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My heart picks up, the blood rushing in my ears. I know he wants children. I knew he was going to freak out. Somehow, the idea that he wouldn’t wantthischild hadn’t yet occurred to me. But that’s a distinct possibility. Everything he said about the timing being terrible is true, plus some. The burden of the way we’ve chosen to live our life was always going to fall heaviest on him. Maybehe’snot ready to add an unexpected pregnancy to an already precarious situation.
“Are you sorry that Julia is carrying your child? Do you not want to have this baby?”
He licks his lips and closes his eyes, and I can’t tell if whatever’s happening inside his head is hurting him or not.
“No. I’m not sorry.” He shakes his head, tiny jerks side to side…like a toy stuck in place. “I’m sorry about how it happened. I’m sorry I betrayed your trust, and I’m sorry it was an accident rather than something we planned together, but—” he opens his eyes, and tears make them water. “No. I’m not sorry she’s having my baby. I’m not, and I know that makes me a selfish bastard, and I’m sorry for that too.”
His hands are still gripping my wrists like it’s the only thing keeping him upright.
“A little Lancaster-Williams,” I whisper. His eyes snap open. “The first of many. Long may she reign. It rolls off the tongue, don’t you think? Baby girl, Lancaster-Williams. Say it. It’s so lyrically pleasing. Lancaster-Williams.”
I watch his lips silently trace out the moniker Lancaster-Williams several times over.
"What if Julia doesn't want it?" he asks in a tiny voice. "We haven't talked about children, except for in the abstract. Not as the three of us. Will it call us both dad? Will the baby be confused? It's not a great time, J. It's..." he falls heavily into my arms. "She's going to hate me."
Of course, it’ll call us both dad. Besides that…he does realize it won’t be born able to talk, right?
What am I going to do with my brooding loves?
I cup the back of his head and hold him to me. His arms circle around my back, and it’s wonderfully bizarre to feel him be so affectionate in public. He doesn’t realize how far he’s come. A year ago, at no time would he have ever let me touch him like this. He certainly wouldn’t have initiated it.
Hell, the idea would’ve never entered his mind.
Now here we are, in the middle of a hospital with possibly hundreds of people walking outside our tiny bubble with glass walls, and he doesn’t pay any attention to anything except us.
"She’s not going to hate you, baby. She's going to be over the moon with happiness. Didn’t you see her face?” I chuckle at my own foolishness. “No, you probably didn’t. You were already knee-deep in freaking out by that point.”
I use my thumb to pull his face enough that I can look into his eyes.
“The woman you love is having your baby. Take a minute and appreciate how monumental this moment is.”
Lancaster-Williams, he mouths again. At long last, his face lights up with joy.
“She’s having our baby.”
Our baby. You’re damn right she is.
“She’s having our baby!” he all but shouts.
Then he kisses me, and it’s soft and sweet, and I feel it all the way to my toes. By the time he pulls away, and I take a gander at my watch, the clock confirms what the heaviness in my eyes insinuated.
It’s well after midnight.
“Happy New Year, Remi.”
8
JULIA
“Knock knock,” a muffled voice calls, immediately following the physical rapt of knuckles on wood. They don’t bother to wait for an answer before the door swings open. The woman walks backward, dragging a blue and silver wheelchair into the room with her and a blanket folded on the seat. “Good Morning!” she says with way too much enthusiasm.
“M-m-morning,” I mumble through a yawn.
It’s still dark out, for heaven’s sake. Either it's the end of her shift, and she should be exhausted, or it’s the beginning, and she’s only been awake for an hour. Either way, she should not have that much energy when I feel like I’ve downed half a bottle of sleeping pills.
Her perkiness reminds me painfully of Justin. Maybe they were separated at birth…I almost giggle.
Twenty years apart.
