I take them in mine, lacing our fingers together. One at a time. If she wants to leave, I’m coming with her.
“You have to tell me, Lil,” I whisper as more water pools in her green eyes. “I can’t guess.” I try to hold back more emotions, but I connect so succinctly with her that it’s almost impossible not to feel every single thing. Like the flick of each nerve. Like fingertips to fire then snow. I am terrified of what she might tell me, but I am more scared of losing her. “Please…don’t make me guess.”
She nods a couple times, staying quiet. And then her lips part in shock and realization. “Do you think…you think I cheated?” Her face shatters at that possibility. What? I almost start crying heavily. I suck it down, my nose flaring from holding it back.
This pain. It’s like someone bulldozes me flat. On the ground. “I don’t know, Lil,” I breathe. “You’ve been acting distant, and you didn’t come with me to Paris, so you had that time alone…I just, I don’t…I don’t know.”
“I didn’t cheat,” she says, her chin trembling again. She looks like she could punch me in the arm, like she usually does. But she has no energy to do so, no fight left for that blow. “You have to believe me.”
“I do, Lil,” I say, taking a breath, not of full relief. “But you have to f**king tell me what’s going on.”
“I was upset…overwhelmed.” She rubs her eyes with her palm but the tears have yet to cease. “And I wanted to do things and I just thought…this would help.” The shame builds as she glances between the showerhead and her knees, crumpled into herself.
“Just spit it out,” I urge. “Whatever it is. Just get it off your chest right now, love.” I just want her to feel okay again.
She focuses on our laced hands. “I didn’t know how to tell you…I thought while you were in Paris, I’d figure out a good way to say it, but I don’t…I don’t think there’s a good way. And I just kept putting it off, thinking tomorrow will be the day.” She keeps rubbing her eyes.
Then finally, she drops her hands.
And she says with a big inhale, “I’m eight weeks pregnant.”
I go cold, like a car impacts me on the right side. Glass shattering. The car swerving. Spinning. The airbag popping into my chest, knocking the wind right out of me. The shock and fear pummels me into a state without thoughts.
“You can’t be…” Blood rushes to my head. My eyes fall to her stomach, the black shirt that suctions to her belly. I roll the fabric to her ribs. I mistook the faint bump as weight gain. Nothing detrimental to our lives. Nothing that could overturn us.
I finally look to the other people who’ve been standing in the bathroom. Ryke. Connor. Rose. Rose. “You’re pregnant,” I say to her.
“We both are,” Rose says in a quiet voice, scared of me. Everyone is frightened of me.
Of how I’ll react.
I have never once wanted a child. Never even considered it for a moment’s time. I’m selfish, damaged and spiteful. No matter how much I love Lily, there are things about me that will never change. “That’s not possible,” I say. Though it is. With the amount of sex we have—too much and too careless—this could’ve always been an end result.
“The probability is slim but it’s not impossible,” Connor answers, his hands casually pocketed in his slacks. He’s known this for a while. “Their cycles had synced up after living together. I don’t use protection with Rose, and I’m sure you didn’t with Lily.”
“I forgot to take my birth control a few days,” Lily whispers, not able to meet my eyes, staring only at her hands, the ones I’ve abandoned. “I didn’t realize it…”
I pick up both of her hands again, and her tears fall harder. I squeeze them. “You could’ve told me sooner.” My mind reverses back to yesterday, and I frown. What I admitted out loud about kids—I had crushed her and I didn’t even f**king realize it. I go further back. Paris. I still feel that night like a deep scar beneath my skin. I was lost, and no part of me would’ve functioned the right way with this news.
She had eight weeks, maybe less, to tell me the truth. And all of them, I wasn’t strong enough to handle it. I can sit here soaked in freezing water, clutching her in my arms, and admit that.
“I know you don’t want kids,” she sniffs, restraining the tears as much as possible. “And I didn’t want to stress you out with this…I’m sorry.”
The guilt slams into me. “Shhh.” I press her harder to my chest, her legs clenching back around my waist. “It’s okay, Lil.” I never meant for her to bear a burden this heavy alone. Not one we should’ve carried together.
“It’s not,” she says, wiping her cheeks and then staring up into my eyes. Her big round green ones are glassy and reddened. “You don’t want a baby.”
No. I have never wanted a baby. But met with this reality, I only want to do right by Lily. I just want to fix every wrong that I have ever made. I am ready, so f**king ready, to defeat this.
To never face these demons again.
I am done feeling sorry for myself.
My fingers tangle in her damp hair. “That doesn’t matter anymore.” I put my hand to my chest. “We’re addicts. You and me.” I motion between us. That fact won’t change, no matter how much we wish it into oblivion. “Maybe we shouldn’t have kids, but we have the means to raise him or her well.”
“And you have us,” Rose proclaims.
Lily and I look back at the three people who’ve been the foundation of our healthy lives. Rose raises her chin with a determined expression like you both can do this.
And then Connor. He stands poised, with more confidence than either of us has ever acquired. I can almost feel it radiate off his body and flow through mine. His lips begin to rise, knowing the effect he has on me, and most people.
My brother. Ryke has his arms crossed over his chest. I think he knows, as well as I do, that I am nowhere near ready to have a kid. But the negativity has been swept from his hard, dark features. He has that same sturdy, unbending will in his eyes as the rest of them.
The perseverance to do anything, to be anything. To thrive.
Someday, that word will belong to us too. After years of coming up short, it’s all I’ve ever wanted.
64
2 years : 03 months
November
LILY CALLOWAY
The steaming shower fogs the glass door. We’re in our bathroom upstairs, where privacy exists, and Loren Hale towers above me, the water blanketing us in hot sheets. We thaw ourselves after the icy bath, his intense gaze never shifting off mine.
Out of all the reactions I imagined he’d have, this was the one I least expected. But the one that I love the most. It’s the one where he is indisputably committed to us, as a team. I wouldn’t ask anything more from him.
My hands crawl up his toned back, and his palm falls to my bottom, the other cupping my face. His amber eyes fill me whole. He leans so close, his mouth pausing an inch from my neck. A cry escapes before he even presses his lips against me.
But when they close over the tender skin, I buck into him, my leg rising around his hip. The thick fog makes it hard to breathe, my body heating with the water and his touch, sensual and slow.