown eyes, dark hair, kind, plump face. About her age. Short and full-figured, fast walker, quick wrist for writing. Her name tag read “Diana.”
“Rest is what she needs,” Diana declared. “The cops and firefighters want to interview Laura.” Her heart began to race. Why would they want to interview her?
Buh bum buh bum buh bum. Diana chuckled. “It’s a mood detector, isn’t it?” Really? Every emotion Laura felt was going to be tracked by the baby’s heart rate? Oh, wow. That was going to be sooooo awesome as Dylan and Mike confronted her. Really. Might as well strip her naked and—
“I promise we won’t stay long,” Mike said gently, sitting on the edge of the bed, eyes tracking back to Laura’s belly over and over.
“Me, too, ” Dylan added, shooting Diana a charm-filled look. It worked; the nurse wasn’t immune to his smile, and frankly, neither was Laura. A warmth, a hope, began to grow in her. Deep breath. Maybe she and the baby would be safe and fine and the three of them—
Uh. The four of them—would be OK.
Whoa, there. Getting ahead of yourself. You still have to face the music. The baby monitor made a series of strange sounds, like skittering bumps.
“What was that?” Mike asked, eyes filled with fear.
Laura’s turn to laugh. “She’s just moving all over the place.”
“She?”
“The baby.” Mouth open, his expression shifted, then closed off. What he had been about to ask was clear as he stopped himself, mid-reach, hand pulling back.
“You want to feel?” she offered. Tears filled his eyes suddenly, which made her own pool just as fast, and as Mike’s strong palm rested on her sheet-covered belly, it felt like being welcomed home after self-imposed exile. A bit awkward yet familiar, regret tinging everything good but hope a steady presence.
“Oh!” His eyes danced as the baby shifted, the feeling tangible through Laura’s stomach. “Was that a kick? It wasn’t very strong.”
“I just felt her first movement yesterday, so I know that was a movement, but I don’t know what she’s doing. A kick, a roll, Gangnam Style—who knows?” A tear trickled down Mike’s cheek and landed on his t-shirt, staining the light-blue fabric dark. In that moment, she felt a tearing horror of regret, of pain, of shame for keeping this from him. From them.
“I’m so, so sorry,” she choked out, voice hoarse and raw from breathing in smoke, but more from her own remorse. “I should have told you a long time ago, but I was just being stupid. I didn’t know how to handle it and now I get why you didn’t tell me about everything. Once you don’t say anything it just...snowballs.”
Dylan blinked hard and maintained his distance; unlike Mike, he seemed hardened. Which was weird, because she would have expected the opposite, that Dylan would be easier to reconnect with. “Why did you freeze?”
She didn’t expect that question. More tears. “You mean in the fire—Oh! My cats!” Panic filled her again, the baby’s heartbeat racing. Damn it! Staring deeply into her eyes, Mike inhaled slowly, her own body instinctively following. The act of being this connected made her heart slow down, his kind eyes extending an olive branch of forgiveness, of love and understanding.
It almost made her feel like this wasn’t hopeless.
Almost.
“The baby is telling us something, Laura,” Josie said, her voice pinched and worried. “Now really isn’t the time. And your cats are fine and peeing all over my apartment right now. I grabbed them from the bushes and threw them in my car and took them home for Dotty to terrorize.”
“Dotty’ll have them in line in no time,” Laura murmured. Yawn. What time was it?
“Laura?” Dylan asked, his voice gentle but firm. “What happened to your grandparents?”
Josie grabbed his bicep and pulled him aside. “Would you shut up about that? It upsets her.”
“No, no, it’s OK. I can talk about it. A little.” The horse hooves picked up their pace but not too much. Man, she had missed these guys. Even now, here in a hospital bed, her home probably destroyed by the fire, her cats becoming subs to Dotty’s dom, it felt so...right to have Mike and Dylan here.
“They died.”
“In the fire?”
She nodded.
“Is that why you freaked on our first date when I talked about fire procedures in skyscrapers?” Her stomach dropped. He remembered that? She’d been nervous enough, and then he’d casually talked about how to handle fires in enormous buildings like hers. What were the chances he’d pick the one thing that terrified her the most?
And what in the hell kind of world made a fire break out in her apartment while she was pregnant?
Wait. Why had Dylan been the one to rescue her? Her turn to ask some questions.
“Why were you the one who rescued me? You live across town.”
Mike and Josie turned their attention to Dylan, who blushed. Blushed! She’d never seen anything so adorable before. He looked like a bashful eighth grader. “I was on call. I woke out of dead sleep and heard your address. Ran for it and called Mike.”
“In good traffic it’s fifteen minutes to my house from yours, Dylan!” Laura exclaimed.
“I made it in six.” Mike made a low whistling sound. Dylan grinned, proud of himself. “And that’s why I have that Audi,” he crowed. Josie rolled her eyes. Men.
Exhaustion seeped in some more, making Laura’s eyelids feel heavy. Too much to talk about, too little energy. “I’m sorry.”
“You keep saying that.” Dylan held a finger up to his lips. “Shh. No need.”
“One of you is the father,” Laura whispered. “I had this one day where I missed my pill. Not even twenty-four hours! But it must have been enough.”
“Or maybe I have super sperm,” Dylan joked. Mike’s glare was like a laser. Josie’s, too.
Laura smiled weakly. “We need to do a paternity test and then we can—”
“No!” Mike and Dylan shouted in unison. The confused look they gave each other shifted to a strange understanding, their faces animated with shifting expressions even as they stayed silent. It was like watching two mimes have an entire, deep discussion without saying a word.
“No?” Josie said, incredulous. “What do you mean, ‘no’? You have to know who the father is, for the birth certificate.” Protective and defensive, Josie stepped closer to Laura, as if ready to shield her from whatever the two men had in mind. Laura, though, knew what was going on.
“You really don’t want to know, do you?” she asked quietly.
Barely four hours had gone by since Dylan’s phone call, and Mike had to absorb his first encounter with Dylan since their fight four months ago, seeing the two loves of his life endangered by fire, and now he had just learned that Laura was pregnant with their baby. Their baby. All three of them. He didn’t want to view it as his, or Dylan’s. But he had no idea Dylan felt the same way!
Pointing at Dylan, he said, “You, too?”
The smile on his partner’s face was so telling, impish and serious all at once in a way only Dylan could pull off. “Me, too. She’s ours. Not yours. Not mine.”
Would Laura agree? Mike wasn’t sure. Seeing her there, on her side, radiant and scared, made him want to bar the door and protect her from whatever the world threw her way. Radiant! Hah! Now he knew why she seemed to be glowing when he saw her yesterday at Jeddy’s, through that window.
A happy pregnant woman, full of life.
Full of his child.
His daughter.
Their daughter.
“I hate to break up this lovely Hallmark moment— hey, where do I get a card for this?—but as wonderful as the sentiment is, it’s not practical,” Josie announced. Li
ke poking a pin in a balloon, Mike felt deflated, burdened and weighed down by something he couldn’t name.
“Why not?” Dylan threw back at her. The opposite of deflated, Dylan seemed emboldened. Cocksure.
“What if something happens to Laura? You need to know who the legal father is for custody. For raising her. I’ve seen too many really screwy situations in hospitals after parents die to know that you do not want Child Services to be the one who takes your daughter away to a foster home while the legal system sorts all this crap out. Plus there are issues of inheritance.” She made a face and rubbed her fingers together. Money.
Like a bucket of ice water pitched on them, Josie’s words made him feel stone-cold sober. Crackpot idea, right? Some calm, internally-focused part of him thought it might work—not knowing. Once they knew who the dad was it would shift everything, make him and Dylan competitors, not collaborators.
“I like it.” Laura’s voice was small but strong. “If they both want to be her dad, I’m fine with it.”
Josie looked at them all as if they were aliens. “But you have to know!”
How had they gone from just learned about the existence of this tiny being to having a fight about her already?
“Maybe we can both go on the birth certificate?” Dylan asked.
“What—like you each contributed half a sperm? Biology doesn’t work that way,” Josie wisecracked.
“I know how—”
Buh bum buh bum buh bum. They all turned to look at the monitor. A large wet spot grew around Laura’s eye on the pillow, her chin quivering and chest shaking a bit.
“Out!” Josie ordered. “All of us! We can come back and fight another time when Laura’s stronger.”
Shit. She was right, as much as Mike was loathe to admit it. He looked at the clock; was it really not even 7:30 a.m.? Man. He’d lived five lifetimes in four hours. He walked to the head of the bed and bent down, stretching to give Laura a kiss on the temple.
“You have nothing to be sorry about. I’m the one who is so, so sorry, Laura. We should have told you.”
“I should have told you,” she whispered back, reaching for his hand. The joy of this moment made his own heart grow, and his fingers reached down to stroke the baby.
“We’ll be back later. We’re here for you.” He knew he shouldn’t speak for Dylan—that was a bridge he still needed to cross—but the words were reflexive, born of years of knowing he could speak for two.
Dylan came from the other side of the bed and kissed her cheek. “Me too. I’m sorry, Laura, for letting you down.”
A smile. “It’s all good.” Yawn. The baby’s heart rate settled back down.
Click. The door opened and Mike saw Josie leading the way. By the time he and Dylan had stepped out, Laura was snoozing, as it should be.
Buh bum buh bum buh bum.
A dad. Daddy. Dylan fumbled with the idea that he might be someone’s daddy. Images of his own father, still strong and hearty at seventy, flipped through his mind. Fishing and hiking and swimming and camping. He knew how to parent a boy, all rough and tumble and energy.
A little girl? He wasn’t exactly the princess tea party type. A lump in his throat seemed to push on his tear ducts and make his eyes leak a bit as he and Mike and Josie left Laura’s room.
“You’re covered in soot,” Josie marveled. He looked down at his forearms. Yep. Nothing new. After a year on the force he had found that his cuticles always had a few flecks of black in them. Professional hazard. “You literally carried her out and saved her life.” Hair wild and eyes tired, she smiled at him, a genuine, earnest look that made her quite beautiful, transformed. “Thank you. You saved them both.”
Both. A baby girl. He washed his face with his hands, kneading the skin, willing his brain to focus, as if he could massage it into place. “What are we gonna do?” Open-ended question. One that no one had an answer to, but he had to ask it anyway.
“This is a start.” For the first time, he got a good look at Josie. SpongeBob pajamas and sockless, with flip flops. What a fashion plate. Then he remembered—3 a.m. She had sprinted like they had, and he felt a combination of extreme fatigue and gratitude. Too bad he’d been too stupid to take Josie’s advice when she’d flung it at him that night at Jeddy’s. Thank God Laura had a good friend through all this.
A look at Mike, who was looking at him. A shared smile. Maybe this would be OK, he thought.
How were they going to raise a child? Nausea settled in. Or maybe that was just hunger. Josie rubbed her eyes and took a good look at herself, head tipped down. Chin on chest, she started laughing, a coarse, harsh sound.
“Man, I gotta get home and make sure those cats haven’t destroyed everything. And I need to sleep. My shift starts at three.”
“You work in a factory?” Dylan asked. She had a hard look to her, like someone who was streetwise. Yet when she softened and smiled, she seemed delicate and intellectual. What a chameleon.
“I’m a nurse,” she said flatly, as if she were offended he thought her working class.
“Cool. I’m a paramedic.”
“No—you’re a billionaire,” she said slowly, as if speaking to a child.
Deadly stare. “And you’re a—” The rest of his sentence was cut off by Mike, who wrapped an arm around his shoulders and steered him away from Josie.
“We’ll be back in a few hours to check on Laura and talk about our daughter,” he said, soothing the simmer that threatened to bubble over in Dylan. Another hand on his shoulder, then a matching one on Mike’s.
“Hey.” Josie’s voice was clipped and edgy. “You two blew it, and if she lets you back in, let me make one thing perfectly clear.” Dylan’s temper rose somewhere in his throat, floating like bile.
One long fingernail pointed at their crotches, one by one. “The warlock waitress will be wearing very real balls if you mindfuck her again. And that baby, too.”
Holy shit. “You really have some nerve,” he nearly shouted, letting his voice rise, feeling it like an old friend. The nurse, Diana, looked at them from behind a large desk, eyeing them warily.
“Me? I’m not the one who—oh, fuck this. I’m done trying to help you two.”
“Offering to chop off our balls isn’t my idea of help,” Mike added, his voice flat and dry.
“It’s 7:30 a.m. My best friend and her baby nearly died in a fire. Now I have to help her not feel guilty after I’ve spent the past three months trying to convince her to tell you two assholes.”
She what?
“You two lied badly enough—twice—to crush my best friend’s heart. The best friend I’ve been with now through the first half of a pregnancy.” Her voice rose. “Were you there when she cried her eyes out over you two? When she started to get morning sickness? How about when I went out to get the tests and we went through them, one by one, and they all read positive— where were you?”
“We didn’t know—”
“I know you didn’t know, Dylan. Why do you think you didn’t know?” Nostrils flaring, hands on hips, she looked like a miniature Joan Jett doing a SpongeBob imitation, all yellow fury. “Because she thought you didn’t tell her about your money because you didn’t trust her. She was fucking overwhelmed and confused. And by the way—use a damn rubber sometimes, you two!”
OK, she had him there. He should have. Mike didn’t? A side glance at Mike, who imperceptibly shook his head. So it really could be either of them.
“Forgive me,” she said bitterly, as if asking for anything but forgiveness, “if I seem overly protective. Someone has to be, though, because the greatest threat to Laura—and her baby—so far has been fire, and you.”
Wham. As if struck between the eyes by a hot ball of lead, Dylan nearly sank to the floor. Fuck all. He resented the hell out of what Josie was saying but he had to admit she was right. The wince on Mike’s face said she’d struck his target, too. Bullseye.
Double bullseye. She walked off, fast and efficient, just like a nurse. Ex
cept they weren’t her patients. Quite the opposite. They were her wounded, her words meant to hurt, to get the point driven home.
And she had succeeded.
Shoulders slumped, he sighed. Ah, man, he had to get back to the station to do reports and go through debriefings. Mike looked at him and pointed to the hallway toward the parking garage. A slow walk to the elevators was rote enough that he just kept moving forward, brain turned to mush.
“What now?” Mike asked as they waited for the elevator.
“You’ll drive me back to my place?” They’d left Dylan’s car in the apartment garage and come in the Jeep.
“I’ll drive us back to our place.” Dylan closed his eyes and leaned against Mike, nodding.
Sometimes it didn’t have to be so complicated.
Thank God.
Chapter Nine
Mike held the smartphone’s camera up and surveyed the soot-covered room slowly. Laura’s apartment building had just been opened for him and Dylan to come down, the fire investigation completed enough that they permitted residents to remove vital items. The conclusion: an electrical fire that started in the breaker box in the basement, directly under Laura’s place.
She was damn lucky. A few more minutes and...well, he wouldn’t be holding a camera streaming live video to her on her smart phone, her sweet face asking questions and giving directions as she rested under a down throw on his couch, looking relaxed and healing nicely.
His couch. At the cabin. When the fire investigators told her she wouldn’t be able to go back to her apartment for weeks, if not months, the structural damage too great for people to live there, the news had seemed to crush her. Quick to offer help, he and Dylan had both tried to get her to move in. Cabin vs. apartment?
She’d chosen the cabin. Who knew why, and he didn’t care. Josie was with her, helping to acclimate her, and now he and Dylan were on a mission to bring back whatever she wanted. Life as he knew it was over. Not just the past four painful, grueling months, but the time before that as well. He and Dylan would never be the same again. It was less about hiding the truth from Laura (twice) and more about what seemed to be a strange role reversal, with Dylan calmer, more reserved, more mature and Mike more emotive, charismatic, and, well—
