Tucker stared at me.
I drank my beer and watched him. “What?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“I know. You’re just…not yourself.”
He shrugged. “I might be a little drunk already…”
It seemed like he’d only had one beer, but maybe he’d chugged a couple before I got there. “How are things with Pria?”
“Great. We’re really getting along.”
“Getting serious?”
“I mean, we’re exclusive. We aren’t getting married or…having a baby…anytime soon.” He stared at his beer.
“You guys have been seeing each other for several months now?” It was almost as long as Cleo and I had been together, not including that two-month break in between.
He nodded. “Yeah. Pretty good amount of time.”
“Do you think it’ll go anywhere?”
“I mean, I love her. I’ve told her that. I think about proposing, but I’m gonna wait a while.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Rings are fucking expensive, man. And I don’t want to cheap out. My wife is gonna wear that forever, you know? Don’t want it to be small or dull. But then it’s gonna break the bank…”
Cleo’s ring cost a pretty penny, even for me. But I wanted her to have something nice, because she did like nice things. But I didn’t tell Tucker about it, didn’t tell anyone about it. I had the ring, but I didn’t know how or when I would propose. Baby steps, I guess. “Maybe you should have her move in first. Split the cost of rent. It’ll help you save quicker.”
“I can’t ask her to move in then pay half the rent. That’s lame.”
I shrugged. “We live in an equal society.”
“Yeah, but that’s not romantic. You make Cleo pay half the mortgage?”
“Well…no.” But that was totally different. I could afford everything on my own, and she didn’t even make enough to be able to make any meaningful contribution. “But that’s not really the same.”
“I’m an old-fashioned guy. I want to be the breadwinner. I want to take care of my wife. I want her to stay home with the kids.”
I guess I was that way too. I wanted Cleo to stay home with Derek, but that wasn’t her personality. She wanted more out of life. I had to respect that instead of trying to change her. Her independence was one of the things I admired about her in the first place. “I get it.”
“So…” He stared at his beer for a while before he looked at me. “You think Cleo would stay home if you had more kids?”
I shrugged. “I doubt it. I can’t see her giving up her job.”
He nodded slowly. “You ever talk about that? You know, having kids…soon?”
I shook my head. “We aren’t there. She’s told me she wants to have kids, and if that’s how it has to be, I’ll do it. But right now, our lives are so perfect—I don’t want to change anything. Derek just started going to school. Having another baby would be a nightmare at this point.” I barely had enough time with her as it was.
He nodded again. “Yeah…maybe in a few years.”
I drank my beer. “She says she wants to have kids, but she’s so ambitious that I think she’ll realize being a mother is just not a lifestyle she wants. She’ll try to do both, keep her job and raise a family, but she just can’t. She’ll have to choose. And at the end of the day, I don’t think she’ll walk away from her job. So, it may never happen anyway.” Cleo loved her job, just got a raise, and it wouldn’t make sense for her to ever leave it. And she wouldn’t want Patricia to raise them all day either.
“Yeah,” Tucker said quietly. “Maybe…”
Derek talked about his day over dinner, hijacking the conversation by talking about his friends, his assignments, the next field trip, and the other ins and outs of a six-year-old.
Instead of being annoyed by it, I engaged with him, knowing he wouldn’t always want to tell me about his day. He would get older, realize I wasn’t that cool, and go into his room to text his friends.
Cleo was quiet, pushing her food around and not eating much.
When Derek was finished, he asked to be excused. “Can I go back to working on my rocket?”
“Sure.”
Derek left and went into his room.
Cleo didn’t even seem to notice he’d left. Her eyes were on her plate, cutting into the fillet without placing it in her mouth. Her greens were mostly eaten, but very little of the salmon.
I wondered if she was upset about Dr. Hawthorne, if maybe it still bothered her. “Today was Dr. Hawthorne’s last day.” I decided not to tell her about the conversation we’d had because it didn’t matter.
Cleo looked up. “Oh? I thought she was already gone.”
“No. She packed up her stuff and left. I guess she got a job with the Mayo Clinic.”
“Oh…good for her.” She turned back to her plate.
“Something wrong with the salmon?”
She raised her head again. “Oh, no,” she said quickly. “I guess I’m just getting tired of fish.” She set her plate to the side even though she didn’t eat much.
“I can make you something else.”
“You know, I just don’t have an appetite anyway.” She looked out the window, her eyes already taking her mind elsewhere.
First, Tucker had been weird. Now, she was weird. “Cleo?”
“Hmm?”
“Everything alright?” She’d been off for a few days, and every time I asked her if something was wrong, her answer was always the same.
“Yeah. I’m just…stressed. Got a lot of stuff going on downstairs.”
I was quiet and withdrawn when I was stressed too, so I took her word for it. I gathered the plates and the bottle of wine and carried them into the kitchen. I rinsed off the plates, put the wine in the fridge, and then glanced at her.
She looked miserable.
The only time she seemed to be herself was when we made love. She was passionate, fiery, affectionate, genuine. Her eyes were on mine, and her lips quivered with pleasure. She rocked into me like my pace was enough for her. She was anxious, pulling me into her, clawing my back, yanking on my hair.
I liked it.
With my fists against the mattress, my forearms pinning her knees back, I pumped into her until I came, filling her with another load that spilled all over the place when I pulled out. It streaked down her ass and to the sheets below.
That seemed to happen every night, but we slept in it anyway, knowing the sheets would be changed in the morning.
I rolled over and lay there, grabbing the tissue box on my nightstand to clean up a bit. The housekeeper put those there, probably because she knew we were too lazy to get up and clean off in the bathroom, so we let the sheets absorb it.
Cleo turned the other way and pulled the sheets to her shoulder.
And like nothing had happened, she was withdrawn again.
I stared at her back for a moment before I rolled toward her, spooning her from behind. My hand moved across her stomach and rested there, on the slightly hard bump right where her belly button was located.
She quickly grabbed my hand and pulled it higher, right underneath her breasts.
My face was in her hair so I couldn’t see anything, but my eyes opened anyway.
Because I knew what I felt.
I knew exactly what my fingertips touched.
Everything hit me at once.
Her doctor’s appointment several weeks ago, the fact that she wouldn’t tell me what it was about.
That she never drank wine anymore.
She was cold and distant lately…moody.
She had a random aversion to fish.
Now her stomach…was different.
Jesus fucking Christ.
I rolled away, moving to my back, needing a moment to process what I’d just concluded.
She was pregnant.
I stared at the ceiling, my heart beating so fast that it felt like I was sprinting in place. I was warm from lo
vemaking, but now I sweated profusely. My palms were cold and clammy. There was so much adrenaline, so much stress.
Fuck.
Eighteen
Cleo
I had Patricia drop off Derek at Margo’s.
The nerves were killing me. The guilt was consuming me. Now I was wearing dresses because my skirts were just too tight. My body was changing, and if he hadn’t noticed already, he’d notice soon…and that was the worst way to find out.
My bag was already packed in his closet, so I could grab it and leave…if he asked me to.
Tucker said I could stay with him.
Tucker texted me. Good luck.
I ignored his text message that popped up on the coffee table. I sat on the couch, waiting for the sound of Deacon’s footsteps, the sound of the knob turning. I was so fucking scared. I was far more scared of this than living in my shady apartment in Brooklyn. This was the very place where he’d left me last time—and I was afraid it would happen again.
When we woke up this morning, he was really quiet, like he was irritated with the constant coldness I gave him. He didn’t even do his morning workout. He just got dressed and left, taking Derek with him while barely saying a few words to me.
My fear was affecting our relationship, so I may as well just tell him.
I was running out of time anyway.
His footsteps sounded.
“Oh god…oh god…oh god…”
The doorknob turned.
“Fuck.”
He stepped inside, set his bag on the entryway table, and hung up his coat.
I didn’t feel joy like I usually did when he came home. Now, I was terrified, like I wished he would leave and give me more time to suck up the courage.
He turned around and surveyed the condo. After a quick scan, he could read the energy, knew something was wrong. “Where’s Derek?”
“He’s with your mother for the evening… I wanted to talk.”
He stood still, looking down at me, his walls up. Now he was the one who was distant, like he didn’t want to come home as much as I didn’t want him there.
My hands were shaking. My voice was weak. I was so fucking nauseated. “Can we talk?” I could barely get the words out of my mouth. They were breaking in the middle of the sentence, and I even felt the muscles of my back twitch like I was freezing cold.
He stared at me for a hard minute before he moved to the couch and sat beside me. There was no affection. No kiss. He even left a few inches of space between us. His elbows were on his knees, his hands together. He didn’t look at me.
Our relationship was already over. I could feel it.
He was behaving the way he did when he ambushed me, when he was livid with me.
I hated this. So much. “I’m sure you’ve noticed how distant I’ve been…” My voice shook more, my lips started to quiver. Before I could control myself, tears sprang from my eyes, I started to shake harder, and I could barely talk at all.
He turned to me, giving me a whole different expression, full of concern. His eyes were wide as if my reaction caught him by surprise. He watched the tears pour down my cheeks, watched my arms and shoulders shake. “Baby…” His hand went to my thigh.
I wanted to defend myself, tell him it wasn’t deliberate, but I had to tell him the truth first. So, I just did it, because my body was breaking down and I was incapable of more than a few words at a time. “I’m pregnant…” I closed my eyes, more tears falling. “I didn’t do it on purpose…” I started to sob, my eyes opening, and I looked at my phone on the coffee table. “I swear, it was an accident. I don’t know how it happened. I need you to believe me… I would never, ever—”
“Baby.” He came closer to me, his arm moving around me, his other hand cupping my soaked cheek and directing my look on him. “I believe you.”
My tears stopped instantly because I couldn’t believe his response, how he was so calm, how he was so understanding. I expected him to storm out of the condo or tell me to get the hell out. I expected him to accuse me of horrible things. I expected him to view me like Valerie, like history was repeating itself.
His eyes softened as he looked at me, like my fear, tears, and pain were horrific to him. “It’s alright. Everything is alright.” He wiped my tears away with his thumb, his other hand rubbing my back.
“I didn’t want you to think I did what Valerie did—”
“I don’t.”
“And I…I was so scared you were going to leave me—”
“Never.” He grabbed my hand and held it on my thigh. “I trust you, baby. If you say it was an accident, it was an accident. Pregnancy is a side effect of sex, and we have a lot of sex. Birth control is not a hundred percent effective.” He moved his fingers to my hair and gently pulled the strands from my face so they couldn’t get wet against my cheeks. His brown eyes were kind, the same eyes I looked into every single day when he came home. The love was still there. “Take a few deep breaths and calm down.”
“I…I didn’t expect you to take this so well.” It was a miracle, to be honest.
He returned his hand to mine and held it. “I didn’t. I was upset…”
“What do you mean?”
He was quiet for a while as he looked into my tear-stained face. “I figured it out last night…when I touched your stomach.”
I stopped breathing, remembering the way he’d quickly rolled away once I’d repositioned his hand.
“I don’t know how I didn’t figure it out before. You don’t drink anymore. The fetus is rejecting fish. Your inexplicable mood. Some of the things Tucker has been saying to me lately. That doctor’s visit. It all just clicked.”
“Oh…”
“But then seeing how upset you are, how scared you are, how this has taken such a toll on you…it reminded of who you are, who we are. You would never force me into something I’m not ready for. It just…made me snap out of it.” He watched me for a while, an apologetic look on his face. “I’m sorry that my initial reaction wasn’t better. I was just caught off guard and overwhelmed.”
“It’s okay…”
“But now, I feel differently.” He squeezed my hand. “I wasn’t ready to have another child, but I wasn’t ready when I had Derek either. You’re never ready. You’re never ready to love someone so deeply, with all your heart. But we’ll figure it out. I’m gonna be here, always. There’s no reason to be scared.”
I started to cry again because I was so relieved.
“And you know what else I realized?”
I sniffed. “What?”
“The first time I had a child, it was with someone I didn’t love. But I love you…so much, and that’s going to make this so special. It’s different. It’s the highest form of love, to combine your DNA with another person’s, to create something that will live after you’re gone. There’s no one else in the world I would want to do that with besides you.”
It was a romantic thing to say, in his own way.
“So…I’m happy about it.”
“You are?” I wiped my tears away, trying to make myself look better even though there was nothing I could do to improve my disastrous face.
“Yes.” He cupped my cheek as he looked into my eyes. “Very.”
I moved into him, pressing my wet face into his neck, holding on to him as I finally let go of all the fear, all the stress. I didn’t expect this story to have a happy ending, for Deacon to accept this with open arms. I expected a fight, expected heartbreak, expected to move out and raise his kid as two separate parents. But he trusted me…believed me…loved me.
He rubbed my back as he held me against him and kissed my forehead. “I’m sorry you’ve had to go through this alone. I wish you had told me sooner.”
“I was scared,” I whispered into his shirt. “So scared.”
“I know, but I wish you had trusted me…the way I trusted you.”
“I lost you before, and I was so scared to go through that again—because it nearly killed me. I wante
d to enjoy our happiness a while longer…before I lost everything. But you’re right. I should have said something sooner. I’m sorry.”
He kissed my forehead again. “It’s okay, baby.”
I pulled away and stared into his eyes.
His fingers cupped my cheek, looking into my face with a slight smile on his lips.
“What?” I whispered.
“We’re having a baby.”
I finally felt the joy for the first time, finally allowed myself to feel happy. I was over-the-moon, inexplicably happy. It was unexpected and certainly unplanned, but it was such a gift, a blessing, and now that the guilt was gone…I finally felt everything. My hand went to my stomach, feeling the almost unnoticeable bump, the extra weight on my waist, and I felt my eyes water again, but this time in joy.
He placed his hand over mine, feeling our baby with me, his smile widening into a full one, that handsome smile he almost never wore. But he did now, his fingers gently squeezing mine.
Tears dripped down my cheeks again, but this time I smiled through it. “We’re having a baby…”
Once Deacon knew, my mood changed.
No longer somber, miserable, or scared, I was now happy…really happy.
Deacon returned to his usual self, affectionate, warm, loving. There was obviously enough room in his heart to love me as well as another person. All his reservations were gone, and we went back to normal.
I bought new clothes since my old ones were starting not to fit, but I kept all of them because I intended to fit into them after the baby was born. I wore loose dresses since I would grow into them over the next few months.
I came home late one night, dinner already on the table because Deacon got it started once he got home. There was grilled chicken and vegetables, salmon no longer on the menu because it upset my stomach. I put my bag on the entryway table, said hello to Derek, and then joined Deacon in the kitchen. “Hey.”
“Hey, baby.” He left the pans in the sink and turned to me, his arm hugging my back as he brought me in for a kiss. He held me close, gave me a long kiss, his hand giving my ass an affectionate squeeze.
The Man Who Has No Sight (Soulless Book 4) Page 19
