Sully was giving me a look like he was about to spiral again.
Raking his free hand through his hair, he darted his eyes away from mine, pained. “I’m just thinking about it.”
“Thinking about what?”
“You in California. I wish…you would have called me, told me sooner. So you didn’t have to do all this alone. I would have flown out there. I would have gone with you. I would have helped you move. I would have—” He cut himself off, took an intentional breath. He released his hair, found my eyes again. “What did the doctor say?”
“That I am most definitely pregnant.”
“Anything else?”
I gave a hesitant nod, not sure if now was the time to go in-depth about it all.
“There are some…other considerations. Some time-sensitive things I’ll need to take care of.”
“Mm.” He dropped his hand from my face but let it land on my thigh. Kept it there. Traced his thumb in slow, steady circles. It was amazing how his touch still had the ability to light me up inside. “Tell me about these time-sensitive things. Please.”
Sully’s calm cadence helped me admit, “I have an appointment later this week with Maternal-Fetal Medicine. At a local clinic.”
His body went rigid. His thumb stopped tracing circles.
“What’s that?” he asked. “What does that mean? Is that something different than normal?”
“An MFM doctor is a specialist.”
“A specialist,” Sully repeated, his tone dropping.
“Yes, generally someone you see for high-risk pregnancies.”
Sully sucked in and then seemed to hold his breath for several long moments. When he finally decided to breathe again, he muttered “high risk” a few times, as though he needed to process the words, force them into his brain. Then he stood and began pacing the length of the living room, a deep crease between his brows.
“Why is it high risk? Is it because of what happened in college?” he asked, and I nodded.
Sully swore beneath his breath and continued to pace.
“I want to come,” he said after a heavy pause where the only thing echoing in the room was his footsteps and our heartbeats. “To the appointment.”
I sighed. I should have anticipated this part of the conversation, but my brain had never really gotten past the initial reveal.
“Sawyer…I don’t know.”
He came to a stop in front of me. “You don’t know?”
“The appointment, it will just be informational,” I explained. “You won’t be missing out on anything, and I think I just need to…I don’t know, wrap my head around all the important details myself without also trying to navigate this.Us.” I considered him, giving what I hoped was an empathetic expression. I knew this was a lot, could see the anxious energy vibrating inside him. “And I think you need a second to process this, too. About what youwantit to mean for you. And for us.”
His lips pulled tight. “Whatdoesit mean for us?”
Oh, God. Despite it being a reasonable counterquestion, I still balked at it.
“Well.” I tightly clasped my hands in my lap. “Like I said, I think it’s something to think about. To talk about. But it likely means committing to raising a child together. Committing to having a…working sort of relationship. But you can let me know what your thoughts are after you’ve had some time to process.”
Sully was silent for a long time, chewing on the inside of his cheek as he brooded.
Finally, “So you think we should be…coworkers?”
When he said it like that, it did sound sort of cold. That wasn’t what I’d meant, though. It was more that we had to agree to work together, to be a team. But I didn’t exactly trust myself to get into it at the moment, not when my emotions—bothour emotions—were all over the place.
“You know what I mean,” I sighed.
