Chapter 8 Dean
DEAN
Strawberry Springs Neighborhood Watch
Kerry Winsor: @Wren Hackett, do you work with any other men that might come into town? Asking for a friend . . .
Comments:
Jackie Anne: Following . . .
Wren Hackett: Sorry. Dean was the only one who I care to keep in contact with. I highly doubt he’ll be back. You’ll have to go back to getting your entertainment somewhere else.
Tammy Jane: Y’all need to read. I didn’t need the eye candy when I was deep in a book about Bigfoot.
Mollie Wilson: Like a history book about him?
Tammy Jane: No.
Mollie Wilson: Wait, what kind of book?
Mollie Wilson: TAMMY PLEASE ANSWER
Grace was as beautiful now as she had been all those months ago.
Just one look and I knew why she was stuck in my mind. She was ethereal, even in a T-shirt and leggings.
It wasn’t my plan to see her. It seemed fate had different plans.
“Y-you’re here.” Her voice sounded distant, cheeks pink as she tucked a curl behind her ear. “Why are you here? I thought you lived in Nashville.”
“What? Are you not happy to see me?” I was determined to seem normal in front of her. It didn’t matter that it felt like I’d been hit by a train just at the sight of her.
“I—well, it’s just unexpected.” She took a breath. “But maybe it’s not a bad thing.”
She seemed different this time. I couldn’t place it, but something was off.
“I’m here for a job. I travel sometimes.”
“Wow. Lucky me.”
“What are you doing here?” I parroted. “Do you often leave Strawberry Springs?”
“Oh, that.” Her voice was low. “I’m here for a d—”
“A date?” The idea of her being with anyone else didn’t sound like something I wanted to know, but it would be good for me to hear.
“Not really.” She bit her lip and looked at me. “But I’m really glad you’re here. I need to talk to you about something.”
Now her voice was tight. Her insistence made me pause.
“What do we have to talk about?”
“Um, well . . .” Her skin paled as she fidgeted with her hands. I’d never seen her be so nervous. “Could we maybe not do this on the street? We could go for lunch, or something.”
Oh no. I’d seen this before. She was happy to see me and nervous to talk to me about something?
She wanted to ask me out, didn’t she?
“I don’t really do lunch with women I . . .” I trailed off. This was always the worst part of it. I hated when a woman caught feelings and I had to find a way to gently turn them down.
This time was going to feel worse than others.
I did think about her, though. If there was one woman that I ever could consider saying yes to, it was Grace Day.
I wouldn’t, though. That wasn’t what I did.
“Can you make an exception this once?” she asked.
Dammit. “I don’t make exceptions. I’m sorry, Grace.”
Her jaw tightened. “I promise, I—”
“Grace, I said it would just be for fun.” My chest ached at the words, but I needed to say it anyway. “I won’t go to lunch with you. And I won’t be anything more with you.”
She blinked as my words hit her. “I’m not . . . I’m not asking you out.”
“It’s okay if you were. It happens to the best of us.”
Her cheeks darkened. “I’m seriously not.”
“Then what else could you be doing? You’re nervous and won’t meet me in the eye. It’s like you know you’re breaking a rule. This isn’t the first time a woman was with me and—”
“I’m trying to tell you I’m pregnant, Dean.”
My breath caught in my throat, all of my words forgotten. “What did you just say?”
She took a breath before repeating the very words I’d hoped to never hear. “I’m pregnant.”
No. No way.
I stepped back from her, squeezing my eyes shut. I could remember every second from our two times. They played back in my mind like they’d happened just the day before.
But they weren’t the day before. It was three and a half months ago.
A lot could happen in that time.
“It’s not mine, is it?”
Grace’s lips pressed together. “That’s your first thought?”
“It’s a fair question.”
“I hadn’t been with anyone in months before you, and I haven’t been with anyone since. The baby is yours, Dean.”
“Shit.” The words came out before I could stop them and I paced around the street. “Shit.”
She didn’t say anything for a good minute before she finally sighed. “Are you done?”
I paused and looked at her. Now that I knew she was pregnant, I could see the differences. Her cheeks were rounder, and her figure fuller. I didn’t know much about pregnancy, but I could see her stomach poking out from her T-shirt more than it had when I first met her.
What the fuck had I gotten myself into?
Grace was the one woman I couldn’t forget. I was trying, but it wasn’t working. And she was pregnant? With my baby?
How the fuck was I supposed to stay away from her now?
What the fuck was I supposed to do at all?
“S-so, what do you want from me?” I asked. And how did I figure out how to give it to her without losing all I was? I couldn’t step away from who I was.
And she was the one person who made me want to.
But my question made Grace’s eyes narrow. I replayed what I’d said in my mind and knew I’d gone about this the wrong way.
I didn’t have time to correct it, though.
“I don’t want anything from you,” she said. “You deserved to know, so I’m telling you.”
“And you waited over three months?” I asked.
“I just found out yesterday myself, actually,” she hissed. “So my last twenty-four hours has been filled with more stress and panic then I’ve ever felt in my life. And you’re not—” She stopped herself, but I had a feeling I knew what she was going to say.
You’re not helping.
Grace took a breath. “If you don’t want this, I understand. I can do this as a single mom. I know that my community will help, and I can do this.”
“Your community?” I couldn’t help but huff out a humorless laugh. “You mean the ones who think of you as the good girl who never does anything wrong?”
“Well, it’s at least someone!” she snapped and then shook her head. “I’ll figure it out. You just figure out if you want to be a father or not.”
“I didn’t mean it like that, I—”
But she was done listening to me. She pulled out a napkin and a pen from her purse and scribbled down her number.
“When you do, call me. Or don’t. I’ll be fine either way.”
She left so fast that I barely had time to catch the napkin she threw my way, but something else fell out of her purse. It was a long piece of photo paper. Slowly, I knelt and picked it up with shaky hands.
When I turned it over to look at it, it was a side profile of a baby.
Grace’s name was at the top of it, and there was an estimated date of sixteen weeks listed.
A quick Google search told me that sixteen weeks was exactly where she should be if she’d gotten pregnant by me.
And as I looked at the outline of a head and upturned nose, I knew I was looking at my baby.
Fuck.