And no way she could believe any feelings he had for her were real love, either.
Chapter Sixteen
Wood stayed at dinner far longer than he’d planned. Their food arrived, they ate some it, the plates were removed, he paid the bill, and he and Cassie sat there, sharing memories of their childhoods. Which moved into conversation about raising a son with awareness instead of privilege as much as possible. About helicopter and lawnmower parenting—hovering over your child too much, and just plain mowing down everything in his path.
And they talked about siblings. Because her childhood had lacked them. And his entire life had been shaped by having one.
Which led him to think about Alan. And how great it was to have a brother. To be a brother.
“If you remain single, do you see yourself having more children?” he asked, in spite of the time pressing at his back. He wasn’t going to make it to the workshop that night.
Her brow creased, and a shadow blew over her expression. “I have no idea,” she said. “Growing up an only child with three parents, I always told myself I’d have at least two kids, because not having a sibling is so hard, but now...” She shrugged. “I turned out okay. And I’ve got great memories from a mostly happy childhood. And right now... I just pray that Alan thrives, is born healthy and that I can give him a happy life.”
He nodded, saddened that her dreams could have to change but knowing that life seldom worked out as one perceived it should.
“I feel a lot more empowered to give him that happy life now that I know you’re going to be a part of it. Not just that he’ll know his father, but that his father is you...”
He needed to reach for her hand. To lean across the table and kiss her. And, of course, he could do neither of those things. He wanted to offer up his sperm if she ever did decide to have another child.
“We should probably get going,” Cassie said while he was still rejecting the responses he wanted to make to her comment, trying to find one that would be acceptable. She pulled her satchel up onto the table. Retrieved her keys. “I’ve still got work to do tonight.”
It was almost eleven. Standing, he pulled his keys out of his pocket and followed her out the door. Walked her to her car. Couldn’t just let her leave.
“You’ve given me the greatest gift I’ve ever had,” he told her as they stood beside her door, face-to-face, looking at each other. Not touching, because they couldn’t. “And if I had a choice of all the women I’ve ever known to be the mother of my son, it would still be you.”
Her smile was tremulous, her eyes glistening beneath the parking lot security lights. When her arms reached out for him again, as they had Wednesday after the ultrasound, he stepped into them. Wrapped his arms around her. Took a deep breath, memorizing. Brushed his lips against her temple.
And let go.
* * *
Wood was barely in his truck when his phone rang. He clicked answer before the caller ID number popped up on his dash screen, grinning. Cassie, being Cassie, was probably now going to apologize for the hug.
“Hey,” he answered, his voice soft and filled with the emotion that overtook him any time she was around. Or he thought of her.
An emotion he wasn’t willing to analyze.
“Wood?” Elaina. She sounded upset.
Instantly changing gears, his chest tight with concern, he said, “Yeah, what’s wrong? Where are you?” He’d head in that direction immediately.
“I’m at home. I just...when I got home and you weren’t here, and there wasn’t a note... I just got worried. You’re okay?”
He understood the panic. Immediately. “I’m fine,” he said. “Just let time get away from me. I’m on my way home now.”
The pause that followed his words made him feel like a heel. They always left notes. Always. And while he no longer needed their contact to be that all-consuming, and didn’t think it was good for her, either, he should communicate the change, not just leave her hanging.
He should have let her know he’d be out. Such a simple thing. One he’d always done without thought.
And he’d forgotten.
“It’s okay,” Elaina said, then, her tone kind. And healthier sounding. “Seriously. Don’t feel like you have to come home on my account. I’m actually sorry I called. I just...you’re always here...and I thought...”
He’d been in an accident. It happened. Without warning. She’d lost her parents that way. And then Peter. He’d lost, too.
Having family, loving them in all their guises, wasn’t easy. Accepting their issues, dealing with their challenges, was sometimes frustrating, sometimes extremely difficult and yet, ultimately, what mattered to him most.
And things still needed to change. He had to talk to her.
“I was already on my way home when you called, El. I’ll be there in less than five. You want to share a nightcap before bed?”
They used to do it a lot. Hadn’t in a couple of years. Not since the divorce.
“No way. Don’t you dare come home on my account. I’m... Just forget I called...”
“El!” he said abruptly, sure she was going to hang up. “I’m serious, I’m almost turning onto our street. I was on my way home. And I’m in need of a drink. You’re welcome to join me.”
“I’d like that. It’s been a long night,” she said with a weary sigh. “We lost a patient during a procedure...”
Those words blew his plan to have that talk he needed to have with her that night.
As she described what she legally could of her evening, he listened to every word. Caring. Forgiving her the panic for his lack of a note. And feeling like crap because he wished his life was different. Wished it was Cassie he was going home to. Wished he’d met her before she’d decided to have a family, that he’d dated her, married her, and that the child she was carrying had been conceived by choice from both of them.
* * *
“Cass? Do you intend to take the full twelve weeks coming to you for maternity leave?” Troy, the most senior of the partners in her firm, asked as he stopped by Cassie’s desk on Thursday of that next week.
Looking away from the case file she’d been reading on her computer screen, Cassie wondered why Troy was asking. She adored him, purely professionally, of course, but also knew that he didn’t spend his brainpower on the day-to-day running of the firm he’d started nearly forty years before.
“I haven’t decided yet,” she told him. If Alan was born healthy, she only planned four to six weeks off work. She needed to keep herself fully invested in the firm’s cases or lose some of her position among the other lawyers there. It wasn’t discrimination, it was just fact. But beyond that...she needed to work to feel secure. As her family’s sole support, she couldn’t let herself yearn for the life of a stay-at-home mom. Was pretty sure she’d go nuts if she had it.
And if Alan wasn’t born healthy...
“I’ve got a case that could use your brand of expertise,” Troy said, coming more fully into the room. “But it’s sensitive, the client is skittish, and it won’t be good to change up his lead counsel midstream. Shouldn’t be much to do in December and January, but next spring things will really ramp up. I could keep you apprised and ready to roll if you think you’d be back by February.”
“I’ll be back,” she said. And was grinning when she was once again alone in her office. She’d just been given the professional compliment of her career. Troy had given her a very brief rundown of the assignment. The potential merger involved, among others, two parties who’d been through a rancorous divorce, but it would serve all of the companies by bringing them together to give them the market power they needed to survive. Just the thought of it energized her.
Alan had to be born healthy. And this was a sign that he would be, she told herself. Because she had to get back to work soon after he was born. The partners had already allowed
that she could work from home as much as possible as her due date grew close, and then after maternity leave. And she had interviews set up that next week for a live-in nanny. It would all work out. Was all working out.
But the professional honor didn’t make it into the texts she shared with Wood that night. The opportunity she’d been given, her choice to accept and her need to plan accordingly, were all on her as a single parent.
She told him that, for now, she’d had the outcome she’d sought for the nonprofit case, though. The executive director still had her job.
Alan had woken her up three times in the night, playing football, she’d decided. And she was suddenly ravenous at the oddest times during the day—all of which she’d also shared with him.
He continued to send nightly photos of the nursery furniture progress and shared an anecdote or two about his workday. Usually something someone had said. And once when someone hadn’t shown up for work and they’d found out he’d been in a car accident.
She felt his pain on that one. Told him so.
He’d shrugged off her concern, saying he was fine.
The following Monday night, when they met for dinner, they’d both been on guard, she figured, based on the fact that both of them had avoided meaningful looks and intimate topics. She told him about the upcoming amniocentesis, scheduled for that Wednesday, possibly the last if everything checked out okay, and he offered to take her as usual. She accepted the offer. As usual.
And when they parted that night, a quick hour after they’d come together with a couple of hours’ daylight left ahead of them, they’d hugged, also mutually, like near strangers.
But they’d hugged.
They had an unusual relationship. One that they’d both accepted as permanent.
And they were making it work.
But she wasn’t as happy as she’d been when they’d been talking about their feelings. And agreeing to be friends.
* * *
Two weeks went by. Amnio results came back good. He’d stayed in the waiting room during the test and had dropped Cassie back off at work immediately after.
He saw her for dinner once a week. Usually on Monday, but she’d had to reschedule for Tuesday once. They texted every night, a way, she’d mentioned a few times, to know that they were each okay. He worked on the furniture. Elaina was out more. Dating, he hoped. It was okay for him to think of living his life alone, but he didn’t want it for her.
She had too much to give. Not that he could affect her choice one way or another.
Mostly life was stagnant, and while normally that would be a good thing for him, he was no longer satisfied with just having no catastrophes with which to deal. For a week or two there, when he and Cassie had been making their plans, possibility, and a new-to-him happiness, had abounded. But instead of them flourishing, he felt...stagnated. Elaina, who knew him so well, called him on his dissatisfaction one night the last week in July.
“Are you mad at me?”
They were at dinner downtown on a Wednesday night. Her suggestion. She’d been excited about a new chef she’d heard about at work. And while the food was as good as promised, he’d have been just as happy at home, his shed waiting for him when the dishes were done.
“Of course I’m not mad at you,” he told her. “I’m just not used to us getting dressed up and going out during the week,” he added, hearing the lameness of his response even before he uttered it.
“It’s not just tonight,” she said, raising her glass of wine for a sip. “You’ve seemed...not yourself lately. You frown more. And aren’t as relaxed when you’re sitting down.”
He had no idea what she was talking about until she said, “Even now, look at you...sitting upright, as though you’re on trial or something. It was the same when I saw you on the couch last week. It’s not like you used to slouch, but you have this way of laying yourself out in a chair like it’s as comfortable as a bed...”
Trying to relax in the chair as though that would make everything go away, he told her, “I’m not at all upset with you. I’m preoccupied with the nursery furniture, though. I took on a lot with only five months to complete it all...” He took a breath to continue explaining himself, not at all sure where he was going or when he’d stop.
“You’re falling in love with her,” she said.
He didn’t know if he was or not.
But seeing the look on her face, the compassion, something inside him gave loose. “Tell me something, El...”
“Of course, anything.”
She was all the family he had left.
“When you agreed to marry me...for that first little bit...when emotions were running so high and we were both still reeling from everything...you felt things for me, didn’t you? You really believed our marriage would work. And, for a few months there, you thought we’d find our happily-ever-after.”
He looked her straight in the eye. Needing her honesty. No matter what it might be.
No matter that his brother had been the love of her life. No matter that she might, in some ways, think he was beneath her—or not—for a while there...
She didn’t look away. Didn’t speak, either.
And he considered that maybe her honest answer was that she’d never felt that way about him. That she was afraid to tell him, thinking it might hurt his feelings.
For a second there, he hoped.
And then she nodded. “I hoped,” she said.
But it hadn’t happened.
He didn’t voice the next question. Did she honestly believe that it wouldn’t happen on Cassie’s part, either? That the feelings he was getting from her were based on all of the other strong emotions she was feeling at the moment, with her life changing so drastically, with the hormones, and with the baby’s health in question, just as Elaina’s had been residual from the shock and grief of losing Peter? And her own physical rehabilitation after the accident?
“Just promise me something?” she asked.
He would if he could.
“Don’t talk yourself into falling for the mother because of the baby.”
He nodded.
“And don’t lose sight of the fact that she’s going through a lot right now.”
She’d pretty much answered the question he hadn’t voiced. With another nod, he signaled for their check.
Chapter Seventeen
Cassie was just settling into bed that last Wednesday night in July, a second pillow behind her now that the weight in her belly was starting to expect more from her back, when a text came through. Wood had already texted, earlier in the evening, just to ask about her day. A normal check-in kind of thing. And as usual, she hadn’t answered, savoring her moments with him at bedtime. Saving her response until then so that she could have those moments.
Expecting to open the text and see the night’s furniture photo, she frowned. He hadn’t sent a photo. He’d sent a question instead.
Are you upset about something?
What on earth?
No. Why?
She put her finger to her mouth. Didn’t bite at the nail—that was gross and a habit she’d broken long ago—but she did nip at the skin. Waiting. Then turned on the TV, called up a feel-good ancient sitcom on her streaming service. Set the volume low.
Rubbed her belly, wondering if she could somehow wake up Alan, just to reassure herself that he was fine. He’d been a bit quiet for a couple of days. Moving. Just not as much as he sometimes did.
You feel more distant. Maybe I am. It’s unsettling.
Oh. Well. Scooching a little bit farther down in bed, she snuggled the covers to her breast and looked at the phone screen. Blinking. Staring.
Not sure where to start. Or stop.
But sure of the problem.
The bond between them had clearly become one.
So they had to deal with it.
>
And maybe communicating via text message was the best way...
I am being extra careful.
Yes. That was good. Maybe that would do it. So many reasons to be careful. No need to dissect the situation.
Careful how? Of what? Why?
She sat up a little bit. Ran her fingers through her hair, ended up with a couple of blond strands in her hand. Shedding extra hair was a pregnancy side effect, she’d learned, and a product of stress. Either way, the woman who trimmed the dead ends off her hair every six months wasn’t the least bit worried about it.
Her phone binged Wood’s dedicated message tone.
You there?
She’d already seen the words. She’d been staring at the screen when they’d come through.
Yes. Just trying to figure out what to say.
This whole relationship with him was so hard. And worth any amount of work.
I’m going crazy needing to get naked with you. I think about it all the time. But I need you in my life. She deleted that last line. Typed again. I want you in my life. Alan needs you. And so I’m being careful not to screw things up.
She reread. Hit Send.
And nothing happened. The phone went completely silent. Tempted to do what he’d done to her and ask if he was there, she decided not to. She trusted him to choose his own reaction. And trusted herself to follow his lead.
Apologies ahead of time for the crudeness. I have a hard-on that is causing physical distress. Carrying one around has become more common these days. It’s the price I’m paying, that I’ll gladly pay for the rest of my life, to know my son. And to have you in my life.
The insecure hormonal being that had taken over her body wanted to play coy and ask what he meant. That person who wasn’t acting like the Cassie she knew wanted confirmation that he was talking about her. That she’d put him in his current state of physical distress.
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