by Stacey Lynn
“This is embarrassing.”
Pam is back to business, already spreading the condom over the phallic-shaped instrument, and then she drizzles on the lubricant.
Braxton’s breath brushes over my cheeks. His dark locks tickle my temple as he whispers, “I feel like I should be offering to help with this.”
“Shut up,” I grit, my stomach muscles clenching from trying not to die or laugh. “This isn’t funny.”
“Oh. This is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen, I’m not going to lie.”
My fingers squeeze his hand and Pam is in front of me. She holds a small black box in her other hand and the tip of the wand against my center. “I’ll go slow, and it might be cold, okay?”
“Yup.”
“Sweet Jesus,” Braxton whispers. “I don’t know whether to be terrified or turned on right now, Cara.”
“Shut up,” I all but growl at him but then the monitor is inside me.
Based on Pam’s pressed-together, smiling lips, she’s pretending to pay us absolutely no attention as her gaze is fixed on the device in her hand and she clicks a button and…
Tha-thump thump thump tha-thump thump thump.
My vision goes blurry immediately as soon as I hear the comforting, whispered trampling. It sounds like horses racing inside my abdomen and Braxton’s hand grips mine so tightly my fingers might break.
“There’s that healthy baby.” Pam smiles at me, softly and kindly and genuinely. This is why I absolutely adore her.
I desperately needed this reassurance.
“Is that it?” Braxton asks.
I nod, my head moving rapidly, and I turn to him, compelled to see him, and when I do, my own heart rate kicks into high gear. “It’s the baby.”
“My God.” His eyes are wide and he swipes his hair off his forehead, staring at the monitor and my covered stomach area and back to me and I’m a trembling shaking mess as I see tears fill his own eyes and there’s nothing we can say. Nothing we can say to each other because this sound…this glorious whooshing, galloping sound is the most beautiful thing I’ve heard in my entire life.
“We made a baby.” A tear falls down Braxton’s cheek and he leans down, brushing his lips over my cheek, and his voice is so gruff, so broken and beautiful. “Thank you. Thank you so much, Cara.”
Chapter 9
Braxton
“The baby is strong,” the midwife, Pam, says, but I’m hardly listening to her.
I can’t stop holding Cara’s hand, grinning at her. I’ve had the weekend to get used to the idea of becoming a father, and it hasn’t been easy. In addition to Cara’s attitude last weekend when I was only trying to be nice, I’m on my own emotional roller coaster.
My dad took off.
My mom overdosed on drugs when I was in college, a habit she’d kicked and been free of since I was born, but apparently, from what I last heard from her, the loneliness and empty bank accounts we always had became too much for her.
And Irvin. He’s the only adult I’ve ever had in my life who was certain I could make something of myself and get out of the crappy neighborhood. His death provided me the financial means to make all the dreams I had come true, dreams he championed.
So I’m not exactly sure how in the hell I’m supposed to be a dad when my own DNA is sorely lacking in parental involvement, but I finally figured, if I can be a third of the man Irvin was, someone who would see a punk-ass preteen and take him in, and provide all the love and support he could ever need, then I’m sure as hell certain I can do it for my own child—boy or girl. I just have to get Cara to see that.
But this…this moment, with both of our eyes filled with tears and our cheeks stained, this moment is everything.
I don’t see the woman I shagged at a wedding.
I don’t see the woman who puked all over my office or passed out in my arms.
I just see her, the mother of my child, and she’s never been more stunningly beautiful. Her face is soft despite the tears, showing a vulnerability she hasn’t yet shown me.
For the rest of the appointment, I listen quietly while Pam finishes her checkup. I leave the room when it’s time for Cara to get changed and I meet her in the front waiting room where we schedule her next appointment.
For a brief moment, I see the hesitancy return to Cara’s eyes when she schedules it, checking with me to see if it works with my schedule, but what she doesn’t know is that there’s absolutely nothing inconvenient about any of this.
Sure, it’s happened well before I was ready, and absolutely unprepared, but life wouldn’t be life if it didn’t throw you a curveball every once in a while.
It keeps you on your toes, keeps life exciting, and I am absolutely, one thousand percent excited for this next roller coaster of an adventure.
“So,” Cara says, tucking the appointment reminder card into her small purse. “You said you wanted to talk?”
“Yeah. Can I take you to lunch?”
“Actually”—she smiles, that beautiful soft smile, and the palm of her hand flattens against her stomach—“food sounds really, really good. Maybe a place with burgers? Or ribs? Or a really huge steak?”
Her eyes glaze over like she’s imagining the largest New York strip in the world, and I bite back a laugh.
I know just the place to take her.
* * *
—
Phil’s is a classic diner. A throwback to the fifties where they make real milkshakes and have not only the best burgers I’ve tasted along the entire Northwest coast—an endeavor I’ve put a lot of time over the years in discovering—but over the years they’ve widened the scope of their menu, and now grill a mean steak. What I like even more than the food is the atmosphere. Phil’s was constructed to look like an old train car. Narrow and long, there’s one small row of booths covered in bright red vinyl along the windows and then a bar running the length of the car where the stools are covered with the same vinyl. Behind that is the kitchen, where you can always hear the cooks shouting orders at one another. The place isn’t what I had in mind when I told Cara I wanted to talk to her. It’s loud and rambunctious, the two servers skating by us on roller skates across the black-and-white-tiled floor. Add in the shouting from the kitchen and the fervent “Order up!” and it’s not the best place for a private, serious conversation.
But more important than talking, I want Cara to know me, and nothing says me like taking her to the place Irvin always brought me on Sunday afternoons for lunch. We’re even sitting at the table where we spent most of the meals. On the metal edge of the table facing Cara’s side, my initials are carved, something I did when I was twelve and Irvin wasn’t looking. Had he ever noticed it, he’d have made me pay to repair it.
This place and this booth hold sentimental value to me and it seems the perfect place to bring Cara when she mentioned a burger earlier. Sitting in a booth that’s heavy with memories of my favorite person in the world only makes sense considering I’m still overly emotional after hearing my child’s heartbeat for the first time.
Cara still hasn’t lost the glow that blossomed on her cheeks when we heard the heartbeat. The confirmation that everything is well with the baby is, I think, exactly what we both needed. She also seems to have her appetite back, since she’s suggested getting almost everything on this menu. Hopefully, her meds are working and she won’t be tossing it all over the floorboards of my car in an hour.
And for the first time since she walked into my tattoo shop last Friday, I can finally breathe without feeling like I’m being strangled every time I inhale.
“Hey, sugars,” the waitress says, snapping her gum and rolling to a quick stop on her skates. “Y’all decided what you want to order?”
Cara flashes me a grin that can only be described as amused, although whethe
r it’s from the diner or her impending order, I have no idea. I nod at her to go first.
“I’ll have the double bacon cheeseburger with a salad, extra French dressing, please. And I’ll also have an order of onion strings for an appetizer. Oh, may I also have a cup of your chicken noodle soup? Please?”
The waitress, Marissa based on her name tag, glances at Cara as she scribbles. “Before or with the meal?”
“With, please. Oh, and a double chocolate fudge shake too. Large.”
I can’t help it. I smother my mouth with a choking sound but it escapes as my laugh rumbles through me. This girl just ordered more food than I did when I played high school basketball. She has absolutely no idea how large these burgers are, or the fact that all the food is served on fourteen-inch silver platters that could hold a pizza.
Her cheeks pinken and I shake my head. “Sorry. That’s just a lot.”
“Well,” she huffs in the most adorable way. “I’m eating for two.”
“Or six.” I wink at her, showing her I’m teasing, and when the waitress turns to me, I order a regular cheeseburger. It’s less than I usually order, but I’m betting Cara will leave approximately eighty percent of her own food untouched.
“So,” she says, once Marissa skates away. “You wanted to talk?”
Where there was a mischievous excitement in her eyes when she approached me at the wedding, asking me to keep the night going with the same tone of voice, now there’s still a haze of uncertainty in her blue eyes. It’s a look I want to shake from her, because she seems so scared of me, so hesitant to ask me for anything. It’s ridiculous. What she doesn’t know yet is that I have a feeling I’ll give her everything she desires without question or thought.
Or, I can remind her of the kiss we shared. I might have done it to quiet her down but between the kiss and the feel of her beneath my hands again, and then the cock-shaped instrument that went inside of her, I’ve been sporting a semi for the last hour just thinking about filling her again, but this time with something more substantial—me.
I’m not going to sit here and lie to the girl, or beat around the bush. I could wax poetic about how I think we should get to know each other, become friends, and then hope I can slide my way into her heart, but I’m rarely anything but blunt, and I don’t see the point in changing now.
I wait while she takes a sip of her water, the glass trembling slightly in her hand showing her nerves. The last thing I want is that sip of ice water to end up sprayed out of her mouth and ending up all over the table.
She sets the glass down, and I wait no more.
“I think we should date and move in together.”
Chapter 10
Cara
My hands grab on to the metal and chipped-Formica table in front of me like an earthquake has suddenly hit the diner. It might have. That’s the only way to describe the crazy force shaking me.
“I’m sorry, you what?”
“I want to date you. And I want you to move in with me.”
He holds no shame or embarrassment in his gaze, none of the bossy arrogance he used in my apartment when he saw the poor little dump I live in. Instead, there’s something else there, a heat that’s been swirling around us since the first time we met.
It’s the chemistry, the fact I can still practically feel his lips on mine from earlier, and the ease with which we can tease each other—him better at it than me—that is what made it so easy to approach him the night of Jenna’s wedding reception and suggest the night not end quite yet.
Because it’s Braxton, and he cried without a hint of embarrassment when he heard our baby’s heartbeat, and as soon as I mentioned lunch and what I was currently craving, he took me immediately to a place I could tell is somewhere he loves, and not somewhere convenient. I know that because it took us thirty minutes to get here and we passed dozens of burger joints and steakhouses on the way.
And yeah, I’d love to date him, to be with him in that way we were months ago, but I’ve jumbled everything up in the last few days and he didn’t even manage to reply to my text of an apology. So there’s a lot of unanswered questions and now that there’s a baby on the way, jumping into a relationship because there’s a baby on the way doesn’t seem like the most responsible choice either.
“Why? Is it because you don’t like my home?”
“No. Can I be completely honest?”
I’m not quite sure I’m ready for his brand of honesty. Although secrets haven’t helped anything so far.
“Sure,” I say, my voice wobbling with fear. “Honesty sounds good.”
He leans forward, the sleeves of his long shirt are pushed up to his forearms and have I mentioned how perfectly his shirts always seem to fit over the curves and dips of his chest and biceps? He’s so beautiful that as he sets those forearms, all his brightly colored inked designs on such beautiful and manly display, I almost forget he’s about to throw me into another tailspin.
He drops his head, pummeling me with sharp determination in his eyes and a wicked tilt of his lips. “I want you. I wanted you the weekend of the wedding and I wanted you the next day and I was pissed you snuck out so I didn’t bother Dan for your number. While we might have cleared up that misunderstanding, it still pissed me off.”
I’m so stuck on the I want you and I wanted you it takes me a moment to process everything else he said. “Okay.”
The tilt of his lips curve up into an almost full grin. “I can see I’m shaking you up a little bit right now, but going slow has never been my thing. I see something I want and I don’t hesitate to go for it. I want to date you because I enjoyed our weekend together. I felt something, what, I’m not exactly sure, but I know it was so good I wanted to see you again. So that’s what I want to do. I want to see you outside doctor’s appointments, for dinner, a few movies, whatever else we can think of to do together.”
I want that. Goodness, I really want that too. I want it so badly I force my hands into my lap so I don’t reach across the table and cover his gorgeous, strong hands with mine and beg Please, yes, let’s do all of it and more.
He also isn’t kidding. He doesn’t go slow.
I feel the urge to move at turtle speed, there’s more to us dating than having a good time. What if we try it and it doesn’t work out? Then we still have to raise a baby together with a failed relationship between us.
“What if we start as friends?” I suggest, trying to appease his need to speed through life with the force of a whirlwind and compromising.
“I’m not getting friend-zoned by you. I’m not risking that.”
“Braxton,” I say and then stop. I don’t even know what to say, how to say it, how to toss my fears at him when he seems so certain about this—about us. I grab my water and take a few small sips, waiting until it settles down my throat. The chill from the ice does nothing to cool the warmth pulsing through my body at his words and determination.
I’m saved by having to say anything else when Marissa appears with my onion strings and soup. She slides everything onto the table, dropping off small plates and rolled utensils all the while, still snapping her gum. “Anything else I can getcha?”
“No,” Braxton says, never once pulling his eyes off me. “I have everything I need.”
I huff a laugh, shaking my head, and reach for a thin onion string and pop it into my mouth. “This is absurd,” I say after I’ve swallowed and I’m pouring ketchup into a massive pile on the plate.
“Your appetite? Yeah, it’s a bit absurd.”
“Shut up,” I mutter, smiling while I say it. It’s not what I was talking about and we both know it, but I like the way he feels so free to tease me.
I dip into my overwhelmingly large appetizer and eat a few bites of soup. I’m already beginning to feel full and the entire time, Braxton is watc
hing me with a mixture of amusement and seriousness. When I slide the onion string basket into the center of the table, he takes a few and we both munch quietly.
I want to date him. I wanted to see him again too after the wedding, I was just so embarrassed.
I want everything he’s offering besides the moving-in-together thing. It’s much too fast. If we date, I want to move forward at a natural pace, not feeling like I’m one of his fostered animals he takes in because they need help and a home.
And perhaps it’d be safer for me to say no, for us to remain friends. Two friendly parents who aren’t together have to be better than parents who can’t stand to be in the same room together. My priority is no longer me and my needs, our baby’s needs come first.
It’s that thought that has me changing my mind on everything. For the first time since I decided to move forward with this pregnancy and confess the truth to Braxton, I finally feel what Jenna’s been trying to tell me.
I’m going to be a great mom. I can do this. And because I have this new, settled confidence and hope, I figure…what the hell, I’ve promised Jimmy something too.
Live for us, Cara. Live the life I won’t be able to have. Follow your dreams. Grab hold of them, please, promise me this.
I wash down the emotion thinking of Jimmy always brings and face Braxton.
His eyes meet mine and whatever he sees in my expression wipes away his grin.
“Cara—”
I cut him off.
“Is all of this because of the baby?”
“No.” His eyes slide to the left and he runs his hand across a hint of stubble that tells me he’s the kind of man who shaves frequently, but even twice a day wouldn’t keep his thick, black scruff away completely. “Okay,” he says, shaking his head and turning back to me. “Maybe a little. At least the moving-in part, but that’s because I want to take care of you. I don’t want to miss a thing about this baby or your pregnancy, and I don’t think I’m a jerk for not wanting to miss out on anything. Besides,” he says, and he gives me that teasing grin, “how can I run out and get you midnight cravings if I’m not around you at midnight?”
