“I never saw anything like this happening to me,” he continued, big shoulders lifting in a fresh shrug of utter bewilderment. “I think, after my dad died, I made an unconscious decision never to risk leaving my own kid to deal with something like that. Losing him, losing my mom… I don’t want to feel that kind of sadness ever again. So I’ve avoided getting into a situation where something could happen and I might.” He implored her to understand, palm out and up again.
Marriage. Babies. She supposed that’s what kind of situations he meant and she understood. To some extent she had done the same thing, always letting relationships fizzle at the first sign, fearing that rejection was inescapable. It was a different side of the same dread of loving and losing.
“I won’t turn my back on my kid, Meg. I wouldn’t do that. I’m sorry I made you think I wanted to.”
She nodded, tongue-tied by emotion, accepting the apology because she believed he was being sincere, but still silently holding up thick walls against him, wary of another knockout blow.
“So… Don’t take this the wrong way, I’m just trying to get it all straight in my head. You’re keeping it?” he asked.
She shot him a glare. What did he think?
*
Linc held up a hand, silently urging her to keep what looked like a livid reaction in check. “I’m just making sure I have my facts straight because I really wasn’t tracking well the first time we talked. You said you’re moving back here?”
She nodded jerkily. “I want my family around me. I need them. Liz is pregnant, like I told you that night.” She looked at him like this was important information so he nodded.
“Good.” He supposed. He was flying blind here.
“She had a miscarriage once before. That’s why she isn’t telling anyone. Most women wait until the three month mark to say anything, just in case.”
“Is that what we’ll do?”
Her blue eyes came to his, surprise and wariness in their turbulent depths. It struck him that this was it, their first decision as parents. Shit got so real in that moment, his heart tipped and rolled crazily, like a silver marble in a pinball machine. What if something happened?
“I guess,” she said faintly. “Except for, you know. Family.”
The word hit him in the face. Sure Blake had thrown it at him, but so sarcastically Linc had dismissed it without absorbing it. But he was going to have a family now. Meg and a baby.
The unacknowledged fear that had kept him dodging entanglements all his life sat up like a troll, but beyond that, he experienced such a clench of yearning, his eyes stung. He could only stare at her, ears ringing, thinking, Don’t let anything happen.
Shakily he had to turn away, rub the frozen terror off his face and get a grip on his twitching limbs. Into his state of apprehension, a thought crept.
“What happened to that guy? The, uh, fan.” His blood moved like broken ice in his veins, sharp and painfully cold, thinking of her and the baby being in danger.
“He posted bail, but it turned out it was actually his family moving him into a psychiatric hospital. It took a few days for me to learn that and I’d already put in my notice and made the decision to come back. I didn’t want to change my mind again. I want to be here.”
He tried to read her thoughts, tried to imagine how he would be feeling if she’d actually stayed in Chicago and had his baby without telling him.
That would be worse. He would have been ignorant, but if he’d ever learned at a later date… It would have been far worse than this.
Maybe some of that disapproval showed on his face. She hurried to say, “I’m not going to live here. I’ll find a place in town. Skye offered me her place for a few weeks, since she’s on the road with Chase and—what?” she prompted, making him realize he was shaking his head.
His mind was finally capable of serious, productive thoughts. He was starting to not only see the solution, but already projecting to each step of what had to happen to recover from this serious skid off his planned path and onto the new track.
“Move in with me,” he said. It was the smartest choice.
“What? No.” She knotted the belt on her sweater decisively. “No, Linc. That’s—No.”
His gut tightened like she’d kneed him there. He reminded himself he’d done some fierce rebuffing of his own today. But why would she refuse so reflexively? Manners? To hell with that. Fastidiousness?
“I realize my place needs work. I wasn’t going to hire anyone because working on it gives me something to do and I don’t care about living in a mess, but I’ll get a crew in.” He began to warm to the idea of seeing the house finished and filled with more than one isolated man. It meant his mornings would be noisy, his days meaningful, his nights—Whoa. Hell, yes. The nights.