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It’s unreal. Fascinating. Terrifying and surreal—but fascinating.
“Do you want to feel it?” Lainey asks.
“Feel it?”
She nods, dabbing at her lips with the napkin, and standing up.
“It’s small but it’s there.” She lifts her shirt and pushes the top of her jeans down, then she takes my hand and presses it against her stomach. Her skin is taut and warm over the surprisingly firm swell of the bulge.
And there’s a fucking baby in there.
I know I’m repeating myself but I can’t help it—my mind is so blown there should be pieces of skull all over the goddamn floor right now.
“Wow.” My thumb drags back and forth over that petal soft skin.
“Wild, right?”
I shake my head. “It’s crazy.”
Too crazy not to talk about. To come to a crystal-clear understanding about. To lay down ground rules and expectations. It’s not so different from a math problem—I just need to know the parameters so I can solve this mother.
I pull my hand away and Lainey sits down across from me, digging back into the mashed potatoes.
“Okay, so, I don’t want to sound like an asshole, but . . . how do you see this working, exactly?” I ask. “What do you expect from me, Lainey?”
She gazes back at me with those hazel eyes—a dozen different emotions swimming in their depths. Hope, determination, joy, worry, attraction and lust—it’s all there, swirled together, naked for me to see.
I don’t think Lainey has a poker face.
“I don’t expect anything from you. Or . . . I expect everything, if that’s what you want to give.” She puts her fork down, her brow scrunching a bit. “I’ve had time to process this, to think it through. When I thought I wasn’t going to find you, I was prepared to have this baby—to keep it, and raise it and love it. That was my choice, it still is. Now you have a choice to make—you have to decide if being a dad is something you want to do. The rest is just logistics.”
“Decide if I want to be a dad?” I lift my chin at the bump. “Kind of late for that, isn’t it?”
“It takes more than knocking someone up to be a dad.”
My neck goes hot and itchy and my tongue feels swollen, like I’m having an anaphylactic reaction.
“Yeah, I get that.”
She goes on to explain about Life with Lainey—her blogging, her videos, her deal with Facebook.
“The contract is for one year so Jason and I will be at the lake house until next summer. After that, I was going to get an apartment or rent a house in town so Jay won’t have to change schools again.” She takes a big breath. “Neither of us planned this, Dean. But, we can get to know each other, we can become friends and we can raise this baby together.”
Her gaze moves down to the table. “Or, if you don’t want that, then that’s okay too.”
I hold up my hand. “What does that mean ‘that’s okay too’?”
“I won’t force you to do anything you don’t really want to do. Parenting doesn’t work that way—not for me. It’s too hard and too important. You have to want it, Dean.”
“So . . . what?” I try to picture how that would work in my head. “You squeeze out the kid and then afterward, we’re strangers? Just two people passing each other at the Bagel Shop on Sunday mornings? Hey, how’s it going, great fucking weather we’re having. How about those Giants?”
Lainey shrugs, her silky ponytail swaying with the movement.
“It’ll be what it’ll be.”
It’s kind of eerie how calm she is about all this. It makes me look for the other shoe—a massive, steel-tipped boot—that’s bound to be painful when it drops.
“What about child support?”
“If you decide to be a part of this child’s life, we can talk about how we’ll divide the finances. If not, I don’t want your money. I can take care of myself and my kids.”
Lainey’s got a stubborn streak. It’s there in the flash of her amber-green eyes, the twitch of her nose and rise of her chin. It’s very, very cute.
And confusing as hell.
Because I’ve spent more than half my life being chased by women. They always cared more than I did, were always more invested in the relationship than I was. I’m not saying that to be a douche—it’s just the truth. They wanted the commitment, the promise, the key to the house, the drawer in the dresser, the ring.
But now, this woman could chain me to her for the rest of our lives. And she’s not. Lainey’s not just putting the ball in my court, she’s laying it at my feet and walking away.
I have no idea what to make of her.
Lainey pushes her empty plate back, and takes a drink of her water.
“You don’t have to decide this minute—we have time. You should think about it, figure out what you want.”
