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Thoreau turned his head in surprise to find a freshly showered Fiona wrapped in her favorite floral robe, standing in the door with her chin tilted up.
“You weren’t in California?” Wyatt asked in confusion.
“She was definitely in California. I picked her up from the airport myself. She’s saying she wasn’t there for a class.” What the hell, Fi?
She looked thrown by Thoreau’s response, but powered through. “The last time I was there to audit a class. The woman who took me in, the librarian? She’s a professor now and she invited me, so I couldn’t say no. While I was there, I got a job at a mutual friend’s company so I could support myself through that term. I only mention it because it has to do with where I was this time.”
“You have a job, Fiona. At Finn’s. And at Bellamy House, if you wanted to do more than volunteer.”
She nodded, pushing her hair out of her eyes. “I know, Wyatt, and I love working at both of them. Seamus pays me well, tips are fantastic and it still doesn’t make a dent in what I owe. I’m almost thirty. I don’t want to be in debt on top of… Well, on top of everything else.”
“Was that why you moved in with Thoreau that first time?”
When Fiona just blushed, Thoreau answered for her. “I wanted her here, and the roommate she’d been living with was getting a little Single White Female.”
“A little what?”
“Strange,” Fiona said, looking embarrassed. “She kept stealing my bras.”
Thoreau could see from the look on Wyatt’s face that she hadn’t given him those details either. Shit. “We’re getting off topic.”
Wyatt’s laugh was hard. “This feels on topic to me. Fiona demanding honesty and admissions and not giving any in return.”
“Damn it, I’m trying, Wyatt,” Fiona said, her voice rising. “Until now, I wasn’t sure if you even wanted to know. You were so focused on what you wanted for us that you proposed even after I told you I’d never get married. You’d already made your decisions. About us. About Thoreau and me. I didn’t want you to automatically decide that what I was doing was wrong without trying to understand why I was doing it.”
Thoreau stepped into the space between them to defuse the tension. He’d already known about the proposal, which was good, because everything else was coming as a total damn surprise. “We can talk about how not giving him a choice might have created more problems than it solved later, but first, why don’t you give us both that chance right now. Tell us what you were doing in California.”
She gripped her elbows and blew out a breath. “The first time I was working as a scheduling secretary and assistant counselor for an accredited LGBTQ surrogacy agency. I was helping connect young, healthy women with gay couples who were financially and emotionally ready to have a child.”
“Nothing bad about that,” Thoreau said, sending an encouraging look to the still fuming but silent Wyatt.
“This last time…” She shook her head, her eyes sparkling with the sudden appearance of unshed tears. “This last time I decided to join the program. As a surrogate.”
She wiped her damp cheek and sniffed, as if angry at the sign of weakness. “I’m healthy, and it would be my last year in the right age bracket to do something positive for someone while making the money I needed to pay off my student loans.”
Thoreau hadn’t realized he’d stepped back until the counter dug into his hip. “You were going to—”
“Carry a baby,” Wyatt finished harshly. “She left the home you shared and my bed to be a stranger’s incubator for nine months without telling us. Not just that. Lying to us.”
Fiona flinched.
No visits this time, Thoreau remembered her saying before she left. No video chats. “Oh, Fi. Why didn’t you tell me? If you needed money—”
“I don’t know, okay?” She collapsed into the nearest chair. “I didn’t want you or the Finns to magically sweep in and solve my problems with a rich husband or a computer hack.” She looked up at Thoreau. “This was my problem. Mine. I’d found a way to solve it and do something good for parents who would put their children first, no matter what. It made sense to me. I could do that, I thought, and no one would get hurt. It was the perfect solution.”
Thoreau was still assimilating the information when Wyatt knelt in front of her, taking her hands. “Perfect? For you to struggle alone through morning sickness and hormones and God knows what else? For you to leave two large families that had your back? To leave your friends, and put an entire land mass between yourself and help while you solved your own problems? Are we still that far away from earning your trust, Fiona? After everything we’ve been through?”
