by Helm, Nicole
He liked this. This right here.
“Dude, seriously.”
Charlie slanted his brother a look. “I’m reevaluating my life.”
“Reevaluate faster. You stay unemployed much longer, Dad is going to have a stroke and Mom’s probably going to sign you up for one of those online dating things.”
“I’ve had offers,” Charlie muttered.
“So take one.”
He let out a sigh. His relationship with Dell hadn’t always been an easy one, and it’d certainly never been one where they shared much of anything too deep. It would be easy to clam up, to say something snide and walk away.
But Charlie didn’t have the energy for that either. “So far the only jobs I’ve been offered are lower positions, less money, and...require relocation.”
“I’m guessing that means...far?”
“Yes.”
Dell was quiet for a minute. “And you don’t want to move?” he asked as though he’d chosen each word very carefully.
“I’m certainly not going through the hassle of changing my life for a job that isn’t up to my standards.” He sounded like a douche. He knew he sounded like a douche, but he didn’t know what this thing inside him was, just that it’d been there for a long time.
It was like he’d built armor over his real self, a shell the outside world, and even his family, could see, but it was impenetrable. He could only give people what they expected, because underneath this shell...he really wasn’t sure who he was.
Maybe he did need therapy.
Suddenly he thought about leaving. Ditching the party. He could go to the Shack. See if Meg would be there, still drowning her own sorrows. Why was that a fantasy? It wasn’t like he remembered much of what they’d done together. It wasn’t like he knew her.
He’d certainly made a very careful effort to avoid the market the past month. So, why did he still think of her at all?
“We’d miss you, if that’s what you decided to do.”
Charlie looked at his brother. They hadn’t always gotten along. In fact, there’d been some times they’d probably both felt they hated each other, but something about Dell having a kid had smoothed a lot of that over.
Still, the sentiment surprised Charlie, and maybe that was on him. So he’d offer some honesty even if it made him uncomfortable. “I don’t want to move. I’m not in dire straits quite yet.”
Dell gave a nod, looking over where the Wainwrights and Pruitts mingled in the yard. “Good. I mean, I’d offer help, but—”
“I’d tell you to shove it.”
Dell’s mouth curved. “Exactly. So...” He gestured to where Lainey was trying to ride one of Wes’s dogs. “I better get in there.”
“You’re lucky, man.” It felt odd to admit it aloud, to let some of that envy show. He’d spent so much of his life convinced he was better off than Dell, never made any bones about Dell’s choices being beneath him.
But Charlie had been wrong, and it felt imperative to say it. Out loud. To Dell.
Dell stared at him, a kind of deer-caught-in-headlights, who-abducted-my-brother look. But then he glanced back out at the yard, daughter and wife with another kid on the way. Then Dell simply shrugged. “Yeah, I am.”
“How’d you do it?” Charlie said, knowing it sounded like a crazed demand but not being able to help it. He wanted to know. What steps did he need to take? How could he build his own version of what Dell had?
Eyes still on the yard, Dell seemed to consider the question. “I figured out who I was. Who I wasn’t.” His smile went soft as Mia approached. “And I let the unexpected happen.”
Mia took the stairs of the porch before Charlie could answer. She fisted her hands on her hips and glared at them. “Are you two going to come help, or stand here and gossip all afternoon?”
Dell’s arm slid around his wife’s waist easily. “Just talking about how lucky I am.”
She rolled her eyes. “Sure.”
“He’s not lying. We were,” Charlie returned. Seriously, probably way too seriously.
Mia cocked her head, looked at him, then Dell, then back again. “Well, that’s...nice. I’ll feel a whole lot luckier if I can get something into my stomach before I feel like puking.”
“All right, let’s get you some food, sugar.” And they walked off, but not before Charlie heard Mia murmur to Dell, “Is Charlie okay?”
No. He wasn’t. Because he didn’t know who he was, or how to find out. And he certainly didn’t know how to let the unexpected happen.
* * *
MEG WOKE UP in a cold sweat. She grasped around in her bed for...for...what? She stopped, realizing she had no idea what she was trying to reach. She had no idea why she was breathing so heavily or why her heart was pounding.
“A dream,” she said aloud. “Just a dream.” It felt steadying to hear her own voice in the pitch-black of her room.
Three nights in a row. Ever since the little niggle of worry had sprouted in the back of her head. Every night it had grown, every night the dreams had grown more vivid and more disturbing.
Stress had always brought on nightmares for her, long before she’d understood what stress was. But now she understood, and she couldn’t keep pretending that idea wasn’t looming in the back of her mind...waiting.
She couldn’t put it off any longer. She couldn’t keep hoping it would go away. It wasn’t going to go away, and her psyche was going to drive her absolutely bonkers until she sucked up all her fear and acted.
She forced herself out of bed and into the little bathroom. She’d shoved the offensive box under the sink after running errands in Millertown yesterday. She’d been so determined and hopeful it was unnecessary, and that the moment she purchased the test and brought it home she wouldn’t have to use it.
But if she was going to get any sleep before milking the goats, having breakfast with Elsie, followed by an afternoon meeting with a local store that might want to sell her soaps, she had to suck it up and do it.
She pulled the test out of the box with unsteady hands, read the instructions and then followed them to the letter.
She waited the three minutes feeling exactly as she had upon waking up. Shaking, heart beating too fast, breath coming too hard. It just couldn’t be.
Except when the timer went off...there it was.
Pregnant.
Her breath whooshed out of her. Pregnant. Pregnant. She had fallen not just off the wagon, but utterly, completely. The condom wrapper either a false promise, faulty or possibly drunken user error.
It didn’t matter. The results were the same. She was pregnant with a stranger’s child. All those years she’d punished her body for some foolish insecurity inside herself, but she’d kept herself out of this kind of trouble.
Clean and mostly sober, for years, and now, at thirty-two, she’d made this mistake too.
She swallowed at the nausea that swam up her esophagus. But it wasn’t a mistake, was it? It was a life. She’d created it in bad choices, but that was hardly the thing growing inside her’s fault.
Meg squeezed her eyes shut. Dear Lord, she was pregnant.
Needless to say, she didn’t sleep. She tried, lying there, staring up at the ceiling in the dark, but then her alarm went off and the goats needed milking, and dawn slowly rose on a new day.
A new day in which she had to start facing the consequences of her actions. That was scary, because all the options felt wrong and hard and overwhelming.
She got ready to go to breakfast with Elsie, determined to keep her problems to herself. Elsie’s chemo was showing promising results, but she was still weak and frail. The reality of the situation was Meg had come to rely on the company probably more than Elsie did.
Funny, Meg thought she was finally getting her life together, and now it
felt unraveled and pathetic.
But she was going to keep that to herself. She would be cheerful and encouraging with Elsie. She ordered their food at Moonrise, took the bags from the waitress and smiled the whole time. She was fine. She could handle this. Tonight, when she got home, she would figure out what she was going to do. Alone.
Because she was alone.
When Elsie opened the door, Meg burst into tears. Elsie didn’t hesitate, didn’t ask what was wrong; she bustled her onto the couch, took the bags of food and plopped a box of tissues next to her.
“Eat, please, eat, while I get myself together,” Meg croaked, trying to breathe, trying to cope.
Elsie pulled out her foam container of food, and then she handed Meg hers on the little TV trays that more often served as a dining table for Dan and Elsie than their actual kitchen table.
“Now, I’m not taking a bite if you don’t spill what’s troubling you.”
“That’s mean.”
“Darn straight it is. I’ll use a little meanness to get my way.”
Meg swallowed, tried to manage a wobbly smile. “Take a bite and I’ll talk.”
Elsie gave her a suspicious look, but she unwrapped the plastic cutlery from the bag and cut a bite of pancake before lifting it to her mouth.
Meg waited for her to chew a few times, and then she knew she had to be honest. When she was honest with Elsie, Elsie was honest with her, and Meg liked to believe it had helped at least a little in these weeks Meg had been visiting with her.
“I... It’s...”
“Spit it out, child.”
“I’m pregnant.”
Elsie’s eyes widened and she set her plastic fork down. “Well, didn’t know you was seeing someone.”
Miserable, Meg shook her head. Her own pancakes made her stomach turn, and she didn’t think it had anything to do with pregnancy. It had everything to do with Elsie being disappointed in her.
She wanted someone to be proud of her. Someone to look at her and see success instead of failure.
Maybe she should stop failing.
“Now, I don’t condone getting the sheets sweaty with someone who you ain’t married to, let alone not well acquainted with,” Elsie said primly. “’Course, I can’t exactly judge either, as I’m not a hypocrite.”
Meg wanted to laugh—leave it to Elsie—but it just came out like more of a sob. “What am I going to do?” she asked in a hushed whisper. Elsie pursed her lips and studied her sternly. “Don’t have any people, do you?”
Meg swallowed. It sounded so harsh when she put it that way, but it was true. Even her friends who’d gotten clean had a hard time being around each other; it dredged up memories of how they’d wasted their youth. And then, of course, her family pretended she didn’t exist, and it had been hard to make new friends with the hours she poured into her business.
Charlie Wainwright was the most non-business-related interaction she’d had—besides Dan and Elsie—in years.
And now she was carrying his child.
“Well, you’re my people now.”
Meg shook her head, afraid she’d cry harder. “You have so much on your plate already.”
“That may be true. But if my daughter was crying on some other old, sick woman’s couch, I’d hope she’d do the same. Now, first things first, you should tell the father. Unless he’s not a good sort.”
“I think he is. Not bad anyway.”
Elsie nodded. “Then you tell him.”
“Tell him what?”
“The truth. Easy as that. You give him a chance to have half a say—half, mind you, as you’re the one doing the carrying and the laboring.”
Oh. God. Labor. “But...what if I don’t know what I want?”
“Doesn’t matter, honey. You got a life growing inside you.”
That she did, and while there were options in that regard, options she’d supported a friend through when they were only teenagers, Meg didn’t think she had that option in her as a solvent adult. A solvent adult who’d always wanted to be a mother someday—in some abstract world when she had it all together. But...maybe she was never going to have it all together. Maybe she had to jump in, not quite ready. More than a little scared that she’d be terrible at it.
Which meant she had to admit something exceedingly scary for someone who’d failed at almost everything until her farm had come along. She’d have to admit she wanted to do it, and that she was scared of screwing it up. She’d have to admit a lot of things she usually faked her way through.
“You need to call yourself a doctor, honey, and then the Wainwright boy.”
Meg jerked her head to face Elsie, who merely shrugged. “Dan’s got no secrets from me.” She then reached over with a frail hand and patted Meg’s knee. “But we’ll keep yours, sweetheart. Don’t you worry about that.”
Don’t worry. Yeah, she didn’t think she’d be able to follow that advice anytime soon.
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHARLIE WASN’T HAPPY to be at the market. It wasn’t that he minded helping Dell. Especially after Lainey’s birthday party when things had felt... Well, he’d been a mess, but it had been nice that his family and Dell had voiced some kind of concern over him leaving.
It was a starting point to this new life he had to figure out. He wanted it to be here. Well, not here here. He could take or leave New Benton and Millertown, but St. Louis and the areas better suited to him were only a forty-five-minute drive from home and these people.
So it wasn’t the loading and unloading of vegetables, it wasn’t even the forced smiles, it was that when he stood in a particular spot, he could see Hope Springs Farm’s booth and his gaze seemed to drift that way no matter what.
Which was stupid. If he was still thinking about the woman, the least he could do was ask her out. Just because they’d had an awkward, drunken one-night stand didn’t mean it had to stay that way. Maybe, despite all outward appearances, they would be compatible while sober.
It was possible, and maybe if he at least tried, all the guilt dogging him over that incident would finally go away.
It had been weeks, though. Over a month. Maybe it wasn’t that out of the ordinary for her. Maybe the guys all blended together for her and she wouldn’t even remember him.
Of course, then her embarrassment and awkwardness that matched his own didn’t make sense, but he needed to move on. Figure out his life, not where he stood with his one and only ungentlemanly drunken exploit.
He needed to stop looking down the aisle, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Except the next time his eyes drifted that way, despite his brain’s express admonitions not to, there she was. Walking toward him.
He straightened. Maybe she would walk right on by. But before he could duck out of sight, she stopped in front of him, a completely unconvincing smile on her face. “Hi, Charlie.”
It was the first time she’d said his name, and he definitely had some kind of internal reaction to it.
“Hi. Meg.” It was a name he’d likely said before in his life. He knew Megans. Yet saying her name felt...weighted.
Yeah, therapy, that was a thing he really needed to look into.
“Well, well, well,” Dell said under his breath, and damn Meg’s timing because there were no customers to keep Dell’s attention off whatever reason Meg had for coming over here.
When Charlie made no effort to introduce anyone, Dell stuck his hand between Charlie and Meg. “I’m Dell,” he offered, the I-know-how-to-piss-off-Charlie grin firmly in place.
Meg smiled. It occurred to Charlie that she had a unique one. That it always seemed to light her up with a mix of mischief and joy, even when there was sadness behind it. Or nerves, as there seemed to be today.
“The Naked Farmer. Yes, I know. You’re...” Her brow furrowed as she loo
ked between him and his brother. “Related,” she said, sounding weirdly put off by that.
“He’ll try to tell you his brother isn’t the Naked Farmer, but he’d be lying,” Dell said. “Hope Springs is yours, right? My wife loves your soaps. Do you do any fun shapes for kids?”
“Um, well, we have a few animals. Owls, goats.”
Dell nudged Charlie. “Lainey’d love that. Why don’t you go pick some out for me.”
The not-so-subtle verbal nudge was no more effective than Dell’s physical one. And Meg’s clear nervousness was off-putting in its own right. Charlie wasn’t sure he wanted to find out the source.
And are you a timid coward or a grown man? “Sure.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, because for the first time in his life he didn’t have a clue what to do with them. He didn’t know what to say, or how to manage this situation.
What an incredibly odd feeling for a man who’d prided himself on always being in control, or if not in control, well on his way toward it.
“So, um, I suppose this is awkward,” Meg began, twisting her hands together as she walked next to him on their way to her booth.
“I suppose,” he returned, wondering if it would be awkward if she weren’t quite so...vibrating with anxiety. Or maybe drunken sex just always made things awkward afterward.
He sighed. At himself. At the situation. At life. “You know—”
“I’m pregnant,” she whispered so quietly he leaned closer, sure he’d misheard or misunderstood.
“I’m sorry. What?”
“I know you don’t have any reason to believe me. We don’t know each other well. It never should have happened, but the very fact of the matter is the only person I’ve been in any potential compromising positions with is...you, and my doctor confirmed a positive pregnancy test. So.”
He leaned back. Away from her and these words that didn’t make sense. He was thirty-five. He was a vice president of... No, not anymore.
He was an unemployed thirty-five-year-old being told the drunken one-night stand he hadn’t meant to ever let happen had resulted in...
“I didn’t mean to drop it on you like that.” She skirted the table of her booth in what felt like a purposeful distancing. He was on one side of this frilly, feminine table, and she was on the other.
