by Lauren Wood
Once Victoria got pregnant, we’d stop having sex. Behind closed doors, we’d stop kissing and being all over each other. She was right that it was hard for me to wrap my head around it, but not because of my ego. I just couldn’t figure out if she was so blasé about all of this because she thought she had to be...because it was what she agreed to...or if it was because she really didn’t see me as anything more than a friend and a sperm donor.
As I ran down the city streets, I kept reminding myself that time was running out. If we had any chance of turning back before someone got hurt...before I got hurt...I needed to tell her how I really felt before she got pregnant. Hell, it could already be too late for all I knew. We had been fucking like rabbits. Her enthusiasm for that made me doubt whether she didn’t see some real potential between us.
More and more, I was starting to feel like the media, my image, the company...none of it mattered if I didn’t end up with Victoria. If we announced a break up, I’d find some other trophy wife to hire who things would be less complicated with. We’d recover and make it work. Victoria would have her baby, and I would keep my distance for both our sakes. At least she’d know who her baby’s father was.
It didn’t seem like such a bad worst-case scenario, really. Not when I considered the alternative. Me not being able to hold her anymore. Not being able to touch her or make love to her, or share breakfast in bed. Or romantic dinners. Or even worse...me finding out, through the course of helping her raise our kid, that she had met someone else and suddenly, the prospect of a real relationship didn’t seem so bad to her anymore. Just not with me. And I’d be forced to watch it all play out from the sidelines.
I had been keeping my true feelings for her bottled up since high school. Now I had gotten us into this mess. All my desperation and cowardly inability to tell her how I felt was humiliating, and it was starting to eat me from the inside out. The most manly thing I could do was just tell her I was in love with her and always had been. If she didn’t feel the same way...I’d be no worse off than where I started.
Except the hope would be gone. By keeping my secret, I got to cling to the possibility of what might happen one day. By telling her everything, I risked losing that hope. Then it would be final. I’d know for certain that she was never going to love me back.
It was a grim possibility, but with each passing day, I knew I needed to face it. And sooner rather than later.
I jogged back to my place, but Victoria was gone—like she said she would be. I decided she could have her night off. I’d give her some space. But after that, the time had come. I was going to make a plan to tell her everything.
15
Victoria
I was in a dreamy daze, sitting at a table on the café’s patio with a glass of ginger ale and a salad. Sitting and trying to interpret all of Lucas’s words and actions had become a regular thing for me, and the stress of it had brought an almost constant uneasiness to my stomach. And it was exhausting on top of that. All the nausea and tiredness was enough to make me think we had made a mistake.
Lucas had started this whole thing with his lie to the press. Then he kept it going with his big scheme. Now he wanted us to move in together? He had lost his mind. The most confusing part was that it was his playboy, womanizing lifestyle that had landed him in hot water to begin with. He had always been a ladies’ man. Did he honestly expect to be able to give that up just to keep the lie going?
I kept imagining getting up in the middle of the night to warm a baby bottle only to run into one of the models or actresses he slept with, stumbling into my kitchen half-dressed. I could see it now. Her asking me who the hell was I. Oh, just Lucas’s fake wife and the mother of his child. Don’t mind me.
I laughed and shook my head. It would never work. Worse was imagining me having a guy over and Lucas sizing him up. Mind babysitting for a bit while we dip into the other room and have sex real quick?
It was absurd. And even more absurd than all of that was how Lucas didn’t seem to be concerned about any of it. Sure, he was stubborn once he got his mind stuck on something. He didn’t care what could go wrong. Whatever came up, he’d find some way to obliterate it and keep on moving forward. But in this instance...I didn’t know how he couldn’t see the obvious, glaring problems with the whole scenario. Or if he could see them...why didn’t he care?
There was the other more startling possibility. One my mind had been avoiding like the plague. Could it be that he didn’t care about the obstacles because this was more than an arrangement to him? Did my oldest, closest friend have actual feelings for me? He did have a funny way of mocking me with a bitter grunt every time I referred to our relationship as “fake” or “just an arrangement.” But wasn’t that what it was supposed to be?
It was a vicious rabbit hole in my mind. Once my avoidance allowed me to skip right over the prospect of Lucas having feelings for me, I had to face the other big problem. I was starting to think I might actually have feelings for him, regardless of what he thought of me.
I buried my face in my hands, trying to bury all the bothersome ‘what if’s right along with it. But a chiming noise on my phone alerted me. What the hell is that sound? Not a text. Not an e-mail. I didn't think I’d ever even heard it make that noise before…
I glanced down at the screen and saw the red dot icon, quickly registering it as a notification from the app I used to track my periods. A bold warning scrolled across the screen.
Don’t forget to log the start of your period.
What!? I stared at it with my face all scrunched up in a knot. I didn’t even know the app would do that, but then again I had never given it a chance. I never forgot to log the start of my cycle and...I was never late.
My heart dropped. I was never late...until now.
“Can I get you anything else?” The waitress appeared at my side suddenly, making me jump.
“The check, please.”
I paid my tab as quickly as I could and bolted off of the patio, nearly forgetting my phone and work binder behind on the table. I rushed back over to snatch them up and took off, practically running to the pharmacy around the corner.
For all the time in recent years I had spent dreaming about having a baby, I had somehow neglected certain important things...like figuring out the best pregnancy test brands and when to take them. As I scanned the ridiculous amount of options calling out to me from the store shelves, I was panicking inside over the wine I had the night before. And the mimosas I had at brunch the day before that. Oh, god...I ate sushi a few days ago! Isn’t that a big no-no when you’re pregnant?
My concerns sent my hand shooting out toward the boxes featuring smiling mothers, shoving them all into my basket like they were going permanently out of stock. The more tests the better, right? Then I’d know for certain that whatever the result was...it could be trusted, if twenty-plus tests all said the same thing.
Approaching the counter, I wondered if the pharmacist might be able to calm some of my worries about the alcohol and raw fish. He was a younger guy—tall and scrawny. Honestly, he didn’t look like he knew much about sex, period—much less pregnancy. But I figured he had to have some expertise, given his place of employment.
“Excuse me, sir,” I said sheepishly, dumping my basket of boxes onto the counter. “Do you know if...well, let’s say you were a few weeks pregnant but didn’t know it yet. How many drinks would you have to have to risk giving your baby something like...fetal alcohol syndrome?”
He blinked. “I’m a cashier, lady. Not a doctor.”
“Right. Sure.” I blushed, holding out my credit card.
I spent the next few hours ignoring all of Lucas’s texts. I ignored every text, no matter who it came from, and emails and phone calls, anything else that might pluck me from the vortex of my pregnancy panic.
I sat in the middle of my bathroom floor, surrounded by empty boxes, instruction pamphlets, and all the small sticks I’d peed on. Each one with the same pink or blue plus sign...w
hich I had learned, after reading the same instructions over and over again about a hundred times, meant that I was, in fact...pregnant.
Thankfully, Google assured me that I hadn’t harmed my baby with my light drinking and affinity for sushi in the days leading up to this startling discovery. But all this panic could have been avoided easily if I had just been paying enough attention to take the test in advance or to be more cautious in the days leading up to my missed period.
I thought I was ready and prepared for this whole thing, with or without Lucas, but apparently I was not. All of his moving in talk had distracted me too much. What other important things would he distract me from before it was all said and done?
I kept sucking in deep breaths and blowing them out again slowly. This was what I had wanted...I just didn’t expect it to happen so soon. Nor had I expected my feelings for Lucas to be so complicated.
I wanted to rush out to wherever he was and tell him right then. I imagined the happy news...the embrace...the feeling of his rock-hard, big, strong body swooping me up into his muscular arms...a body that I was nowhere near done with yet. What was I going to do? The sex was just a means to an end. The end had come. But thinking of hugging him alone was enough to send my body shooting off into a hot frenzy of need.
Why did I think getting a positive pregnancy test would somehow seal up the can of worms we had opened?
The mountain of pregnancy tests around me wasn’t helping matters any. I swept them all back into the bag from the pharmacy and tossed the boxes and other papers. It was the first time I had stepped out of my bathroom since I got home, and I was desperate for more ginger ale. At least now I knew my nausea and fatigue had a much larger cause than the stress of this whole stupid arrangement.
Walking towards the kitchen, I found myself stopping in the doorway of my guest room-turned-nursery. The big chest was sitting there in the middle, full of things waiting to get out and be used. I had been dreaming of having a child for years. Smoothing my hands over my stomach, it was hard to believe it was finally happening.
But the nursery didn’t look as hopeful as it once had. Was Lucas right? Should we move in together? No matter how prepared I thought I was, it didn’t stop overwhelming fear from paralyzing me the moment I realized I was late. The feeling had only been getting worse, and all of this was just from little pink lines on a stick of pee!
How would I fare when my stomach started bulging out with a kicking baby? When my water broke? When the baby caught a fever or some other common illness and couldn’t sleep? I tried not to cry as the biggest question made its way to the front of my mind...Why did I ever think I could actually do this on my own!?
My phone started dinging again, but this time Lucas was calling instead of texting. I couldn’t avoid him forever. He would have to know eventually. Maybe not quite yet...but soon.
“Hello?”
“There you are. I’ve been trying to reach you all day. You alright?”
“Fine!” I lied.
“Okay. Do you have dinner plans? I was hoping to steal you away for the evening.”
“Not yet,” I replied, trying to sound as casual as possible. “But I’m starving.”
“Save your appetite then. I’ll pick you up and take you out.”
“Out? Uh...Lucas, I don’t know….”
“Don’t fight me on this, Vic. This is kind of a surprise, so your cooperation would be appreciated.”
I finally agreed and hung up, thinking to myself...Oh, trust me. You’re the one who’s in for a surprise. As for me? I’ve had enough of them for one day...
16
Lucas
Victoria looked stunning with her dark hair and eyes gleaming against the glow of our candlelit dinner. I made reservations at one of the nicest spots in the city, hoping it would be the perfect backdrop for me to confess the secret I had been keeping from her since we were teenagers.
“Damn, you look gorgeous, Vic.” I grinned as we ate. “You’re glowing tonight.”
A strange look flashed across her face. Not what I was expecting. “Thanks. You look good, too.”
I cleared my throat and continued eating. It had been like this all night. Me trying to set the mood and gear up to tell her everything...while she seemed like she was a million miles away.
“Is everything alright?”
“Um, sure. Well, I mean...I do have something I need to talk to you about,” she replied slowly.
“I needed to talk to you, too.”
“You go first,” she suggested.
“No, you go ahead.”
Her lips parted, but she seemed to get lost in my eyes. We were in a face-off, neither of us saying a word.
“About us moving in together…,” she said finally.
“I didn’t mean to pressure you about that, by the way. I’m sorry. But...did you have a chance to think it over some more?”
“I did.” She nodded, taking a sip of water. “I think you were right about us looking for another place. A bigger one for both of us.”
“That’s great. I’ll contact the agent I know tomorrow and get some showings lined up.”
I was excited about living with her, but it only piled on the pressure for what I needed to say. She had agreed to that much, but if she didn’t feel the same way about me as I did about her...it would scare her away from moving in together.
“I was thinking something with a mother-in-law apartment in the back and three bedrooms,” she continued. “That way we could have separate rooms and a private place in the back for...you know. Other relationships we may have.”
I wiped my napkin over my mouth in an attempt to hide my disappointment. “Oh. I see.”
“Anyway. What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”
This was it. As good of a moment as I was ever going to get. Even if it did scare her off from living together, it needed to happen. If this whole thing was going to blow up in our faces, specifically mine, then better now than later.
“I was going to say…” My chest and throat tightened, making it hard to speak. “That...I was going to say the same thing. Separate bedrooms and all that.”
I chickened out. I told myself I might have a chance to recover at some point in the evening. After dinner, we took a long walk by the river, but she was so busy discussing strategies for Heartstring’s marketing and public relations that it wasn’t exactly as romantic as it should have been. I decided what I really needed to do was force myself to sit down and watch a rom-com marathon. Surely there had to be some fail-proof way to tell your best friend you were in love with her. Some grand gesture that would melt her heart and make it impossible for her to be angry or shut me out.
But if this was going to happen tonight, like I planned, I had to find some way to get her in that kind of head space. And fast.
“Don’t you ever stop thinking about work?” I quipped.
“Do you?” She smiled. “The Lucas I remember was always scheming and plotting.”
I shrugged. “People change.” Recently, the only time I ever stopped thinking about work was when I was stressing over things between us, but that wasn’t exactly a great intro to—I love you and I always have.
We walked a little farther until a gazebo came into view. It was historic and needed some repairs, so they had closed it off to the public as a precaution, but it had the best view of the water and the city lights twinkled in the background.
I pointed. “This is one of my favorite spots.”
“It’s closed.”
“For no good reason.” I raised one brow and shot her a mischievous glance. “Want to break some rules? Let’s go.”
Her face scrunched up, but she looked intrigued. “Are you sure it’s safe?”
“The renovations are for a new paint job and a few loose shingles on the roof. The foundation is fine. Come on. I wouldn’t tempt you if I thought it was dangerous.”
“What if we get caught?” she asked, looking over both shoulders.
�
��By who?” I laughed. “The park police?”
“Yes, actually.”
“Live a little, Vic.” I took off towards the opening and lifted the tape to usher her in.
She hesitated for a moment, but finally sighed and followed me in. There was a chill in the evening air as we stood at the edge, looking out at the lights twinkling over the rippling water.
As we stood there, I felt a hot flash surge through my body—ending with a twitch between my legs. The thing about confessing my feelings to her was that it might all be over after that. It was a risk I needed to take, but finally getting to know her in bed had been one of the greatest highlights of my life so far. I was suddenly reluctant to give that up without at least one more taste of her.
I stepped closer to her, reaching out to brush her cheek. Her skin was as soft and smooth as a rose petal and I never got tired of touching it.
She blushed and dropped her gaze. “What are you doing?”
“I told you...you look fucking beautiful tonight. I’m just admiring the view.”
That spark between us flared up as our eyes met. The crackling between us was so evident in the air, I’d swear it could shock anyone else who happened to stumble upon us.
Our bodies drifted closer, the way they had become so accustomed to doing lately. An invisible force pulled us together, and it felt so natural and effortless. It was hard to imagine ever going back to being “just friends.” At least it was for me. Maybe that’s still all we were supposed to be, but we were friends who fucked—couldn’t I keep that much?
Within seconds, my lips were pressed to hers. I teased her mouth open with my tongue and sucked in the taste of mint. We stood there in the chilly breeze, moving closer together for warmth...and a deeper kiss, of course. Our tongues explored in the darkness, and I was growing alarmingly hard.
She felt my erection brush against her leg through my pants and stopped. I thought she would say we needed to stop. It was dark in the gazebo, but we were still out in the open for the most part. Anyone walking by could probably easily notice us and see everything if they got close enough.
