“So what does this mean for us?” he asked.
“It means we’re having a baby. It doesn’t have to mean anything else.” I felt sick. This wasn’t how I wanted this to happen at all. “I don’t expect anything from you. It doesn’t have to be a big deal.”
“You’re having my baby, Honey. That’s a big deal. ”
I shifted forward on the couch and hugged my cushion tighter, aware of my raging pulse in my neck. “We don’t need to figure this out now.”
“I just found out you’re having my baby.”
“Exactly. And that’s why we shouldn’t talk now. You need time to process it. I think you should leave.”
He looked surprised. “Leave?”
“You need to process the news. And that isn’t going to happen with me standing over your shoulder.”
He frowned. “I don’t think I should leave. We need to talk about this.”
My mind rolled back to when I was ten and my mom found out she was pregnant to some guy who worked the crap tables at one of the casinos on the strip. He said he was happy. Said he wanted to be a family. Talked about living in a house with a lawn and a swing set in the backyard. Two days later, my mom and I came home from doing the grocery shopping to find our TV and the roll of money we stashed in the freezer, gone. We never saw him again. And mom never had the baby.
I exhaled. Sadly, it wasn’t the only time my mom found herself in that situation. I didn’t have any brothers or sisters. And my mom never failed to remind me that it was because no man wanted an instant family. The world isn’t made up of Mike Brady’s, Honey. No man wants to take on another man’s responsibility. They don’t want you, so they don’t want me.
I didn’t know what man was responsible for me. I’m not sure my mom ever knew either. She was fifteen when he got her pregnant and then ran away. What I did know were the legion of unsuitable men who followed in his footsteps over the next eighteen years. The mechanic who moved us into his trailer and then kicked us out when Mom came home early from work and caught him in bed with the neighbor. The craps croupier with the lazy eye. The businessman who traveled a lot, but who actually had another family in another state. Then, finally, the one who decided he wanted to visit my room at night when I was twelve.
All of them made promises.
All of them broke them.
If my childhood taught me one thing, it was that rash decisions lead to heartbreak.
“We can’t talk now,” I said. “Not until you’ve processed it. If you stay, you’ll make promises you can’t keep because you’ve been caught off guard.”
His eyebrows came together. “I’m not in a habit of doing that.”
I stood up. “Please.”
For some stupid reason I felt like crying.
Maybe it was my hormones. Or maybe it was because I was throwing him out of the house, when really, I wanted him to stay and rub my feet and tell me everything was going to be okay.
Or maybe, just maybe, I wanted to cry because no matter how much I wanted to deny it, I really liked him.
CALEB
She’s pregnant.
It was the one thought rolling through my mind as I rode through the early evening light. I didn’t know where I was going, I just rode. Honey wanted me to process the news and she was right, I needed to work out what it all meant and how the pieces all fit together.
A baby.
It was so damn unexpected, I didn’t know what to make of it. I mean, I loved kids. And I always knew I’d have a family of my own one day. But now?
I’d never even had any close calls. I didn’t fuck without a condom. Not even with Brandi and she was the only girlfriend I’d ever had.
But now . . .
With the flick of my wrist, I rode farther into the evening. I considered dropping into Joe’s, one of the local bars, to see some friendly faces, but decided adding alcohol to the mix wasn’t going to make things any clearer. I thought about dropping in on Cade and Indy, but Indy was only weeks away from giving birth to their first baby and I didn’t want to impose. I thought about the clubhouse but I wasn’t in the mood for the usual suspects and their antics, so I headed toward Cavalry Hill.
At the top of the old army fort, I parked my bike and lit a cigarette. Below, Destiny glittered with the first lights of the evening.
I thought about Honey. I was really into her. But trying to establish something while she was pregnant wasn’t a good idea. There was more at risk now if things didn’t work out. What we needed to do was focus on the baby and then see what happened.