Which was super hard to do from the bathroom floor.
By early evening, I’d managed to shuffle to the kitchen for a handful of grapes. Some stayed down, but so did I. I made a little nest in the bathroom and rested in my own self-pity.
Lachlan banged on my door. I’d expected him, but I wasn’t risking the few grapes I’d managed to eat. I texted him to come inside.
It looked worse than it was. I curled up on the fuzzy bath mat, cradling my head on the waterproof pillow I kept in the tub. Grapes were everywhere, mostly smooshed between the pages of the What to Expect When You’re Expecting book I’d bought. I cradled my camera like I’d been taking some weird, avant garde pregnancy project, and I was still working to fit that other slipper on my foot. It took me half an hour to get the first one on, but damn it, I was trying.
Lachlan stared at me, arms outstretched. “What the fuck happened? Are you okay? Do you need a doctor?”
“My morning sickness decided to throw a party that lasted all day.” I licked my lips. “I’m thirsty?”
He panicked, but just enough to make my life a little harder.
Lachlan leapt into the tub and grabbed the shower sprayer that had been my best investment before accidentally marrying him. He turned on the shower. Like a surprised puppy, Lachlan yelped when the cold water sprayed him right in the groin. After a confused moment, he adjusted the setting on the sprayer, aimed the water into the tub, and offered it to me like I’d sip from a water fountain.
Or we could be adults.
I pointed to the bottle of water on my sink—the one not currently flooding my bathroom like a hurricane’s storm surge.
“Oh.” Lachlan handed it to me. He turned off the shower and removed his shirt, wringing out the wetness.
I shook my head. “Okay, when I go into labor? You aren’t allowed to do anything. I’ll drive us to the hospital, and you do the stupid breathing exercises.”
Lachlan settled beside me on the floor. “Deal. I’ll find a way to entertain myself.”
“No, you will sit quietly in the corner. If I let you anywhere close to my cervix, the baby will bungee jump outta me with the umbilical cord.”
“Nah.” He snickered. “My boy is gonna surf out on the placenta.”
“You’re gross.”
He wrapped his arm over me. “You wanna tell me what happened today, Red?”
No. Not yet. “We haven’t even joked about amniotic fluid or cluster feedings or meconium yet.”
“What the hell is meconium?”
“It’s the newborn poop, some sort of tar-like black stuff that’s made of leftover uterine cells—”
“No, no, no.” Lachlan covered his ears. “We’re not talking uteruses right now.”
“Uteri.”
“Yeah. We’re talking about you and I.”
“No. Uteri. That’s the plural of uterus.”
Usually I could spin him around a couple times, show a little skin, and I’d distract him away from a topic. Not today.
He shook his head. “Put the dictionary down, Webster. You better tell me what happened at practice today.”
I hedged the question. “You got into a fight with Jack Carson.”
“Nice try. That was yesterday. Today’s crisis was all about you.”
I swallowed. Hard. “I can’t really talk about it.”
“You got fired?”
“Yeah.”
“For theft?”
God, it sounded even worse coming from him. “Is that what they’re saying?”
“No one is buying it.” Lachlan stared at me. “I know you, Elle. You’re the cutest damn hoarder I’ve ever met, but you’re not a thief.”
The truth unsettled my stomach. I prepared for the great grape purge of the afternoon. It wasn’t going to be pretty.
“I can’t…tell you,” I said.
“Imagine that.”
I frowned. “What’s that supposed mean?”
“It means you’ve been lying to me for a long time.” Lachlan’s accusation should have been more of a surprise, but I didn’t have the energy or strength to refute it. “Where were you two days ago? Why were you in Atwood?”
Because I thought I was saving both of our asses. “I went for the team.”
“Tell me the truth.”
“I am. Can you please let it go?”
“That’s not how this works.”
Lachlan paced a bathroom too tiny for his bulky frame, especially with the sea-shell wind chime I hung from the ceiling. He battered through it, flinching as the clink-clink-clink warned him before he lost an eye to a sand dollar.
“You’ve been lying to me every day since training camp began,” he said.