“Well, hello to you, too, Miss Merry Sunshine,” Laura cracked. She gratefully accepted the cup of decaf Josie offered.
“They’ll be here soon and this is the first chance I’ve had in a week to talk openly with you. Those two seemed to have had a schedule for making sure one of them was always there in the hospital.”
“They did.”
Josie’s face was agog. “All so I couldn’t talk alone with you?”
Sip. “I don’t think that’s why.” Sip. “Just, you know, because we’re—” What words were supposed to come out next? Together? Were they back together? Laura didn’t know where they stood, actually. Five days in the hospital had been long enough to learn that she was fine. The baby was fine. The polyhydramnios had actually improved a bit, though it wasn’t gone. She would need constant monitoring for the rest of the pregnancy, but they hadn’t found any problems with the baby that explained it. Being extra-big with added fluid would make it harder to move around, and could make the delivery a bit risky, but they’d ruled out birth defects.
Which had been the best news Laura had received in— well, ever. Diana had reviewed her chart with Sheri and the supervising obstetrician, Dr. Kalharian, and they’d agreed on a schedule for follow-up care.
Her orders: go home, rest, hydrate, recover.
Easier said than done, because she’d had no home. Until Mike and Dylan had offered her one. Josie, too. Deciding had been hard and easy at the same time. Josie was the easy choice, and her friend seemed to assume Laura would pick her.
But her heart, her gut—her womb—told her to go heal in the mountains.
She figured out pretty quickly that the guys would respect her, would treat her like a queen, and would wait on her hand and foot if she stayed at the cabin. Dylan had told her, with a quiet serenity and troubled demeanor that was so unlike him, about his and Mike’s...fight? Breakup? What word do you use when there isn’t one to describe the relationship in the first place?
So many strands of the relationship between the three of them had been snapped by someone deciding not to tell a simple secret, the kind of information that really wasn’t a deal breaker, but that can become one if withheld for too long. Dylan and Mike really cared about her—she knew that, and knew that by screaming at them that day at Josie’s months ago, she’d created a rift that needed mending.
And yet she absolutely was not the only one with some guilt to work through. The guys hadn’t told her they knew each other, and she was still uneasy, in a tiny place deep inside, about how they had come to her, orchestrated that wonderful first night. Getting over that had been hard, but not impossible. Could she find a place for their other secret?
Staring around the room, she suspected she could. The vaulted ceilings, the knotty pine, the startling view of the snow-covered ski trails, and the cozy fire burning in the fireplace all made her feel like she could—
“—eat shit?”
“Huh?”
Josie stared at her. “I still don’t get why you didn’t tell Mike and Dylan they could just go and eat shit, but I respect your decision.” Her tone of voice made it clear she did not. “How’s little Josie today?”
“You mean little Laura?”
“Whatever.” Bzzzz. Laura found a text from Mike: “Need anything at the store? Ice cream and pickles?”
She read it aloud. Josie softened. “That is really sweet.”
Laura typed back: “Nope. Thanks! <3”
“You’re going to regret that at midnight when you want salted caramel ice cream.” Josie stood and reached for her purse.
“You’re leaving?” Panic fluttered in her chest. Or was that the baby kicking again? Touching her belly, she shook her head slightly, to herself. Nope. Panic.
“Four—er, five,” she pointed to Laura’s midsection, “is a crowd.”
Reckoning. This would be it. Mike and Dylan would come back and they’d wash her things and she would need to find a rhythm here as she recovered, the three of them settling in to— what? What, exactly, were they to each other? And then there was the issue of—
“—who the father is.” An expectant look covered Josie’s face.
“Huh?”
“The baby is sucking your brain right out of your head, Laura.” Josie laughed. “It’s like you’re not listening to anything I say.”
“And that’s new because...” she joked.
“Ha ha.” Josie shrugged into her leather coat. She looked like Captain America when he was little. “You’ll talk to the guys about the birth certificate issue?” They’d cooked up a scheme they thought the guys would accept. Even Laura realized that as sweet as it was to share the baby, and for whichever man wasn’t the bio dad to act as if he were, the practical legalities needed to be respected. Someone’s name needed to be on the birth certificate.