“I will. I promise.” The two hugged, Laura clinging a bit longer than she normally would. As if crossing over into a new life, a new world, she felt unmoored, time starved, and unsure. The baby grounded her in that moment by kicking her, hard, in the cervix.
“See you tomorrow.” Click. The front door closed and Josie walked out on the porch, the same porch where, nearly five months ago, Laura had slunk out, Mike bringing her her purse, her fear so overwhelming it had almost crushed her heart.
Almost. And then...why hadn’t they told her? Why? They were billionaires. Her baby’s father was a billionaire. Josie had joked about child support (“You could get more than you make in a year. Hell, in a decade, per month. Can I get the other one to impregnate me?”) and Laura reeled from the implications of all.that.money.
Some dish Dylan had in the oven simmered and filled the cabin with a luscious aroma that made her belly start to eat itself. She was hungry.
The guys were on their way. Her stomach dropped. Because this time she’d be alone with them and it was time for some long overdue conversations.
Why was it always, indeed, so complicated?
A palpable tension sat between him and Mike on the car ride up the mountain, a third partner who wasn’t nearly as appealing as Laura. Unresolved emotions, unspoken words, and a sense of uncertainty made the air thick, kept Dylan’s nerves on edge, and finally forced him to blurt out, “I was a total douche. I should never have made us wait to tell her about the money, and I almost blew it, and now here we are with maybe—kinda—sorta—a chance with her, and I don’t want to fuck it up again.”
Cringe.
“If you’re a douche, I’m a bigger one. Mega douche. Thor the Douche,” Mike bantered back, his voice jovial, but his face serious. Eyes on the road, he seemed to feel the change in the car. They were talking. Really talking, once again.
“How do we make this right with her?” Dylan’s words had an urgency, a plaintive tone he could hear in his own voice and hated.
Mike shrugged. “I think this time we actually listen to her and Josie and do what Laura wants.”
“That easy?”
Mike picked up Route 2 and they prepared for the long drive. “If it were easy, we wouldn’t have fucked it up.”
“Twice.”
“Yeah. Twice.” Mike blinked, revving up to sixty-five mph. “Dylan, I’m sorry about the glass and all that.”
“It’s OK. You sent that cleaning crew and replaced everything.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Mike’s jaw flexed and twitched, his stubble glinting in the sunshine.
“I know. And it’s OK. As long as we’re OK.”
Mike laughed, a sputtering sound of surprise. “We’re fucked, man.”
“Yeah. We’re about as far from OK as you can get.”
That made Mike swallow and blink hard. “True. But as long as we’re not OK together, I think we’ll be fine.”
“What if it’s not your baby?” Dylan said rapidly, as if saying the words fast would somehow make them less provocative.
“What if it’s not yours?” Mike’s answer was a growl.
Silence. A dark cloud of confusion and suspicion, with an undertone of something sinister he’d not felt with Mike, ever, slithered about in the Jeep. Dylan decided to let down his defenses and simply said, “I don’t care. I care, but I’m not invested in whose she is. I’m invested in loving who she is.”
Mike’s head jerked back in surprise. Shoulders relaxing, he drew in a deep breath. “Same here.” He took his eyes off the road for a second and gave Dylan a look that made him fight to hold back tears. “I just don’t want to be left out of the greatest love I can imagine.”
Nodding, Dylan tapped him on the shoulder with a gentle fist and said, “Impossible. Because that love can’t exist without all three of us.”
“Four. Four now.”
Four.
Laura woke to the sounds of laughter in the kitchen, deep men’s voices guffawing and teasing, the room’s light telling her it was past sunset and somehow she’d fallen asleep in place, curled up and warm. Her stomach growled and her mouth felt like cotton, parched. A glass of water on a coaster, inches from her hand, was a pleasant surprise. A few quick gulps and she finished it off, yawned, stretched and—ouch!—sciatica flared up, necessitating that she stand and stretch more.
Little muscles in her hips and along her ribcage needed to be treated with kid gloves, stretched slowly and with great care, or she’d have a stitch in her side and a major spasm. Pregnancy really wasn’t for wimps, all the blessings aside.