The Deal With Triplets

by Rayner, Holly

  “Ellie went into labor four hours ago. Just gave birth. Beautiful, healthy baby girl. Updates to follow. I’M A DAD!!!”

  I chuckled at the last part. That was such a Cal thing to say. Then it hit me. My best friend had just had a baby.

  “Ellie had her baby!” I cheered, jumping up from my seat. “A baby girl!”

  Lucas jumped up to join me in my excitement, congratulating me despite the fact that I wasn’t sure I was someone to be congratulated. Nonetheless, I took it with a smile.

  I found myself leaning in to hug him. I hadn’t planned to hug him, to put even less space between us and send my feelings for him raging, but it had just sort of happened.

  We stood there with our arms around one another, the movie still on in the background, neither of us letting go. That same tension that had been there since the moment we met was still in full force. With each second the hug lingered, I felt the spark growing stronger and stronger.

  I was desperate to give in, and I wondered if he was, too. But I didn’t give in, and neither did Lucas. It seemed as though neither of us wanted to be the one to let go.

  It wasn’t fair to do this to ourselves. I hesitated for a moment before pulling myself away from Lucas. I’d hoped his eyes would give something away about how he was feeling, but I couldn’t get a good read. Was he sad that I’d pulled away? Was he uncomfortable that I’d hugged him in the first place? I was tired of this tug-of-war in my mind.

  “I should really be getting to bed,” I said. “It’s been a long day, and we have a big day tomorrow.”

  “That we do,” Lucas agreed.

  I felt his eyes all over me, and it took every ounce of restraint to bid him a good night and part with a second-long hug. I headed down the hall to my room, wondering when my life had become so crazy. I was in a foreign country, with a man I’d only known for a few months, pregnant with his child, and feeling as though I’d completely fallen for him.

  As I tugged the comforter over my body, I hoped that a good night’s sleep would provide some much-needed clarity.

  Chapter 18

  Zoe

  Even though the fertility clinic I’d been to in Chicago was likely the best in the entire state, this clinic Lucas had scheduled the appointment at for us in Brussels was out of this world. As beautiful as Belgium was, I doubted that all medical practices there had grand marble statues and sparkling clean floors.

  We exited the elevator into a waiting room that had cushioned chairs that reclined, the largest selection of magazines—available in three languages—that I’d ever seen, and a coffee cart with an attendant.

  It was all lovely, and almost—but not quite—enough of a surprise to calm my nerves as we waited for Dr. Legrand. I was excited about the prospect of getting to see my baby. That wasn’t the issue. It was more the issue of Lucas. It was about pretending everything was completely normal and I wasn’t having these lingering feelings for him. It was about Lucas and I going into the examination room and explaining that we weren’t an item, had never been an item, and yet were having a child together.

  I had to presume that, given Lucas’s status and the status of his company, the doctor was already aware of the situation, but I couldn’t be certain. How did one even go about explaining a situation like this? I wondered if the doctor had ever dealt with anything similar in the past. He’d probably seen thousands of patients in his lifetime. Surely there had to have been at least one or two couples with equally unconventional situations, or at least that was what I kept telling myself to normalize the situation and make me feel better.

  As weird as it might be to have Lucas in the room with me, it would have been far more terrifying to go through this alone. I was glad to have him here. Or, rather, I was glad that I’d flown eight hours so we could do this here. We were a team, whatever that meant for us.

  Lucas rested his hand on my arm, and I noticed for the first time that his hand was shaking ever so slightly. He was nervous, too. Somehow, his nervousness made me feel better about my own.

  “Zoe Green?” a blond, curly-haired nurse called from the doorway that separated the waiting room from the examination rooms.

  This was it. The past few weeks had been surreal, but maybe seeing my baby on an ultrasound screen would make things feel more real to me. Lucas caught me by surprise when he squeezed my hand in his and held it all the way to Exam Room 3.

  I confirmed the information on the medical documents that had been sent over from my doctors in Chicago and answered some routine questions—my medical history, details of how the pregnancy had been going, any symptoms I’d had lately.

  Lucas and the doctor left the room as I changed into an examination gown and made myself comfortable in the chair in the middle of the room. This was weird, having a baby with a man who wasn’t actually my man and left the room when I got undressed.

  All I could think about what seeing my baby on the sonogram and hearing the heartbeat. That would make any awkwardness between Lucas and me worthwhile.

  Once I was settled, I called the doctor back in, and he took his spot by the ultrasound machine while Lucas sat in the chair beside me.

  The ultrasound gel was freezing cold against my skin, and I flinched as the doctor spread it on my stomach. I closed my eyes and drew in a breath as he began moving the ultrasound wand around on my tiny baby bump.

  “There’s the heartbeat,” Dr. Legrand said.

  I held my breath until I heard the quiet thump-thump. Tears rolled down my cheeks, and Lucas reached up and wiped them away.

  “And here’s heartbeat number two. A good, strong heartbeat.”

  What had he just said? This had been a chaotic whirlwind of a trip. Surely, I’d misunderstood.

  I looked over at Lucas, whose face was frozen in some sort of contorted manner. Clearly, he’d heard the same words I had. I needed him to reassure me, to tell me that we would figure this out, but he just sat there and stared at the sonogram machine.

  “Are you saying…” I began, but the doctor was still focused on the machine, still moving the wand on my stomach.

  “And… there’s a third heartbeat,” he said. “Congratulations, Ms. Green. You’re having triplets!”

  I could hardly breathe. Lucas’s face stayed in that same shocked position as Dr. Legrand spoke with us. We’d have to call him back to get whatever information he was saying, because it was clear that neither of us was listening.

  How would I handle three kids on my own? Triple the mouths to feed. Triple the diapers to go through. Triple the wakeups in the middle of the night for feedings and diaper changes.

  As intense as it sounded, I wasn’t even concerned about the money at this point. Lucas had made it clear that he would make sure our child—well, I guess now it was our children—had everything they needed. It was just about everything else that had me worried. I’d been nervous about being able to balance one child and work, and now there were going to be three of them?

  Still trying to comprehend the news, I thanked Dr. Legrand for his time. He gave us printouts of each of the sonograms, respectively labeled Baby A, Baby B, and Baby C.

  Lucas hadn’t made a sound since the doctor had told us we were having more than one baby, and he didn’t say a word the entire elevator ride down to the parking lot.

  The moment we got into the car, Lucas began muttering under his breath. I couldn’t make out most of what he said, except for “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  It finally hit me that he wasn’t just in shock, he was completely freaking out.

  I could understand his reaction to a point—and it was true that I definitely needed some time to process the news myself—but this was good news, right? we had three healthy babies on the way. So how come Lucas was so upset?

  Something told me that I wasn’t getting the full story. Lucas had been so thrilled at the prospect of becoming a father. I wasn’t convinced that the addition of two more babies would warrant a reaction like this in and of itself.
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br />   “Lucas, talk to me,” I said.

  “Triplets,” he mumbled. “We’re having triplets.”

  “Look, I know it’ll be a lot to handle, but we can figure it out.”

  I wasn’t exactly sure how we would figure it out, but I almost felt like, given his initiation of all of this, Lucas should be the one reassuring me.

  “Is that really all this is? Nerves? Because we can work through that.”

  Lucas shifted in his seat, meeting my eyes for the first time since we’d left the clinic. “Zoe, there’s something I should probably tell you.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “I’m a twin.”

  His words hung there in the air, and I took my time before responding. I wasn’t sure if I was just surprised, or if I felt betrayed by the fact that he hadn’t told me this. That seemed like a pretty big fact to have ignored over the past few months. We’d shared so much about our lives. How had it never come up that he had a brother?

  “You’re a what?”

  “I have a twin brother named Benoit,” he said. “My family has a long history of twins, though I don’t believe there have ever been triplets. I haven’t spoken to Benoit in five years.”

  My heart broke at the words.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Well, I told you my father passed away six years ago.” He paused, waiting for acknowledgment, so I offered up a nod. “When he passed away, Benoit and I took over the family business. We were fifty-fifty partners, co-CEOs. It was all fine and good at the start, but then we started arguing about what direction we wanted to take the business. I’d been working for the company all along and felt like I knew what was right, and Benoit had spent some time working in a different field and wanted to take his own approach.”

  “Ouch. I’m guessing that didn’t end well.”

  Lucas shook his head mournfully. “The result was a giant blowout,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you the particulars of it if I had to, but it ended up with me buying out Benoit’s shares of the company and him leaving the company. When he left Cadieux behind, he left me along with it. I honestly can’t even remember what we fought about, but I lost my brother because of it.”

  Man, this was a day full of surprises. I hoped this was the last piece of new information he was going to spring on me today, because I wasn’t sure I could take much more. I felt awful for Lucas. I knew he wasn’t perfect, and that it was likely that he and his brother had both been at fault in some way, but Lucas was too kind of a person to do anything with ill intent.

  I couldn’t imagine having a sibling I’d once been close with but now never spoke to. Even though Evan and I lived far apart, we texted on a regular basis and made sure to video chat at least twice a month. I couldn’t think of anything that would drive that much of a wedge between us that we could go years without speaking.

  “I’m sorry, Lucas,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” he replied. “I just don’t like talking about it, or even thinking about it, for that matter. I didn’t want you thinking that I would be a bad father because of it.”

  “Why on earth would I think that? I know you’re going to be an amazing father.”

  Lucas lowered his voice so that it was barely above a whisper. “Benoit’s about to be a father, too.”

  “He is?”

  “His wife is expecting their first child—I only found out because they posted the news on social media.”

  “Maybe that’s your way to reconnect with him,” I offered.

  Lucas shook his head. “I thought about it, but I worried it might make things worse. This is a happy time for them—the last thing I want is to dredge up years of pain and resentment.”

  I wanted desperately to say something to make him feel better, but I wasn’t sure there was anything I could say that would change the situation. I also wished it hadn’t taken finding out that we were having triplets for me to find all this out.

  Triplets. With all of this brother talk, I’d forgotten for a moment that we were going to have three babies.

  I took a deep breath. I’d worry about that one later. For now, I wanted to comfort Lucas in any way I could.

  “What is Benoit up to these days? Does he still live in the area?”

  “He’s still in Brussels,” Lucas said. “While I went on to have success with Cadieux, he left the money behind and got a job working in tech. I don’t know much about it, but he seems happy.”

  “Well, maybe—”

  “Zoe, as heartbroken as I am over Benoit, that’s not what’s eating away at me right now.”

  I noticed for the first time that his eyes were filled with tears. I’d never seen him this close to crying. In fact, I hadn’t taken him for the crying type at all.

  “I wanted one baby, and one baby only,” he stated, letting the words hang there for a moment. “I wanted one child to be my heir, that way no one would get hurt. If we have three kids, think about what could happen. I don’t want our children fighting over the family business and straining their relationship like I did with Benoit.”

  I took a deep breath and carefully considered what to say next. I wanted to be sympathetic, but I felt as though he was focusing on all the wrong things. We were having three babies, sure, but they were three strong, healthy babies who knew nothing of the kind of fallings-out that adults could have.

  “We’ll figure this out,” I told him. “I promise things won’t turn out the same for our children.”

  I hated making promises I couldn’t keep, but I was reasonably sure we could find a way to avoid such conflict between our own children. Of course, we were thinking decades into the future, but this was obviously something that Lucas cared a lot about.

  In this moment, I felt like a reassuring girlfriend or wife. I could tell that my words meant something to him, and that, in turn, meant a lot to me. I wasn’t sure what this bond between us meant. This was a lot to process in the span of twenty minutes.

  I looked down at my belly and convinced myself that it had become bigger since finding out we were having triplets. This was absolutely surreal.

  I couldn’t wait to tell Ellie, to see her own baby girl and tell her the news about my babies. I was really going to be a mother. Sure, we had some issues to work out, but it was happening for us. I held the first photographs of my precious babies in my hand as proof of that.

  The rest of the ride back to Lucas’s home, all I could think about was his strained relationship with his brother. No one deserved to go through life without a sibling because of something that was so far in the past. There had to be something I could do. There had to be a way to fix this.

  Chapter 19

  Lucas

  My mind had been swirling with thoughts of our triplets since the moment the doctor had told us the news. It had finally sunk in that this was our reality, and I was getting used to that. Sure, it had been a huge shock, but I was mostly just happy that Zoe and the babies were healthy.

  Though I’d known multiples ran in our family, I had never expected it to be something that would come to affect me. I’d resigned myself to life as a perpetual bachelor. Even when I’d shared my proposition with Zoe, the likelihood of having twins or triplets had never crossed my mind. I supposed that, in my rush to set up the arrangement with Zoe before leaving Chicago, I hadn’t even considered it as a possibility.

  There was still the lingering worry about who would take over the family business, plus added logistical factors for sharing custody with Zoe, but I’d decided to push them out of my mind until she was back in Chicago. We had plenty of time to figure out when the kids would go from Belgium to Chicago and vice versa, or which holidays the kids would spend with each of us. For now, my vision was clouded by the newfound smiles and laughter Zoe had brought into my life.

  It had been a week since she had come to visit, and every day was a new adventure. In all honesty, I didn’t want her to leave and return to her life i
n Chicago as if none of this had mattered. In previous relationships and trysts, I’d hoped for distance and separate lives like I had with Zoe, but, right now, I wanted nothing more than to somehow mesh our lives together.

  I’d convinced Zoe to stay in Belgium longer so we could get organized before she got further along in the pregnancy. I’d spent all week making up trivial chores for us to do together, when in reality, I just didn’t want to let her go quite yet. Instead, we’d spent the past few days shopping for bassinets, and picking out paint colors, and discussing baby names. We decided that, for the sake of stability for the babies, we’d get two of everything—one for here, and one for Chicago. They’d have the same bassinets, blankets, onesies, and binkies at each home. It seemed like the most sensible way to go.

  I wasn’t sure it had quite hit me yet that the next time I saw Zoe could very well be after the birth of our babies. She’d decided that, as great of a time as we’d been having together, she had to get back to work. I had twenty-four hours left with her before she and our babies she was carrying flew thousands of miles away.

  We’d gotten into a sort of routine at this point. Before I went off to work, we ate breakfast together at the house. She used her laptop in my study to do any work she could do remotely while I worked a normal day at the office. Arnault drove Zoe to Cadieux each day so we could eat lunch together, then we continued about our days until reconvening for a dinner cooked by my chef at the house.

  I hadn’t eaten three meals a day with the same person for multiple days since I was a child, back when it was pretty much mandatory. I admittedly usually got tired of seeing the same people over and over and sought change. With Zoe, it was different. I’d had the most incredible week with her.

  We’d spent our nights together watching films in the media room, or working out together in the gym, or preparing the babies’ nursery. It was a simple routine, but I’d grown to love it. It almost felt as if we’d been playing house, like we were husband and wife or something.