10. Plum #2
“I’m sure Evan slid right out. Third babies,” Ryder quoted, laughing at the situation, but Zoe’s eyes hadn’t un-widened.
“What if I’m brewing up an enormous little football player in there?” Zoe squealed under her breath.
“Zoe?” Ryder said before stuffing another bite in his mouth.
Without a word, she looked sharply at him and seemed to wait for a genius answer.
“How about we table that worry for month… I don’t know, eight?”
“Good call,” she hissed as she blinked away the panic.
The dizzying, invigorating chatter didn’t stop.
The Halseth clan, plus his own brother and Claire now, was something else.
Ryder had always had friends. Work friends, school friends, even a social circle when he was younger.
But this… this easy conversation, teasing and familiar, was bizarre. In a good way.
He leaned back into the stiff seat, his hands resting easily in his lap. A long while without an update was right. But, he supposed, they were pretty busy in there.
At his side, Zoe settled in and drew in her legs. After a few minutes, her bent legs tipped into him again.
On the narrow seat, her feet slipped and she’d pull them back in.
Ryder hooked his arm around her legs to hold them up.
She whispered, “You doing okay?”
He nodded.
“You’re quiet.”
“Even my mother is laughing and visiting, comfortably. Your family is… amazing.”
She lifted her hand and pinched his chin between her forefinger and thumb, pursed her lips as she examined, then glanced sideways and seemed to realize the intimacy of the gesture and dropped her hand.
And looked at his arm around her legs.
“I broke up with Raphe,” she whispered.
“Oh,” he said, waiting, quiet, a flutter of hope he was afraid to acknowledge.
No sadness watered down her look nor even dropped her lips past neutral.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“It was stupid to get back together. I forgot how miserable he is to fight with. He’s gentle and polite at baseline, but when he’s in a mood, he loses all manners, and somehow finds all of my buttons and smashes them.
” She glanced around the waiting area, and no one was paying attention.
Well, nothing more than a few curious or amused drifting look at them.
“But…” She bit her lips together and closed her eyes, a smile glittering in her expression she seemed eager to tamp down.
Quieter, she angled away from the others and whispered, “You and I get along quite well. I often think about jumping your bones. Like, a lot.”
Ryder’s breath stilled in his lungs. He tilted a look at her, uncertain.
“But… this is complicated enough. If we were to date, and then I discover that you’re miserable to fight with and we break up, before the baby’s even born?”
“Fuck, you’re right.” The fluttering hope fizzled, and he couldn’t deny that he’d suffered the same recurring worry, especially when sleep eluded him.
When would be a good time?
When there was a baby depending on them?
When they were trying to figure out custody?
Or how about when the child was off to kindergarten. Or when it was off to college and they were empty nesters.
A snort of a laugh rattled him. “I would never have pegged you as such a worrier.”
“What?” Her nose scrunched and she knocked her fist into his shoulder. “I am certainly not a worrier. Why would you say such a thing?”
“No reason,” he said, and pretended to laugh it off. “Just picturing that football player sized baby in there.”
“That is a legit worry,” she flipped her hair and narrowed in with a teasing grin.
“Happy twelve weeks,” he whispered, and nudged her softly.
She smiled back, then glanced at his mother meaningfully.
“I will,” he said, and grimaced as he pictured it.
I t wasn’t a matter of preference, or a flipped coin or fairness, it was the obvious thing for the Halseths to go back first. Even Patricia knew she wasn’t Haley or Finn’s top choice to hold the baby first.
Ryder had settled into the little loveseat while Zoe went back with Evan and Scott. Undoubtedly, Finn and Haley’s friends would invade soon, but they had arranged spacing all of their visits.
At least Patricia despised sitting still and had left to find someone important to commune with. Just three of them left, and the waiting room was oddly quiet.
Grady and Claire were sitting next to each other across the oblong coffee table between them. Even after spending an hour smoothing his hair, Grady’s surfer blond mess would magically muss without even being touched. After hours of waiting, it was wild now.
With a giggle and a loving gaze, Claire playfully smoothed it down, but it popped right back up again.
Ryder snorted a laugh, arms folded across his chest, drawn into the cute scene.
“Look in a mirror,” Grady teased, and turned to include Ryder. “Yours is messier than mine.”
Ryder scrunched his hands in his hair and cringed. “First the seltzer campaign, now the deal with Bellamy? As part of the modern guy image, I’ve gotten to ditch the suits, grow some edgy stubble, and I don’t have to sop my hair in products anymore.”
“I thought you normally dressed so spiffy because you liked the slick image,” Claire said, smiling softly and he knew the difference was still throwing her off.
He laughed under his breath and shook his head. “I both blame and thank you. Since you left, I…” Fuck, this wasn’t the time or the place. “My priorities have changed.”
Claire tilted a look at him, her brow tightening as she tried to read him. “You look more relaxed, but you work twice as hard as you used to.”
“I didn’t say they changed in a healthy way,” he huffed, and shook his head with a laugh. “I don’t fucking know.”
His phone buzzed and he jumped to check it.
Claire lifted an eyebrow, assuming it was work, as it always had been work that had him jumping like that.
“Zoe texted me. I get to come back. Scott and Evan are leaving,” he said, realizing how wide he was grinning and he quickly searched his area to grab his jacket and the gift.
“I’m jealous,” Grady teased, and his matching blue eyes warmed rather than chilled. Jealousy had been a nasty divide between them for too long.
Losing Claire to Grady had been the best thing that had happened to his relationship with his brother relationship, oddly enough. Not a situation he would recommend outside of their formerly estranged, strained relationship.
“Ha. My one night with Zoe has provided many, many residual benefits,” he laughed and stepped back. “Maybe we’ll let you in first to see our baby,” he added with a shrug. “Maybe.”
“What?” Patricia yelped from halfway down the echoey hall and grabbed her chest. “Did you… Ryder, are you saying…”
“Fuck,” he mumbled, his smile dropping and he felt awful. He crossed to his mother and stuffed his hands in his pockets, chest puffed up and he nodded confidently. “We wanted to wait until twelve weeks, to tell you.”
“But you already told Grady?” In his entire life, he’d never seen her bottom lip pout.
“I… I… yes. I did. He and Haley. They’re my best friends,” he said plainly, but the words squeezed his chest and eased the tension in his jaw. “Zoe and I were going to tell you together, over brunch, when I was up for the appointment next week.”
“Oh. Of course,” she said with a frigid cover over any hint of emotion. “That would be lovely.”
“Patricia… Mom… Mother…” Fuck it. He wrapped both arms around her and tilted his head to rest against hers.
On impact, she melted into him, not her usual stiffness, but a rare clinginess, and he relented to a whiff of regret over not telling her sooner. “I’m so happy for you,” she whispered.
“Me too,” he said, and started to draw back. “Zoe and I are… well, we’re not together, but she’s great, and I’m going to be one hundred percent a dad to this baby.”
Her thin lips tightened and she nodded vigorously. “I have no doubt you will be a wonderful father. Better than yours could ever hope to be.”
Never a simple, “congratulations.” He nodded as he forced the smile and debated whether or not to respond.
“Hey, Ryder?” Evan shouted down the hall.
Ryder turned and nodded. “Coming.”
Evan smacked him on the back as he hugged him, Scott too, and both were red in the eyes.
Infectious, really, and Ryder’s eyes heated as he saw they had been crying. Evan whispered, “Zoe’s waiting for you.”
“Thanks,” Ryder said, and walked through the security door and back toward the room listed on his sticker ID badge.
Outside the room, he paused with his hand on the doorknob, the door already open a crack. Zoe laughed about something, delicious and sweet. Haley and Finn were visiting with her, but his sister sounded half asleep.
He knocked as he came in, and slowed and leaned against the corner.
Fuck.
Breath still in his chest. Eyes absorbing more than he knew he could, yet his entire attention was singularly focused.
Zoe cooed at the tiny bundle, rocking in an old-fashioned rocking chair that looked out of place in a hospital, and she lifted her gaze as he entered.
Her lips curled into a sweetly inviting, warmly honest smile.
“Hey you,” she said softly. “I found us a baby. Let’s steal this one and they can have ours when it comes along. ”
He snickered a laugh, teasing his tongue behind the edges of his teeth, and walked carefully over toward her.
“Sounds like a plan,” he said, and crouched down to see.
Elbows on the arm of the chair, leaned close to Zoe, he tilted a look and couldn’t help but smile at the little thing.
“Although, we could use a little more time to prepare.”
“True,” she said in a gentle voice, the baby calming the room with its presence alone, although, he did have the softest little breathing. “Clothes, diapers, crib… parents who aren’t freaking out. Yeah. We ought to let Finn and Haley keep this one.”
Haley was nearly limp with fatigue, and sticky sweaty in the hospital bed, but she watched with a sweet smile. At her side, Finn rested his chin on his hands and his elbows on the hospital bed, equally heavy-lidded.
Ryder lifted to his feet and walked over to his sister. He leaned in and kissed her sweaty head, and she motioned that he could sit at the side of the bed. “How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Good,” she said, scrunching her nose and nodding. “Tired. Terrified, but good.”
Finn slipped one hand into Haley’s and kissed the backs of her knuckles. “FYI, no one seemed to mention how difficult breastfeeding is. We’ll try again in a bit, but…” His eyes widened and Haley’s mirrored and she nodded gravely.
“Don’t make my mistake of thinking it comes naturally. Or maybe it’s because Emerson and I are both too tired to get it right,” Haley said, watching Zoe softly, Zoe smiling at the little bundle still.
“Good to know,” Zoe said, without looking up. “Ryder, take notes. That’s your job.”
He drew out his phone and pulled up a notepad. “Got it. Breastfeeding: learning curve. Anything else?”