by B. Cranford
He shook his head, but leaning in to look closer changed his mind. They did and didn’t look like babies and it was odd. Cute but odd. He tried to imagine the emotion that must come with seeing the face of your child for the first time, but couldn’t quite tap into it. In some ways, he was excited that he was going to see Ashton’s baby, because he cared about her and he knew she was nervous and excited both.
But in other ways, he was less excited. It wasn’t his. It would never be his. It was strange to know that and to be put off by it, especially since he actually wasn’t put off at all.
He was confused. Clearly. In fact, the only thing he wasn’t confused about was his confusion.
“Now that I’m here,” Ashton began, her voice hushed, like they were in a library or a museum, “I really want to know.” Her eyes met his and in them he saw her hope and her fear.
Hope that she’d see her baby and find out if it was a boy or a girl.
Fear that she wouldn’t be able to do it all alone.
He wasn’t sure how he knew what it was, but he did. And he wanted to put her at ease. “You’re going to be a great mom, Kitten. That baby is really fucking lucky.”
Her laughter was a welcome sound. “I don’t think you’re supposed to say the ‘F’ word in situations like this but hey, I’ll take it.”
The opening of the door stopped Duncan from saying anything else, but the levity the moment had brought was present as Ashton climbed onto the ultrasound table, lifted her shirt and lowered her pants—just enough to give the technician access, but he still looked away—and made an adorable little yelping sound as the gel was squeezed onto her bump.
“Coooooooold,” she added, a smile telling him that she was just having fun. The tech, who’d introduced herself as Karli, gave Ashton a knowing look—one that said she’d heard that before—before placing the wand in the gel and starting to move it around.
“We’re going to start by taking some measurements,” she explained, even as the whomp, whomp sound started to fill the room. “That’s your baby’s heartbeat.”
Wow. If he was surprised at his reaction to the fast, fluttery sound, then he was doubly so when Ashton reached out a hand to him, grasping it as if . . .
As if it were their baby, not just hers.
“Nice and strong. Everything is looking good, but I’ll put all the details in my report for Doctor Renner.” She moved the wand around some more, periodically clicking and pausing and doing Duncan didn’t know what. “Are you wanting to find out what you’re having?”
The question was directed at Ashton, but before she answered, she glanced over at him, like she was looking to him for the answer. He gave her a slight nod—not because it was his decision to make, but because he knew she needed the support in the overwhelming moment—and squeezed gently on their clasped hands.
“I–If I can, yes, please.”
Karli pointed at the screen. “See here? That’s your little girl.”
A breath whooshed out of him at the same time Ashton breathed out “a girl”, wonder in her voice.
“Congratulations. Dad, you’re going to have your hands full.” The words were directed at him by Karli, as she lifted the wand and started wiping away the gel that was now smeared all over Ashton’s stomach.
He didn’t respond. He couldn’t. He just nodded, knowing that though the little girl in his Kitten’s belly wasn’t his, he’d do anything to keep her safe.
Keep them both safe.
No matter what.
A girl.
A little bitty baby girl that she could dress in frilly pink layers and white booties and big flower headbands, because dammit, why not?
“So, Ashton Junior is still on the table, right?” Duncan’s voice held amusement as he climbed into the driver’s side of his car.
Ashton looked down at the printout of her baby girl in her shaking hand, trying to picture what name would pair well with orange-y colored baby-ish blob. “I thought Llama would be a good name,” she heard herself saying, the memory of their long-ago name game coming back to her suddenly.
“Then you’d have to have another, called Alpaca,” Duncan replied, their eyes meeting before he started the engine and backed out of the parking space.
“Good point, don’t want to get ahead of myself.” She ran a finger over the barely formed nose of her daughter—her daughter—and tried to picture herself with more than one baby. The image that came to mind wasn’t of her with a little girl and another child.
No, it was of her and her daughter, and Duncan—holding a little boy with dark hair and dark eyes.
I am so screwed, she thought, knowing that already she was in too deep and he’d been back in town for about two hours and they hadn’t discussed anything about . . . well, anything.
“Are you going back to work?”
The question was a nice reprieve from her thoughts, so she grasped at it, explaining, “Yes, but not to actually work. I promised my brother I’d tell him, and oh, shit. I’d better call Aaron.”
“That’s easy enough.” He pressed on a button in the steering wheel—Bluetooth, she knew, since her car had a similar feature—and instructed the vehicle to call Aaron. “Hey, man. I have your sister here.”
Ashton blinked, realizing how this must look. Duncan calling him from his car, his phone, Ashton giving him the news that he’d have a niece in a few months time. Like they were a couple. Together. Still, she forged on.
She didn’t care how it looked.
She was a little bit worried about how damn good it felt, though.
“Big Brother.”
“Little Sister.” Aaron’s voice was loud and clear over the speakers in the car. “So?”
He’d known, of course, what today was. Both he and Austin had marked the date down—something she’d found so sweet she’d, shock-horror, cried.
She wanted to make a big announcement, or say something funny, but instead, she kept it simple, not trusting herself to not make it weird. “Girl.”
“Girl?” Aaron echoed, making it sound like a question—like he wanted to be sure he hadn’t misheard.
“Girl.”
“I knew it! I said it would be a girl, and I was right. I am always right and you owe me a blow job.”
“I’m sorry, what?” Ashton knew he wasn’t talking to her but still, the comment was enough to make her do a double-take. “Duncan?”
“Not it.” He looked over at her as he said it, a comical look on of horror on his face.
“Simon, you idiots. He said it’d be a boy, I said girl, I win, all the blow jobs for me.” The glee in Aaron’s tone was clear, but Ashton wasn’t convinced it was only about winning the wager he had with his husband. He was excited to be an uncle to a little girl—she knew it.
With Aaron distracted by Simon, the sounds of good-natured fighting in the background, Ashton reached carefully over and hit the end-call button. “What?” she asked, when Duncan gave her a why’d you do that? look, responding to the unasked question with, “Come on, like you wanted to hear more about their oral sex bet.”
“Good point. So, The Avenue?”
“Yeah, I’ll tell Austin and then I’m done for the day.” She tilted her head, a thought occurring to her for the first time since he’d scared her witless before the appointment. “Are you back for good? You’re early, right? Where are you staying?”
“I am. Yes, because I found someone to rent my place earlier than I expected. And I don’t know yet. Either with Aaron or in a hotel until I find something of my own.”
She processed that—acknowledging that the idea of him staying with her brother or at a hotel was, if not unpleasant, then not her preference.
But she couldn’t ask him to stay with her, could she?
Could I?
Instead of extending an offer, knowing it was something she needed to think more about, she latched on to something else. “You found someone to rent your place?”
“Yeah. I thought about selling it, but it makes more
sense to keep it. For now. And they were happy to keep all the furniture, which also meant one less thing to worry about.”
She’d known he was looking at selling or storing his stuff—though he’d mentioned there wasn’t a lot of it—so she was relieved for him that he didn’t have to deal with it. But still. “Wasn’t it hard to leave your stuff behind? What about when you find something here?”
He shrugged, frowning a little as he seemed to gather his answer. “No. Honestly, Ash, it never felt like my stuff. My place was”—he paused, drawing in a long breath, and she tried to picture herself leaving her home behind with nothing more than her clothes and a few boxes. “It was not really mine, I guess. I mean, I owned it and I paid the mortgage and shit, but . . . I was too busy with Ken to worry about decorating it, so I bought it with the furniture already in it. It was basically me doing the same thing for the next person.”
“Like some kind of pay-it-forward deal?”
“Yeah, why not? The only thing special about that place was Kennedy and her stuff and after”—he cleared his throat, then swallowed, his voice shaking minutely as he continued—“after she died, I donated or threw out most of it. Some of it, I kept and brought with me. But most of it is long gone, so there really wasn’t anything tying me there.”
Ashton nodded, trying to find the right words to say and coming up blank. “Sorry” only took you so far, and could only be said so often before even it lost its meaning. And she didn’t want that. She didn’t want to offer empty condolences or pretend she had any understanding of what it was like to lose your sibling.
Yes, she and Aaron and Austin had lost their parents, but it was a different kind of loss. No, she thought, it wasn’t loss. It was abandonment, pure and simple.
Their parents had cut them off and turned their backs, and that was their problem.
But if she’d had to say goodbye to one of her brothers . . .
Wordlessly, she reached over the middle console and gently placed her hand on Duncan’s thigh. It was her way of giving comfort as best she could while he was still driving. “I still owe you a hug, you know.”
“I know.” He placed a hand over hers, the weight and warmth of his palm giving her back the comfort she sought to offer him. “Don’t think I forgot. I have plans to claim it, you know.”
“You make it sound like you’re some kind of hug ninja.”
“Oh, Kitten, you have no idea.”
She laughed at that, the mood in the car changing once again—the happiness of earlier returning and the brief interlude of sadness, of grief, evaporating in the face of Duncan’s wiggling eyebrows and playful innuendo.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
They were sitting at her small kitchen table—again—and with her head thrown back in laughter—blonde curls trailing down her back, black shirt pulled tight across her tits—she was even more beautiful than she had been just a few weeks ago, when they’d sat in this same spot. Talking about her baby.
Her little girl.
He was still kind of dazed by the experience of seeing the ultrasound, hearing the rapid whomping sound that was the baby’s heart. But mostly, he was dazed by her.
They’d come to The Avenue, sharing Ashton’s news with Austin and Odette, before heading upstairs to her apartment, where they sat and joked about baby names and her endless pregnancy tears. She made him laugh, she made him feel better than he had in forever, just by being her.
There was still so much to learn about her, but he was suddenly greedy and needy for it. He wanted to get down to the business of knowing her, so he could have her. Make her his. In all the ways.
Especially the sexy ways.
It was about time they learned all there was to know about each other—and then decide if this was what they wanted, once and for all.
“Ashton.” He said her name low, but she heard him nonetheless. The way her head tilted back up, the echoes of laughter still in the sheen on her eyes, the upward lilt of her lips. “Can we . . . talk?”
Her smile grew wider. “Uh-oh. Are you breaking up with me?”
It was a joke, he knew, but the way the words hit him. Breaking up. They weren’t even officially together, and he already knew that breaking up wasn’t an option. Not now. Not ever. But still, he didn’t want to scare her off with the burning intensity of these feelings.
It seemed on one hand like they’d come out of nowhere.
But on the other? It was as if he almost didn’t remember what it was like to not feel like this.
It might not be love, but it was somewhere close and getting closer.
Soon it would crash into him completely and then . . . well, then, he’d be fucked if she didn’t feel the same way.
“Never.” The word slipped unconsciously from his mouth as his mind tried to make sense of how everything seemed to go from zero to forever in so short a time.
Except it’s not that short. It’s been fifteen years.
“Okay then,” she said, locking her eyes on his, concern in their depths that was belied by the wide smile still lighting her face. “Whatcha wanna talk about, Dunk?”
“Us. You. This, whatever it is.”
“Oh.” She didn’t break the eye contact, meaning he saw the messy mix of emotions as they warred within her. Hope. Need. Desire. Uncertainty. “Are we an us? I wasn’t—I mean, I didn’t know. I don’t know.”
“I’d like to be.” It wasn’t the time for games or jokes, he’d decided. So he was going to lay it out for her. Hopefully without Ashton-style rambling, even though he suddenly sympathized with what it must feel like to want to say everything and nothing all at once. “I remember the day you climbed into my shitty little car. You had that shirt on, and this belligerent look on your face. Like you’d fight everyone for your right to follow Aaron to school.” He smiled at the memory of them bickering over her staying or going, and how, even then, he’d known that once Ashton’s mind was made up, it was a done deal.
He hadn’t really even known her name, but he’d known that.
“I hadn’t ever wanted anyone as badly as I wanted you then. Time hasn’t changed that; I knew it from the moment I saw you behind that bar.” He paused, giving the words time to set in. He watched the way her eyelids slowly closed, like she was savoring them and trying to understand them all at once, and then reopened to meet with his again, telling him to keep going.
So, he did.
“I know things are complicated. I’ve just moved my life here—not for you, but I’m not going to lie and say that you weren’t a compelling reason to come back here—and you’re . . . you’re going to be a mom soon. But I like you. A lot. At the risk of sounding like a teenager, I like you, like you, and I want to be around you and with you.”
“You like me? You want to be with me?” Ashton’s words weren’t said with any kind of heat, more like she was simply trying them on for size. And that was fine by him. He didn’t want to rush or scare her. He wanted her to know.
He was in.
“Kennedy being sick and then dying really drove home the point that life is too short for bullshit. It’s too short to not go after what you want. For years, I haven’t been doing that—not really. I did what I needed to for her and for me, because she was my sister and I wanted her to be healthy and happy and alive. But I didn’t want to work in that building, in that city. In a career with long hours and that, yeah, earned me great money, but earned even greater money for someone else and left me feeling”—he shrugged, to buy himself time to find the right words—“empty? I don’t know. And now, I don’t want to wait for the right moment because, let’s be honest here—you’re knocked up by candidate number eleven so the right moment might not come until Ashton Junior is eighteen and ready for college.”
He’d tacked on that last part in the hopes of bringing a little light to the conversation and, with the way her chest dipped with an internal laugh, he knew it had worked. “You know I’m right.”
She didn’t reply
, but she did stand and move toward him, and that was all it took, really. He reached for her hand as she rounded the table and pulled her close, closer, until she fell into his lap and into his arms. Right where he wanted her.
“So?” she asked, moving her hands that shook ever so slightly as they cupped his face.
“So, Ashton Marie, will you be my”—he paused, letting a smile steal his features and throwing in a raised eyebrow for good measure—“girlfriend?”
At the fast-but-small nod she gave him, he leaned in and pressed a brief kiss to her lips, before adding, “I haven’t asked anyone that for twenty years. I feel old.”
“If it means more of this grey,” she said, running her fingers over the hair at his temples, “then I think old is working for you, Dunk.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Ashton wiggled a little, enjoying the sensation of being in her boyfriend’s lap.
She was nearly thirty-five years old, just shy of five months pregnant and she had a boyfriend. It was an odd and oddly welcome sensation, though the doubts crept in almost immediately.
Second-guessing herself and him. Their decision. Her choices.
Everything, really.
She’d wanted this baby for so long; had decided she would go it alone. And now, here she was, entering into a relationship with a man she still hardly knew. She couldn’t help but wonder about the what ifs.
What if he only wanted to be with her because he thought she needed help?
What if she’d only said yes to him because, somewhere deep inside, she didn’t think she had what it took to be a single mom?
What if what they’d had for those few days all those years ago was enough for one night or a week or even a few months, but wasn’t enough to go the distance?
“Now what?” His question helped her staunch the flow of doubt, but the fact was, she had no answer. Now what, indeed.
“I–I don’t know?” Words began to build in her, her desire to spill every thought she had coming on as quickly as always. “Oh, my God, Duncan, I don’t know. I don’t know what I am supposed to call you or what we do about my daughter. Are you Andrew or Duncan or Dunk or something else? And, and, and, I’m going to have a daughter and what do we do about that, I can’t change it and I don’t want to but it’s not yours. I mean, I don’t care about that but we’re two minutes into a relationship and it’s not like we can just be like, okay, we’ll do this together. We don’t need to do this together; that’s not why you want this, is it? Because you think I can’t do it? Because, lemme tell you, Buster, I can do it. I know I can. I mean, I think I can, I’m pretty sure. No, no, I know I can and I don’t want you taking pity on me, and oh, my stomach hurts and this is just, this is just, this is—I don’t even.”
