“Of course,” Lily replied, as she passed Lucy over to me.
The sweet scent of newborn innocence filled my nose as I held Lucy. She continued snoozing as I took in her diminutive features. “She’s absolutely gorgeous,” I murmured.
“She looks just like me when I was a baby,” Melody said.
Jake peered over my shoulder at Lucy. “Yeah, she does.”
Brayden grinned. “She’s got Mel’s dark hair, that’s for sure.”
The door burst open to announce the arrival of AJ and Mia. While AJ held Bella in his arms, Mia had an armful of balloons and flowers. “We couldn’t wait to see the newest member of the Runaway Train family,” AJ said with a grin.
“Thank you, man,” Brayden said, before giving AJ a hug.
Rhys poked his head in the room. “Is this where the party is?”
Brayden laughed. “Sure is. Come on in.”
Rhys sidled up to me to get a look at Lucy. “Wow, you’ve got another stunner on your hands. Better look out for her in sixteen years.”
“Yeah, I think she and Melody will be giving me a lot of grey hairs,” Brayden replied.
AJ nodded. “I hear ya, man. If this baby is a girl, I think I’m going to have to invest in some early hair care prevention.”
“This baby?” Lily and I asked at the same time.
Mia huffed out a frustrated breath before smacking AJ’s arm. “You weren’t supposed to mention the baby today! It’s about Brayden and Lily, not us.”
AJ’s expression turned sheepish. “Sorry. My bad.”
Bella clapped her hands. “I gonna be a big sister!”
Mia glanced around at us. “Fine. Since Mr. Blabbermouth and my daughter can’t keep quiet, yes, I’m three months pregnant.”
A hearty “Congratulations!” went up around the room.
Next to me, Rhys groaned. “Oh God, another baby? What happened to us being a band of rockers? Now we’re a band of dirty diapers and Dora. I mean, seriously guys, we’re going to have to have a separate eighteen wheeler to get around all the crap for your kids.”
“Shut up, jackass,” AJ replied.
As the happy conversation buzzed around me, I didn’t hear any of it. I was too overwhelmed by the news of Mia’s pregnancy coupled with holding new life in my arms. Mia and Lily had what I desperately wanted, and the green-eyed monster of jealousy was rearing its head.
Sensing my jangled emotions, Lucy’s face scrunched up, and she began to cry. “Guess I better give her back now,” I said, before handing her to Lily.
“Shh, sweetheart. It’s okay,” Lily cooed softly, and within a few seconds, Lucy was quiet.
The walls of the room seemed to close in around me, and I fought to breath. I knew I had to get away, or I was going to lose it and start screaming. I bolted for the door when Jake reached out to grab my arm. “Where are you going?”
“Just to the bathroom,” I lied. I forced a smile to my lips before I slipped out of the door. Fighting the tears, I started putting distance between myself and Lily’s room. Somehow I ended up down the hall at the nursery. There were only a few babies inside since most were in the rooms with their mothers. Leaning in, I placed my hand on the glass.
A newborn baby boy slept peacefully wrapped in a tight cocoon of blankets. The name on his bassinet read, West. He had a head full of dark hair, and even in his sleep, his mouth worked on a phantom pacifier.
“Abby?” Jake questioned softly from behind me.
I didn’t turn and look at him. Instead, I kept staring at the sleeping baby. “Did you know that I wanted to be a Labor and Delivery nurse?”
“No, I didn’t.”
With a nod, I replied, “If I had finished my degree, that’s what I had planned on doing. I couldn’t imagine anything more fulfilling than helping to bring life into the world.”
Jake took a tentative step towards me. “Look, I know you’re upset about seeing Lucy and then the news of Mia’s pregnancy.”
A mirthless laugh escaped my lips. “Makes me a horrible person to be jealous, doesn’t it?”
“No, I think it’s only natural for you to feel that way. Kinda like when I see guys and their mothers. We can’t help what we want.”
“No, we can’t.”
“Maybe…maybe we can start trying for a baby.”
Although Jake’s words should have been music to my ears and the answer to a prayer, they instead just brought pain from something I’d been carefully hiding. “It won’t work,” I whispered.
“What do you mean it won’t? We haven’t even tried,” he protested.
My eyes snapped shut in pain. With the walls of my carefully constructed façade starting to crumble, I figured I had no reason to continue harboring my horrible secret. “I have to tell you something, Jake.”
“What is it?”
“I’ve been lying to you,” I choked out.
His dark brows furrowed in confusion. “About what?”
I slowly turned to face him as my heartbeat began to race out-of-control. “I stopped taking my birth control a few months ago right after I was cleared from my surgery.”
Jake stared at me in disbelief. “What?”
“I wanted a baby, and I knew it was going to be harder to conceive. You said after I came out of surgery, that when the doctor cleared me, we would try. So I thought…I thought if it took us a long time to get pregnant, then you really would be ready then. Then at the same time, the waiting and the wondering if I could was too much to bear.”
The color drained slowly out of Jake’s face. “You promised. You swore to me on our honeymoon that you would never do anything so horrible as to go behind my back.”
Tears pooled in my eyes before streaking down my cheeks. “I know. But things changed with my surgery—”
“Not enough to make you lie to me.”
“I’m sorry, Jake. I’m so, so sorry.”
He shook his head. “I can’t believe it.”
“You don’t understand what the last nine months have been like for me. I wanted to believe everything would be all right, but I couldn’t. And then I couldn’t talk to you about it because I knew how you really felt about having a baby.”
“So you’re trying to make this my fault?” he shouted, which caused a few nurses to turn their heads in our direction.
“No, I just want you to try to understand why I did what I did. I want you to see that even though I wasn’t thinking straight, there was a reason.”
“A reason for you to deceive me?”
“Please, Jake,” I begged.
He stared at me before shaking his head again. “It’s like I don’t even know who you are anymore.”
When AJ appeared before us in the hallway, Jake pointed a finger at him. “Take Abby home. I can’t be around her right now.”
Sobs overcame me as I watched Jake stalk down the hallway to the elevators. AJ’s comforting arms came around me. “Shh, it’s going to be all right.”
Something deep within me wondered how it ever could be. After all these months of deception, I had somehow known that Jake would react the way he had. Even though I knew his anger and his hurt would cause him to walk away, I hadn’t changed my mind or come clean. And now, I had to live with the consequences.
The scenery became an emerald blur, as I stared out the window of the bus. It was kinda ironic, as the last few hours, after I’d stormed away from Abby at the hospital, had been a painful blur as well. Well, painful didn’t quite cut it. In the moment, it had been fucking agony hearing her admit to stopping her birth control, and now hours later, the ache still hurt so bad it was hard to breathe.
I hadn’t gone home or even to our apartment in the city. Instead, I had just walked around downtown Atlanta—gone to Centennial Park, watched the kids playing in the water fountain. A few people recognized me and asked for autographs, but for the most part, I was isolated and alone in my torment. I’d finally headed back when it was almost time for the bus to pull out.
; Abby had stood beside our bus with Angel on her leash. Her eyes were puffy and swollen from crying. “Jake, please, talk to me,” she began, but I kept walking right past her. Instead, I did what I did best, which was basically shut people out and be an asshole. I had climbed onto AJ and Mia’s bus without a word to her.
At the sight of me, Mia raised her eyebrows to AJ, but neither one of them said anything. I eased down at the table where Bella was eating a snack and coloring. “Want some?” she asked, pushing the plate of animal crackers my way.
“No thanks, sweetheart.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw AJ and Mia having a quiet, but heated discussion. She threw her hands up before stalking over to me. “I think you’re lost.”
“Excuse me?”
She narrowed her dark eyes at me. “I said, I think you’re lost. This isn’t your usual bus. You remember, the one you and your wife ride on.”
I glanced over at AJ who shook his head like he wasn’t about to get into it with Mia by taking my side. “Please Mia, I need some time, okay?”
She huffed out a frustrated breath that ended almost in a growl. “What I would say to you right now if it wasn’t for her,” she said, pointing to Bella. She then stalked away from me over to the kitchen, and for the next hour, she ignored me. But I didn’t really mind as long as she wasn’t yelling at me. I focused my energy on staring out the window and trying to process what in the hell had happened to my life.
When I felt a tug on the pants leg of my jeans, I glanced down to see Bella staring up at me. She had abandoned her place on the couch with AJ where they had been watching movies. “Hey sweetheart,” I said. I bent over to pick her up and ease her down on my lap. Her jet-black eyes surmised me before she cocked her head at me.
“Why u sad?” she asked.
Great, I didn’t even begin to imagine how I was going to explain this one. “Do you think I’m sad?”
Her dark ponytail bobbed up and down as she nodded. Leaning over, her tiny hands came to my cheeks. Her fingers gripped my flesh before she pushed my face up. “Smile, Unca Jake.”
I laughed through my smushed cheeks. “Okay, okay. I’ll smile instead.”
A pleased little grin spread on her face. Grabbing a piece of paper off the table, she waved it at me. “I dwawed u a picture.”
“You did?”
“Uh, huh.”
As I stared down at the scratchy, multicolored drawing, I knew better than to make any assumptions about what was on there. I’d made that mistake when Jude was little and caused him to burst out crying when I suggested the drawing of me was a dog. “So tell me about the picture,” I urged.
Her little finger stretched out to one of the stick figure/semi blobs. “Dat’s u and Dat’s Aunt Abby.”
“I see. Oh, you did a really good job.” She had managed to give the Abby blob yellow hair and mine brown. My eyes honed in on the yellow and brown blob beside us. “Is that…Angel?”
She giggled. “No.”
“Oh, is it your kitty, Jack Sparrow?” At the mention of his name, the one-eyed Siamese cat lifted his head from his perch over the table and eyed me contemptuously.
“It’s u baby,” she said, as if it was the most obvious choice in the whole-wide world.
I sucked in a harsh breath. After today, Bella’s comment was like a double roundhouse kick straight to the groin. “But I don’t have a baby, sweetheart.”
“But u will. Evewy night before I go to sleep when I say my pwayers, Mommy and I pway for you and Aunt Abby’s baby.”
I cut my eyes from the drawing to stare at Mia. An unapologetic smile appeared on her face before she quickly looked at Bella. “Come on, pumpkin. It’s time for your nap.”
“No,” Bella protested, burrowing down in my lap. Her fingers twisted into the material of my T-shirt as if I was her lifeline to keep her out of naptime hell.
AJ crossed his arms over his chest, looking seriously parental. “You know the rules, mi amor. If you don’t take a nap, you don’t get to see me at the show tonight.”
Bella squirmed in my lap. She, along with Jude and Melody, loved nothing more than to put on their noise-blocking headphones and stay backstage, watching us perform until their bedtime. Leaning over, I whispered into her ear. “Go on and take your nap. I’ll need to see you at the show so you can make me smile,” I urged.
“Okay,” she said. Before she hopped down, she gave me a smacking kiss on the cheek. “‘Mon, Jack,” she instructed. Although the cat hated me and AJ with a passion, he had a special love and patience for Bella. He rose up and stretched before hopping down. Once Jack Sparrow was at her side, she put her tiny hand in Mia’s and started down the hallway to the bedroom. Glancing at me over her shoulder, she said, “Love u, Unca Jake.”
“Love you too, princess.”
Once the door was shut behind them, I exhaled the breath I’d been holding. As AJ eased into a seat across from me at the table, I gave him a shaky smile. “Your daughter is far too smart for her own good.”
He laughed. “Tell me about it. It’s like she’s two and a half going on twenty-two.”
An uncomfortable silence then passed between us. I could hear Mia reading Bella a story. Finally, I cleared my throat. “So Abby was pretty upset when I left, huh?”
AJ grimaced. “I’d say emotionally obliterated.”
My chest ached at the prospect, and I sighed raggedly. “She fucking blindsided me, man. To find out she’s been lying to me these past few months. That she ended up doing what I feared the most—what she swore she would never do.” Gritting my teeth, I shook my head. “How can I ever trust her again?”
“Look man, I know that it all seems pretty desperate right now. But you have to sit back and think for a minute. Abby has stood beside you through some pretty heinous shit—times when you were hard to love and did things that she didn’t understand or maybe approve of. But she stayed right by your side, man.”
“I never openly deceived her like this,” I protested.
“Would you just take a second to think about it from her perspective? She goes through a pretty horrible surgery, she’s worried to death about having a baby, something you know she wants more than anything in the world, so what does she do? She cracks and does something that goes completely against her character.”
I stared down at Bella’s drawing, taking in AJ’s words. “I’m not saying what she did wasn’t wrong, Jake. It’s a hard pill to swallow when anyone lies to you. But at the same time, you have to look at the bigger picture. She wasn’t cheating on you or stealing money from you. She wanted a baby—something she said you gave her hope for after her surgery.”
“I wasn’t thinking straight that night. I didn’t want to hurt her after her surgery, so I lied.”
AJ’s brows rose up. “Oh, so it’s okay for you to lie, but it’s not for her?”
“Fuck,” I muttered, rubbing my hand over my face.
“You have to talk to Abby. I know she’s sorry for what she did. She loves you so much that she would never, ever do something to hurt you.”
“But she did.”
“You lied to save your own skin. She lied because she was so incredibly scared. When she did, it wasn’t out of spite, but desperation.”
I raised my brows. “Is there a fucking difference?”
AJ snorted. “I sure as hell think so. It was out of desperation that Mia handcuffed me to that shower. She doesn’t have a spiteful bone in her body.” He gave me a pointed look. “And neither does Abby.”
“But—”
Holding up his hand, AJ killed any argument I had with his next words. “Wasn’t it desperation that drove you to say the hateful things you said to try to drive Abby away when Susan was dying?”
“Yeah,” I croaked.
“Then I rest my case.”
“Would you forgive Mia if she had done the same thing?”
AJ didn’t even hesitate before replying. “Under the circumstances, yes, I would.” He then narrow
ed his eyes. “And then I would fucking man-up and stop denying the love of my life what she wanted most in the world.”
I gave a defeated sigh. Maybe AJ was right. Maybe I needed to be the man and husband Abby needed and give her what she wanted. Wasn’t marriage supposed to be about compromise and sacrifice? Abby had been doing a hell of lot of that, but I hadn’t gotten with the program yet. “How do you do it?”
His brows furrowed in confusion. “Do what?”
“The father thing. How do you do it now, and how did you not totally lose your shit when Mia got pregnant?”
AJ shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, sure, I freaked out when I found out Mia was pregnant. I couldn’t sleep for worrying how much having a baby was going to change my life. Did I really want my life to be changed? Did I really want the responsibility of some little person? But in the end, the answer was yes, I did. Maybe deep down, I always knew I wanted kids. Then at the same time, I had to put my fears on the backburner because I was fighting for Mia. I wanted a life with her and my child so much that I guess it took away some of the fear. Yeah, there were days where I’d wake up in a sweat, scared to death that I was going to fail Mia and Bella. And once Bella was born, I began worrying about her constantly. But that’s what being a father is about.”
“How do you know if you’re ever ready to be a father, though?”
AJ laughed. “Most guys never do, and even if you think you’re ready, you’re really not.” He cocked his head at me. “Why are you so scared of being a father?”
“Too many fucking reasons,” I muttered.
“Yeah, well, hit me with some of them.”
I threw up my hands. “Fine, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“I’m listening.”
“I seem to hurt the ones I love, so I’m afraid of something bad happening to my kid.”
“That’s not true, Jake. Bad things happen every day. You can’t help who they happen to. Susan dying of cancer wasn’t your fault. Abby getting beaten and then having the cyst, not your fault either. Your kid may have asthma or break his arm falling off of a bike, but that isn’t your fault either.”
I wrung my hands in my lap, afraid to voice to AJ my ultimate fear. Under his intense stare, I finally caved. “I’m afraid I’ll become my father. I’m afraid Abby will be so consumed by the baby that she won’t care about me the same way, and when I don’t have her undivided love and attention, I’ll look for it elsewhere.”