The Baby Bump

by Tara Wylde

  Insomnia isn’t something that’s new to me. Even as a child, I was restless, and would often spend the entire night reading a book or playing a video game rather than sleeping. And after the accident, well, that’s when I learned that I far prefer staying awake to having to deal with the nightmares that plague my sleeping hours.

  Over the past few years, things have gotten better, and more often than not, I can trick myself into falling asleep. Not tonight. Tonight, too many thoughts are racing through my mind, chasing away even the slightest hope of resting.

  Today, I decided to put the time to good use by setting up my laptop on the kitchen table and opening up my manuscript. I spent hours writing. My fingertips flew across the keys, and row after row of black text appeared on the screen. My characters dove into one plot point after another while I tried not to think about the words Ryan whispered as hefell asleep.

  He loves me.

  They were the last thing I thought he’d ever utter. Hell, they were pretty much the last words I’d ever thought I’d hear any man throw in my direction.

  I’ve spent so much time thinking that Lance was my one true love, that he was the only man who could truly love me back. Just like he was the only man I’d ever fall for. When he died, my heart and ability to love died with him.

  The alarm on my laptop sounds, startling me. A quick glance at the clock on the tool bar confirms that the morning is well underway and that it’s time to stop writing and get on with my day.

  Upstairs a floorboard creaks, door hinges squeal, and then there’s the tell-tale sound of water bubbling through the ancient pipes as Ryan turns the shower on.

  I stand and add some more grounds and water to the coffee pot before moving to the window.

  Sighing, I lean against the cold window pane and stare up at the sun, which is starting to climb higher in the sky. A warm sense of peace settles over me, happiness nipping at its heels, and I realize that the source of both emotions is currently standing upstairs, taking a hot shower.

  I think about how well he got along with Nathan yesterday at the ball game, how sad he was when he returned the boy home. My heart aches for the boy who grew up in a house with a father who not only used his fists on his son, but also took the life of a dog he loved, for no other reason than to be cruel.

  I think of the way my heart races as he leans in for a kiss and how his voice sounded as he whispered that he loved me.

  I’m in love with him too.

  The realization stuns me, rendering me incapable of moving, of even breathing.

  Somehow, in less than three days, the impossible has happened. I’ve fallen in love with Ryan, just like the character I created, Maxie, is falling head over heels in love with Heat Flare, the superhero I modeled after …Ryan.

  Talk about life imitating art.

  Love.

  Just the word releases tendrals of warm fuzzies.

  Even before the accident disfigured my face and cost me Lance, I hadn’t ever thought I’d fall in love. I hadn’t wanted to. I’d always hated the idea of needing someone as much as I needed my next breath, and was terrified by the thought of anyone needing me just as much, but here I was, filled with the very love I’ve always feared and there’s not a damned thing I can do about it.

  And even if I could, I don’t know that I’d want to.

  I’m so lost in my thoughts, I don’t notice that the water is no longer running through the pipes. I also don’t hear the soft sound of footsteps on the wooden stairs, or the sound of clothes rustling with movement.

  “Hey.”

  The single word has me whipping toward the door that leads to the stairway. My elbow slams into the window pane, and I yelp as the jolt races up and down my arm. My hand goes numb.

  Concern flashing in his amazing eyes, Ryan hurries across the room.

  “Easy.” He catches hold of my arm in his warm hands and starts rubbing the bruised elbow, his touch chasing away the pain. “Are you okay?”

  I stare up at him. Butterflies dance in my stomach. Now that he’s told me that he loves me and I know that I love him right back, I’m more nervous about him than I’ve ever been.

  Even as a part of me wants to scream my new love from the rooftops, there’s another part, a stronger part, that wants to keep the news to myself, at least until I better understand it.

  “Er … yeah. I’m fine.” I lick my lips and swallow. “Just a little bruised. Nothing I can’t recover from.”

  Ryan keeps massaging my joint. “Are you sure? That was quite a bang.”

  “And hopefully I learned a lesson and won’t be quite so clumsy in the future.” Desperate to put some space between us, I tug my arm free of his grasp and quickly move away from him to the coffee pot, which has just stopped percolating.

  “Want some coffee?” My voice sounds high pitched and overly bright.

  Ryan’s eyes narrow. “Is something wrong, something besides the elbow, I mean?”

  “No.”

  “It’s just you seem… different. Sorta unsettled. And you didn’t sleep in bed with me.”

  “Oh, that.” I fill a mug with coffee and pass it to him. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  Ryan nods and accepts the coffee. “I thought maybe things have been moving too fast. That you needed some space.”

  “Things are moving fast, but that’s okay. I can deal.”

  Ryan sets the coffee down and closes the distance between us. He pulls me into his arms and rests his chin on the top of my head. “About last night. I want you to know … I don’t want you to feel any pressure or think that I have any expectations. I know that you’re still grieving for Lance, that you still love him. I don’t want to take his place.”

  For some reason his words cause a lump to rise up in my throat. I bury my face in his chest. My own declaration of love presses against my lips, but I swallow it. The emotion is so new, so unfamiliar after spending so long not feeling anything. I need to live with it for a little while, explore its depths, decide if it’s the real thing – or just infatuation – before I put it into words.

  I pull away from Ryan and shove my hair behind my ears. “Do you want any breakfast?”

  He watches me with hooded eyes. “You don’t have to wait on me.”

  “I was going to pour myself a bowl of cereal. It doesn’t take much effort to pour a second bowl.”

  “All right then.”

  While I get the cereal and two bowls out, Ryan grabs the nearly empty gallon of milk out of the fridge. He sets the jug on the table, creating a slight vibration that causes my laptop to wake up.

  The rows and rows of text that I spent the past few hours adding to my manuscript glow on the screen, catching Ryan’s eye. He looks at the computer with curiosity, but doesn’t lean forward to read the document.

  “Working on something for the medical office?” he asks casually as he sits down in the chair beside the one I was using.

  I bite my lip and stare at my computer. I’ve never told anyone, not my mom, not my best friend, not even Lance, about my love for writing, even though I’ve been making up stories for as long as I can remember. I’ve always been afraid that they’d think it was silly and a waste of time.

  But suddenly, I don’t want to keep it a secret any more.

  I place the cereal on the table and take a deep breath. “I write fiction.”

  Ryan raises an eyebrow. “Great. Anything I might have read?”

  “No.” This feels like I’m stripping away a vital piece of myself, leaving me exposed and vulnerable before him. “I haven’t published a single word.”

  Will he think less of me for putting so much effort into something and not showing it off? “I don’t think it’s very good.”

  Ryan nods as if he understands. Maybe he even does. “What do you write?” he asks.

  “Superhero romance novels. At least, that’s what I’m working on right now.”

  “Really?” Ryan sits up straighter. “I love superhero comics. Especially Green
Lantern. And the Hulk.” He tips his head to the side. “Great, now you’re probably thinking I have a fetish for the color green or something. And I don’t. I just think they’re cool characters. I even auditioned for the role of Hulk when they did casting calls for The Avengers, but Ruffalo got it instead. What do your characters do?”

  “One generates heat.” I decide not to say that the character is based on him. “The other can manipulate items, including a little bit of mind suggestion.”

  “That’s really cool.”

  Okay, so telling Ryan about my hobby was easier than I expected. Now, to try something harder. “Would you, I don’t know…” I twist my hands together as I try to form a coherent sentence.

  Ryan quirks a brow and watches me with patient eyes. “What?”

  “Would you, maybe, like to read it?”

  Ryan

  “Are you kidding me? Of course, I’d love to!”

  When I first walked into the kitchen, Lucy’s reaction to me had broken my heart. She was so uptight, so jumpy, that I was sure I’d blown it, that telling her I loved her had her running scared. Which makes sense. She’s still in love with the boyfriend who died.

  I don’t want her to think that I’m trying to take his place, that I want to erase him from her memory. That’s the last thing I would do, though the idea of living in his shadow scares the hell out of me. I mean, how can I possibly hope to compete with a ghost? I’m bound to come up lacking.

  But I have to at least try.

  I’m shocked that Lucy is writing a book. But it does explain why she’s so protective of her laptop. If I tried to write anything, even a short story, I’d probably become OCD about my electronics too.

  And that she wants me to read it. That feels like a huge leap of faith on her part, the kind of leap one only takes when they’re starting to trust, and maybe even fall for, someone else.

  The very thought has my heart pounding in my chest and hope unfurling in my belly.

  “Great!” Forgetting about the cereal, Lucy springs away from the table. “It’s not finished yet, but it’s just about there, so you can read what I have and then I’ll get the rest to you as soon as it’s done. Oh, and it’s okay if you don’t like it. I promise I won’t hold it against you.”

  “I’m sure I’ll love it.” How could I not love anything that put such a delightful glow in her eyes? “How long have you been writing?”

  “Pretty much my entire life, but I’ve been working on this particular story for a little less than a year. I started it as a way to deal with Suzie and because I was afraid that I was beginning to forget about Lance.”

  The bottom of my stomach falls, dropping until it’s even with my shoes. A love story designed to help her re-fall in love with the man she considered her one true love. A story in which he just happens to be a superhero.

  Shit. Living, and falling in love, in the shadow of his memory is bad enough, but to read about it … talk about masochistic, but I can’t back out now.

  “’I’ll transfer the files to my Kindle and you can use that to read it.” Lucy grabs a black laptop bag off the counter and starts rifling through it. She pulls out a bright blue case that contains her Kindle tablet and dives back into the bag. “I swore the cord is in here.” She takes a moment to consider. “I bet it fell out of my bag and is in my car. I’ll go get it.”

  “Lucy, hang on a minute. You don’t have to set this up right now. There’s plenty of time to do that later. Eat your breakfast.” My words fall on deaf ears. Lucy is already out the door and heading for the garage.

  I roll my shoulders and try hard not to think about the fact that it’s a story written about Lance that has her so excited as I add cereal and milk to the bowl Lucy placed in front of me. I try to concentrate on that rather than the fact that I’ve agreed to read a book about my rival.

  Just as I swipe my spoon through the flakes and milk, Lucy screams.

  Ryan

  Officer Seth stares into the cardboard box that Lucy found sitting on the hood of her car when she went out to fetch the charging cable.

  “I don’t think this cat was shot and killed,” he says.

  Continuing to hold Lucy, who’s been shaking ever since she found the box and discovered it held a dead cat, I glare at Seth. “No. It was beaten to death by some sicko with a shovel and then put in Lucy’s car.” The idea that anyone capable of doing something like that is in Patina Falls, that they were right here, just a few feet from where Lucy and I are sitting, fills me with equal parts dread and anger.

  “I’ll admit that’s what it looks like,” Seth says. “But I don’t think it’s what happened.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite. What do you think happened to the poor cat?”

  “I think it’s been dead for a while, probably since yesterday morning.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel better,” I tell him as Lucy shudders.

  “I also think it was hit by a car.”

  This gets my attention. “A car?”

  “Or a truck, motorcycle, maybe even a tractor. Maybe even all three of those things.”

  I sense he’s waiting for me to put all this information together and come up with the answer, but I’m not in the mood. “What are you saying?”

  “That I think this cat was roadkill.”

  Lucy looks up. “Really?”

  Seth nods. “I’m seeing bits of gravel and broken pieces of asphalt in the box. Plus the body has tire tracks on it, which would explain why it’s all flattened and mangled. What I can’t understand is how come it also appears to have three bullets in it. One is right through one of the tire tracks, but it doesn’t appear to be flattened at all, which makes me wonder why someone would be shooting a dead cat...”

  “I want to know why and how it ended up in Lucy’s car.” I drag a hand through my hair. “I’m assuming that whoever did this is the same one who keyed my car?”

  “That’s my guess.” Seth carefully folds the top of the box, sealing the cat inside of it. “And I don’t like how fast they’re escalating. It’s a huge jump from writing a few crude words to scooping roadkill off the road and hand delivering it. Ms. Higgins, do you know when this box could have shown up?”

  Lucy shakes her head. “Not really. My friend, Bea, drove it here yesterday afternoon, just before we left for Detroit. It’s been in the garage ever since.”

  “We’ve had a bodyguard watching the house while we’re in it,” I tell Seth. “He would have seen someone creeping around the house.”

  “So, looks like the most likely time for someone to do this was while everyone was in Michigan, which actually gives us a pretty good chunk of time.” Seth pulls out his pen and notepad and scribbles something on the paper. “Who knew you were going on this trip?”

  “Not very many,” I say. “It was a spur of the moment thing. My agent and her sister set everything up and accompanied us. The only other people that should have known about it are a few members of the hospital staff, including Dr. Christian Murphy, and Nathan’s parents.”

  “Okay. That’s enough to at least give this investigation a solid starting point. I’ll make talking to these people my first priority of the day.” Seth writes down the names and tucks the notebook back in his pocket. “If the two of you don’t mind telling me how you’re spending the rest of the day, I’ll arrange things so that there’s a patrol officer nearby.”

  I rub Lucy’s back. “We’re spending the day at the hospital.”

  Seth’s eyes sharpen. “There’s nothing wrong, is there?”

  “No,” I assure him. “I’m shooting a commercial for them today and I don’t think Lucy should be alone, so she’s coming too.”

  Lucy’s eyes bore into me, telegraphing her displeasure in having me plan her day.

  “Okay.” Seth gingerly picks up the box containing the cat remains and holds it away from his body. “I’ll take this to the lab to be analyzed, and start talking to people.”

  Lucy waits until he gets into his car
before turning to me. “What do you mean, ‘she’s coming too’?”

  “You said you didn’t have to work, that your office was closed down for the week to give everyone a chance to recover from Suzie’s wedding.” I stand up and extend a hand to Lucy to help her up. She ignores it. “And based on what just happened, do you really think that you should be alone here?”

  “Probably not,” Lucy says as she stands up, “but that doesn’t mean you get to make decisions for me. Ever. If this thing between us is going to work, you need to include me in the discussion, not make plans for me.”

  Her tone startles me. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard it sound sharp, almost like she’s irritated with me. From her, this is practically like being screamed at.

  A warm glow envelopes my chest. Most men don’t enjoy a sharp reprimand, but I’m pleased, for a couple of different reasons. One, losing her fear of conflict means no one like Suzie will ever be able to walk all over her again. And two, maybe it means she’s starting to put the accident, Lance, and her guilt over what happened behind her, because she’s starting to fall for me.

  It’s a start.

  Lucy

  “As an organ donor, you have the power to save as many as eight lives.” Ryan starts to walk across the hospital lobby toward a tall potted plant where Nathan, looking tired and seated in a wheelchair, is watching him.

  I can’t get over how relaxed Ryan looks. If I was the person standing in front of the camera, I’d be a nervous wreck and probably forget everything I was supposed to say. But not Ryan. He has a knack for acting like the camera isn’t there while not forgetting to make sure it always catches his best side.

  “And don’t assume that just because you have a medical condition, that your organs will be rejected. In most cases, a portion will be both used and appreciated.”

  Ryan looks just as fresh and cheerful as he did when he first walked into my kitchen this morning, impressive since this is about the eighth time he’s gone through this particular part. Most of the reshoots have been because of some minor problem, but no matter the reason, Ryan remains cheerful and listens to what everyone who’s behind the camera has to say.