“That would not be fair to her. She just gave birth. The last thing she wants to see is your new wife in her room, trust me.”
Despite the fact that I wouldn’t go in the room I couldn’t bring myself to leave the hallway outside. The door was cracked open and while I wasn’t a huge fan of eavesdropping I needed to know what was being said when neither of them thought I was around. Shirley, the other nurse who had helped me years ago when I lost my daughter, came around the corner giving me an odd look. I knew she might be here since Leanne had brought her up to Cedar Falls a few weeks ago to get her out of a bad relationship. Ghost helped out until Shirley could get a job and back on her feet. “Jamie Murdock?” I was shocked she remembered my name, though I don’t know why considering Leanne had to have told her that Ghost was my dad.
I put my finger up to my lips and pleaded with my eyes. She gave me a small nod and when she got closer I quickly gave her the gist of what was going on and why I was spying on a patient, probably her patient. “After what happened before, with the baby,” I closed up for a moment, swallowing down the too heavy, too hard emotions. “I can’t go through that again, but I also can’t let anyone else go through it. I need to hear what they’re saying.
“I’ll stand with you then. I was heading out on my break, but this is more important than a lunch I can eat at the nurses station any time.”
“Thank you so much.”
The door was still cracked ever so slightly. “You didn’t need to throw a damn fit like a raving lunatic, Becs.”
“You brought your new girlfriend in here, when I thought I was in early labor. Of course I did.”
“She’s not my girlfriend, she’s my wife. No matter what, she’ll be in the baby’s life, and that means yours too. You have to learn to deal with her.”
“From what I’ve heard she’s not even with you right now. You sleep at the clubhouse and she’s at her own place. She doesn’t even want you anymore.”
“She’s here isn’t she? She’s not still in Georgia getting divorce papers ready.”
“I think it’s just morbid curiosity. Maybe she’s still hoping it’s not your baby, and then she can forgive your lying to her.” Sadly, she was a little bit right on that count. “But we both know there’s zero chance of that particular wish coming true for her. Unless God himself came down and blessed me with child, you’re the only possibility.”
“I know, Becca.” Sweet sounded so damn sure and resigned. My heart lurched, because that certainty spoke volumes about the type of relationship they had. At least it told me about how the woman had felt about Sweet. This was probably devastating for her. I couldn’t reconcile the way I felt bad about the situation with my own selfish need to keep Sweet after realizing he should have been mine all along if hadn’t been for Marisol’s lies.
“She doesn’t want you. Won’t want you with someone else’s newborn to take of. Please, baby,” she pleaded with him, and I could feel the heartbreak in her words. Hell, I felt them too, because it was a gut punch to hear her use that endearment with him. “Please, we could be a real family. You, me, and our daughter. It’s how it was supposed to be, Sweet.”
“No, it was never supposed to be this. There was,” he groaned out a noise of frustration. “I’ve already told you, I had a moment of weakness when I said I’d make you my old lady. If I had been serious, if that’s what I really wanted, then don’t you think I would have done it before I had to leave on my run? Why do you think I waited? It’s not what I wanted and I needed time to know if I was okay settling for something less than what I had once.”
The horrible, gurgling croak of a sound she made then brought tears to my eyes. I don’t think he was being intentionally cruel to her, but that wouldn’t matter. “You don’t mean that. You only changed your mind when you found her again.”
“I didn’t come back home when I could have, because I’d already decided. If I was super happy and excited about the prospect of making you an old lady, my old lady, don’t you think we would have been talking all the time while I was gone?”
“You were too busy, I understood that.”
“I wasn’t too busy, Becca. I had more down time in South Carolina and Florida than I did back home. I wasn’t too busy. I just didn’t want to include you in my life. I told you all this when you found me before my wedding. You know, where I married the woman I absolutely want to spend the rest of my life with.”
Her sobs were growing louder now. “I kept this baby, because I was going to be raising it with you. My family will disown me when they find out.”
“Your family doesn’t know?” His shock was evident by his tone.
“No,” the word came out on a whimpered sob. “I’ve been using my small trust to pay for everything so insurance doesn’t get billed.”
“Jesus, why?”
“I just told you, they’ll disown me if they know I’m having some dirty biker’s kid,” she snapped.
“Oh, so I’m a dirty biker, but you want me to leave my wife for you?”
“It’s not what I think,” she whined, suddenly sensing hope. “It’s what they would think. I was ready to be cut off by them for you. To be with you. To have our family with you.”
“That’s not going to happen. Ever. I need you to get that in your head. I don’t feel the way you do. I never did. I’m sorry for that. I really am, because I hate that I’ve put you through this. I hate that Jamie’s suffering too for my mistakes, but I can’t make feelings appear where they don’t exist, Becca. And I won’t be in a family that is completely broken from the start.”
“Unless it’s with her,” she added quietly.
“We’re not broken,” Sweet said, but he sounded like he wasn’t sure of his own words.
“Yeah, okay. If that’s what you think, then why did you wait so long to tell her? How is that not broken? You couldn’t even tell your wife you were expecting a child with another woman. It’s not even like you cheated, it happened before.”
“She lost her baby,” he whispered out just loud enough that I could hear. Nothing but stillness followed that admission. “She lost it really far along in her pregnancy. It wasn’t mine, and it was while we were separated, but I didn’t know how she’d handle knowing I was getting what she didn’t.” Nurse Shirley, who had been tuned into the soap opera going on pulled me into her with one arm around my shoulders and squeezed. She had been there that night when I lost my baby. She knew. What he was saying was partially true. I am jealous. I am furious that she gets this opportunity where I didn’t, and may never be able to. I was beyond furious that her reason for keeping the child was a man, when I would have still loved my baby if we were the only two people on the planet. Instead, my insides are messed up, and the doctors told me back then they weren’t sure I’d ever be able to carry a baby to term. So, yeah, I’m jealous that this woman gets to carry my husband’s baby. Something I may never get to experience. I also understand it’s not a rosy, happy time for her though, because he is my husband and she’s just on the fringe looking in at what she wanted too. Both of us were missing crucial pieces to our puzzles, and the other one possessed them. Sadly, we were both in a no-win situation.
“I don’t want to feel bad for her. I know none of this is her fault, I do. She seems really nice, but I was in love with you.”
“Was,” Sweet pointed out. “Past tense. You’ll get over me, and find someone who will absolutely give you everything you need, Becs, but that person was never me.”
“I can’t keep her,” she admitted then. “If I’m not raising her with you, as a family, I can’t keep her.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’ll just give her up for adoption, and then neither of us has to worry about it anymore, and your wife can forgive you.”
“Like hell you will,” he bellowed. “That is my baby, my daughter. You will not be giving her up for adoption. If you don’t want her, you can sign over your rights to me, but she is mine. Period. I will be raisin
g her.”
“What if that’s not what your wife wants?”
“That’s not your business.”
“It is if you’re going to be raising our daughter on your own.” Again, that hopeful note was in her voice.
“Becca, you just said you didn’t want her. If that’s true, you don’t get the right to care about how my life looks while I raise her. If my wife leaves me, it still won’t open up a spot for you. Nothing will. You need to make your decision, and I’ll be letting your doctor and my lawyer know that I do want that baby. Since I’m the father, I want to make sure you don’t go trying to adopt her out behind my back.”
“I wouldn’t.” The sobs were back again. “I’m sorry, Sweet. I just wanted…”
“I know what you wanted, but you can’t have it.” I heard him take a few steps away from her bed then stop. “I need to go find my wife, and figure things out. You need to focus on getting rest, and what exactly you want to do. If you’re serious about giving her up, I’ll have the lawyers draw up papers. Your family will never have to know. I’m sure we can have it sealed up, just like a closed adoption or something.”
Nurse Shirley pulled on me a bit, and I followed her at that point. She took me over to a lounge area near the nurse’s station. “Do you want him to find you right now, or do you need time to process? If you need time, I can get you out of here without him being none the wiser.”
“Thank you, Shirley, but honestly I need to hear what he has to say, and if he’s going to try to lie to me again.”
“Okay, honey. I hate sticking my nose in other people’s affairs, but it sounds to me like that boy loves you, and he was just confused, and not wanting to hurt you.”
“I know, but we’ve had issues with miscommunicating and lies before. We both promised never again. Then this. He found out on our wedding day and never said a word until we got here. I just wonder if he was trying to weigh his decision and see if this other family was more important or what?”
“No, that’s not what I was doing, Jamie.” Sweet’s voice carried in from the door to the lounge. “I swear to you, that’s not what I was waiting on. I just wanted to protect you.”
“No more lies, Sweet. Admit it, you’re more than 90 percent sure it’s yours anyway.” He looked down at his feet guiltily.
“I believe she’s mine, but there’s always a chance Becca is lying. We never had unprotected sex. There was one condom break, and I don’t know.” He pulled his hand through his hair in that nervous gesture I was so used to seeing.
“I’ll leave you two alone in here, and let the others know you’re using the space.”
“Thank you, Shirley.”
“Anytime, honey.”
“How do you know that nurse?” Sweet asked.
“She was there with me when I lost my baby.”
“Shit,” he hissed out. “I knew I shouldn’t have brought you here today.”
“No, I’m glad you did,” I told him. “There were some truths I needed to hear.”
“Truths you needed to hear?”
“Yeah, I needed to know what you were going to say to her,” I told him. I waited for the anger to kick in, but he never showed it other than to ask one simple question.
“You didn’t trust what I was telling you?”
“I trust what you show me, and over the past couple weeks you’ve shown me lies and that you’re willing to hide shit from me still.” I held my hand up when he started to argue. “There’s no denying that, Sweet. I’m not saying I don’t understand where you were coming from. I get it, but you can’t expect for me to just swallow it all down now when you come clean and expect everything to sit as gospel in my mind. When I said we had work to do earlier, I meant it. Trust is something we’re going to have to work toward again.”
“But we will be working towards it, right?”
I smiled at him then. “Of course we will.” What else could I say? I knew what it was like to be without him. I knew what the loss felt like. “Is she really going to give up custody?” I was bewildered by that decision.
“Sounds like it, but Becca’s been playing a lot of games lately trying to manipulate me into being with her. I think the best bet I have is to wait and see, and make sure that everyone who needs to know is aware that once the tests prove I’m the father, I will be taking custody of that baby.”
“You don’t really have any doubts that it’s yours, do you?”
He shook his head. “I don’t baby girl. I knew she was serious about me, and hell, I should have ended it long before I did because of that. I wasn’t ready to settle on someone that wasn’t you yet. It didn’t matter how many years had gone by. It just never felt right.”
“I know that feeling,” I assured him as he pulled me into a hug and held me tightly to his body. We stood there like that for the longest time until the door to the waiting room opened up and in walked a concerned looking Leanne and one very angry Ghost.
“I heard rumors, and thought for sure that they couldn’t be true since neither of you bothered to tell me. Then I find out that my daughter didn’t even know,” Ghost’s words flew from his mouth on a cloud of anger. “What in the fuck were you thinking?”
“Andy, keep it down. This is a hospital,” Leanne attempted to calm him with her quietly spoken words.
“I don’t give a fuck,” he shouted, still directing his words at Sweet. “Between the two of us, we’ve put my girl through hell, and now you’re going to drag her through this shit storm with no fucking warning?”
The door to the waiting room opened again and Nurse Shirley poked her head inside checking to make sure that I was okay, and to investigate the sudden shouting from within. “Ghost, I love you dearly for helping me out of a tough spot, but if you keep that up security will be called and I won’t be able to stop them from escorting you out,” she warned before turning to Sweet. “I came to tell you that she’s in active labor now. She requested you be there with her,” Shirley winced and glanced in my direction guiltily as she delivered that news.
Sweet shook his head. “Just let me know when it’s done and point me to my daughter. I think it best if I stay away from Becca before she gets her hopes up again for no reason.”
Shirley nodded her head at Sweet. “I’ll let her know you can’t come back.”
“Please, don’t sugarcoat it. I don’t want her upset while giving birth, but I also don’t want her playing any more games thinking she’s going to get more out of this than is happening. She’s not having that baby because we planned a family together. The baby is a result of a broken condom, nothing more.”
Shirley didn’t say a word and left the room. That’s when I turned to Sweet and swatted him on the chest. “I better never hear you say that again. That baby is here, or on her way to being here, and no matter what went down between you and her mother, you will respect the woman who is in there giving birth right now. You will also never, and I mean never, let me hear you repeating those words, because one day your daughter is liable to hear them, and what will she think of you then? More importantly, how will she feel about herself if all you thought of her was that she was the undesired result of a broken condom?”
Sweet’s eyes were rounded out in shock as he looked down at me, and then a smile bloomed across his face. “Yes ma’am,” he muttered, ducking his head in an attempt to hide the smile that ramped up into a full-fledged grin.
“I don’t know what you’re smiling about,” I scolded before I turned to see both Ghost and Leanne smiling at me as well. “What?”
“That kid is going to have one fierce momma bear at her back,” Leanne told me before pulling my dad closer in a side hug.
“Yeah, well, if her mom really does what she just said she was going to do, she’ll need me,” I admitted.
My dad and Leanne both gave us questioning looks but Sweet just pulled me into his arms and whispered into my ear, “Thank you, sugar.”
The next day, when we went back to the hospital to se
e the baby, Sweet took off immediately for the nursery. I wasn’t comfortable going there with him just yet. Not that I didn’t want to be supportive, but that I didn’t want Becca to think I was taking everything from her including these precious moments with her daughter after she was born.
“Can we talk?” I heard from behind me and turned to see the woman in the flesh for the first time. I nodded and followed her back down the hall to the room she was staying in. At first neither of us said anything. Then she sat gingerly on the bed and started fiddling with the blanket. “I knew,” she finally said and I just waited because I wasn’t sure what it was she knew and I didn’t want to prod her to elaborate. This was her show.
She looked up at me then. “I knew he never returned my feelings,” she confirmed what I thought she’d been saying. “I thought if I just waited him out things would change, you know?” She chuckled to herself then. “When he stopped seeing that club girl and all the others I thought maybe he was coming around. We talked about him announcing me as his old lady when he got back from his run, but I knew even then. His eyes were so dead when we talked about it. I guess somewhere deep down I knew then, but it really hit me when I watched him talk about you yesterday. I saw him with you in the hall too, and…” She sniffed back her emotion before continuing on. “He never once looked at me like that. He’s not lying when he says it was only ever you.”
“It’s like that for me too,” I told her, not wanting to hurt her but needing her to know the truth.
“I know. I could see that too. Even when I thought you would be mad about the baby and leave him, I could see it in your eyes that you would never do that.” She shrugged. “Just make them happy, okay?” She swiped at a tear that was running down her cheek before the words she had just spoken sunk in.
“What?” I asked when I couldn’t believe what she was about to say.
“Make sure they’re happy. I need you to promise me.”
“Don’t do this,” I told her. “You will regret this decision. I lost my daughter, and I would give anything to be able to hold her and have those memories that most moms get.”
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