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“I’m okay,” I whisper.
“You were kept in a dirty motel room,” he whispers back. “That’s not normal. You should have been seeing a doctor. Taking prenatal classes sooner, and meeting other moms. You were denied all of that.”
“All I think about are those little chances I had to escape, and I didn’t take them.” I swallow and meet his eyes. “If I’d known…”
“Known what?”
“That you’d help me.”
“I was furious with Cormac.” Darragh looks away. “Putting so much at risk by being vulnerable. But had I known he had you, I would have come for you.”
“Even though I made a stupid mistake and lied to everyone?” I gulp back regret from that epic miscalculation. “I was twenty-one and scared.”
“Shhh.” He brushes his soft lips against my forehead.
We both look down, remembering Sophie is with us.
“You like kissing her forehead,” she says with more curiosity than anything else.
“It’s the best way to tell someone’s temperature,” Darragh says.
I snort a laugh because as a doctor, he can’t believe that.
“I’m feeling better, Sophie.” Looking down into the shopping cart, I say, “So tell me what all this is for.”
“Tell me, too, Daddy!” Sophie chirps. “Can I help when the baby gets here?”
“You sure can, honey.” Darragh pulls her close and then shows me everything in the cart, explaining what they’re for.
After a while, it all makes sense.
“Much of this is for the first month or two, and then you don’t need it. Babies are incredibly easy so long as…” He lifts his eyes back to me. “The baby is healthy.”
“The ultrasound said so.”
“Right.”
“Why would the baby not be healthy?” Sophie asks, holding a stuffed bear she claimed the minute we got to the store.
Because I did drugs for a few months and your uncle smoked pot in the room until the day we got arrested.
I don’t say that, obviously.
“The baby will be healthy.” Darragh continues down the aisle, and I detect him smiling.
He likes this, likes going through all this again. I’m sure he liked it with Sophie, too. Daddies love their little girls, but boys ignite different passions in men. I believe him when he said DNA-wise, my baby is biologically his.
Any O’Rourke baby will be consumed, nurtured, and protected by his family. I just have to consider how my father will feel about it.
Can we keep my baby a secret forever?
Baby-boy fever shivers through me, too, as we pick out blue-themed bedding, infant onesies, and a wardrobe of tiny outfits with cars, trucks, and bears on them.
Walking to the register, Darragh spots an infant Seahawks jersey and snags it. Because, of course, a boy baby needs one.
Everything is rung up, and I close my eyes at the total cost. But Darragh comfortably, and even possessively, pays for it all.
I tell myself he brought me to Seattle, made me live with him. He’s choosing to keep me. Keep me and my baby, all for himself.
