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“Work on what?”
“Just this assignment.”
I’m incredulous. “You got up in the middle of the night to work on an assignment?”
Maverick pushes himself up to sitting, and it brings us face-to-face. He rubs the sleep out of his eyes and fixes me with a serious look. “It’s really important to me that we graduate together,” he says. “Especially now.”
He kisses me before I can respond to that. I chase his lips when he pulls away, but he only lets me sneak one more peck before holding me at arm’s length. I roll my lips as he studies me closely. “Do you feel okay?”
I’m not sure how I feel, so I answer vaguely. “Yeah.”
He looks like he doesn’t believe me, and he probably shouldn’t. “What about, like…morning sickness?”
“None yet.” I shrug. “It’s really early.”
One of his hands drifts down to my abdomen and caresses lightly. My stomach is not flat; there’s already a soft curve there that Maverick loves to touch and kiss when we’re fooling around. I try to imagine looking down and seeing a visibly pregnant belly instead of just a few extra pounds. I imagine Maverick would still have his hands all over that part of me, feeling the baby kick and dropping goodnight kisses atop my skin. The thought gives me butterflies.
As if reading my mind, Maverick raises his eyes from my stomach to fix me with his piercing gaze. “You know we can do this.”
“Is that what you want?” I ask, even though it’s obvious what the answer is. He was quick to school his expression last night, but I didn’t miss the way his face fell when I first brought up the possibility of having an abortion.
Still, he’s careful not to say what he’s thinking. “It’s not my body going through it.”
“I know, and I appreciate that,” I tell him sincerely. “But I still want to know what you’re thinking. I want us to make this decision together.”
Maverick exhales hard through his nose and looks away. For one heart-stopping moment, I think I’ve misread him and he actually doesn’t want this at all. But then he begins to speak, and I realize that he’s trying to temper the emotion in his voice. “Do you believe in soulmates, Zale?”
I pick at a loose thread on the back of the couch. “Not really.”
“Me either. I don’t think I was fated to meet you, and that makes me feel so lucky that I did.” He reaches for my hand, and our fingers fold together like two pieces of a puzzle. “You’re the most important person in the world to me, and I’m with you for the long haul. That’s number one. Okay?”
I’m fighting my own emotions when I murmur, “Okay.”
“Number two, though—the baby—I know the timing sucks. Iknow. But I want to go for it. I want it because I want it, but I also want it because I can tell you want it.” With his thumb, he brushes my cheek. “You’re holding back because you’re scared.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Oh, I’m fucking terrified,” he says with feigned levity. “Doesn’t mean I don’t want to do it anyway.”
I don’t look at him as I wind the thread around my pinky until the tip of my finger turns white. Then I pull it off slowly, watching the color return. “How will we—” I stop, clear my throat. “What if I can’t handle it? What if I end up like Marie and our baby ends up like me?”
“What if our baby ends up like you?” Maverick asks incredulously with just a hint of annoyance in his tone. “What if our baby turns out to be brilliant and kind and loyal and loving? Yeah, that would be terrible.”
Part of me preens under his praise, but I feel a pinprick of irritation as well. I drop his hand and scoot away, putting a few extra inches between us. “What if our baby ends upabandoned by its mother, is what I meant.”
My words seem to suck all the air out of the room. They still needed to be said. I may not believe in soulmates or astrology or signs from the universe, but I can’t ignore the warnings blaring in my head that I am dangerously close to repeating history that would be better off left behind.
“You really think you have it in you to do what she did?” Maverick asks in a strangled voice.
“Not right now,” I admit. “But we don’t know what will happen.”
He shakes his head. “Of course we don’t know what will happen. Nobody ever knows what’s going to happen, about anything.” His voice is low but fierce, an impassioned plea for me to break free from my fears and let us have the life I know we’re both longing for. I stare down at the floor with my chin in my hand. “You’re not Marie, Azalea. I’m not your dad. I’m notmydad.”
I look up at him, furrowing my brow. “What does that mean?”
His jaw works for a minute, a telltale sign that he’s trying to get his emotions under control. When he speaks, it’s carefully controlled with just a subtle waver that most people wouldn’t pick up on. “A while ago, my dad told me that he and my mom had a rough patch when I was first born. It sounded a lot like your parents—he was always working, she had to do everything at home. And they were in their thirties by then, Azalea. They’d gone through grad school together and already been married for three or four years, and itstillhappened.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” It comes out harsher than I mean it to.
