20. Matt
20
MATT
S everal people called out to me as I walked through the hallway. Without a destination in mind, at first, I simply wanted to be on the move and walking out of the building. Fresh air would’ve been nice, but also unlikely with the smog in the air. Privacy was more of what I sought, and I knew I could find it if I stepped outside.
Away from everyone in the building.
I couldn’t process this bombshell without actually letting the facts sink into my head properly. It was a jumbled mess up there, with too many things pinging around and keeping me confused and slow to think.
After ignoring everyone who called out to me, even Eli, who wanted to know where Loren had disappeared to, I snuck outside.
But I didn’t stop there. I kept walking, going and going even though there was no one place in mind to go. I just needed to move. To be active and mobile so that my mind might catch up and let all the pieces of Loren’s admission fit in somehow.
Walking down the sidewalks, I relied on an innate street-smarts sense of self-preservation to keep me alive. I didn’t have to consciously think about stopping for intersections. By rote, I blended in with the mass of pedestrians and stayed with others as I crossed streets and dodged cart vendors and the begging homeless.
The further I walked, the calmer I felt. It would take more than a simple stroll to clear my mind and be able to rationalize my way forward from the fact that Loren was pregnant.
Each time I put my foot down, a little clarity eased into me. Simply regurgitating the facts helped to make them sink in.
Loren was pregnant. She was carrying a child, but that wasn’t the kicker that damn near stopped my heart when she whispered it in the building.
It was my child. I didn’t even have to ask. I wouldn’t ask, because I could be confident that I was the last man she’d slept with.
That wasn’t me being smug. It was just a fact of the matter. She admitted that one night that she didn’t sleep around often, especially not with strangers. That was a similarity between us, one that I thought meant we could be “bad” and go against our norms together.
If she wasn’t prone to sleeping around or familiar with frequent, casual sex, then it stood to reason that of course I was the last man who’d fucked her.
Also, I had the innate knowledge that she lacked free time to date and sleep with anyone. Without fail, as the hard worker she was, she was often the last person to leave the office before I would. And she was typically one of the first to arrive in the morning. Someone plugging in for that many hours simply wouldn’t have the idle downtime to get ready for going out and then staying up all night for having fun between the sheets. That was just math.
She had been with me last, and I walked through the city musing on the notion that the baby she had in her belly had to be mine .
I wasn’t going to ask her if she was sure, either. I wouldn’t be that kind of an ass. Of course, she’d know her body well enough to assume she was pregnant. Knowing how much of a stickler she was to pay attention to details, I bet she’d bought several different brands of pregnancy tests to take. She would be able to notice differences about her health, especially her reproductive system, and I knew I could take her news and have it be true.
As if she’d lie about something like this.
“She wouldn’t,” I muttered aloud. Loren wasn’t a liar, not to me, and not like that.
Loren wasn’t a gold digger either, trying to take my money or to con me into giving her some.
It was real. I could take her word for it. If she was pregnant, then that was a fact, just as much as I would have to be the father.
For so long, I'd resisted the mere thought of settling down with someone. Thoughts about starting a family hadn’t percolated in my mind, but since my conversation with my grandmother, I wondered if she’d prompted me to have it lingering in the back of my head.
What if? I’d tossed those words at myself so many times.
What if Loren and I tried to make this real and legitimate?
It sure as hell was real now! With a baby on the way, she couldn’t be trying to fake anything or trap me into child support for our unborn son or daughter. That wasn’t who we were. That wasn’t how she behaved.
On I walked, letting all these facts kick in. They all had to have a place because I couldn’t stay distracted for too long.
One other thing that stood out to me was the fact that she must have only just learned about this.
If she already knew that she was having my baby sooner, she would’ve mentioned it in the conference room when I was going down on her and shaking her loose with an orgasm. She wasn’t duplicitous enough to mess with me first. I didn’t know everything about her, but I knew enough. And I swore that she had a good heart with her sharp mind.
We used condoms, though. That was a surprising element as well. We used protection. I did pull out for one time, but other than that, we’d seen to the necessary resources and precautions.
Accidents do happen…
Thinking of my baby didn’t feel like he or she was an accident.
Unplanned. That sounded better. This pregnancy was unplanned. Just like my chance encounter of meeting Loren before she showed up for her first day, everything happened so quickly and spontaneously between us.
But, I realized as I slowed my walk and stuffed my hands into my pockets, that didn’t mean I was adverse to the thought of Loren carrying my baby.
It was just such a shocker. The last thing I expected her to say. I had been so convinced that she was struggling with the fact that we had been caught being romantic and intimate at the office. I figured her attitude was because she was struggling to get over the humiliation of being seen with me like that, perhaps bothered about how it could impact her workplace reputation. That others could see her in a worse light somehow.
No one, and I meant no one, could dare to insinuate she was getting benefits from me. I hadn’t known she was a Richards’ employee when we had sex. And since I learned that she was, we’d been the opposite of friendly, merely cordial when working together.
It’s so sudden. It seemed like with this race to get Gammon as a client, all I’d been seeing and hearing about were baby products. It was almost like the assignment had been projected onto my personal life.
Sudden, but not… bad.
Anything I could have or share with Loren couldn’t be bad. We’d proven that we can work together no matter our ups and downs. And at the end of the day, she was still the woman in my thoughts and hovering near my heart. Just like I seemed to be the man she wanted to get a rise out of each time she pushed my buttons. All those times she looked at me when she likely thought I wouldn’t notice. Every time she sighed when we were near.
Loren was good. For me. For my future. It wasn’t a hardship to convince myself that we could have something good, something lasting and solid, if we only just worked with each other.
Walking off probably hadn’t helped matters, but it was all that felt right at that moment. I didn’t want to stand around near her and be tempted to argue with her or bicker. She’d floored me with her news, and it didn’t make me an unforgivable asshole to need a moment to collect myself.
It wasn’t every goddamn day that a man learned that his lover was carrying his child.
Lover? That felt inadequate.
Loren could be it . The One. I had already been coming to that conclusion before she announced that she was pregnant.
With a baby or not, I want her for good.
This news about my pending fatherhood stole my breath, but now that I’d walked off the shock and felt clearer in the head, I was left with a rosy, glowing excitement.
I’m going to be a father. A father! Me!
Bachelorhood had served me well while I focused on work. Being a workaholic and a young parent sounded like a recipe for instant disaster, either on the parent’s side or the kid’s.
Yet, that wouldn’t change me. Loren was a go-getter like me, eager to rise up the ranks based on her performance and merit. She wouldn’t just give up on who she was now that she’d be having a baby.
And I wouldn’t need to change. I could still work. I would still do everything I could to be a CEO.
In fact… I rubbed my chin, wondering if my grandmother was teasing or joking when she said she might retire sooner with news of me settling down.
I just might have to take you up on that offer.
When my phone buzzed, I sighed and knew that I could reenter society, that I could be clear and level-headed now that I’d accepted my future as a parent, as the partner to Loren—in whatever capacity she would let me.
It was John, and I answered quickly. A sense of fear hung in the recesses of my mind, apprehensive and impatient about whether he might have gotten word that things were heated between me and Loren.
“Hello—”
“Dude! Where the fuck are you?”
I furrowed my brow, stopping on the sidewalk. Hearing John’s angry voice was something I was expecting, but not about his needing to know where I was. “Having a moment to myself. Why?”
“Did you forget about the meeting with Gammon?” he demanded.
Oh, fuck! I rotated my wrist to look at the time. It was already past the hour of when the meeting was supposed to start.
Thunder rolled overhead, threatening to bring a storm. It was almost like the skies were getting angry with me too as I tried and failed to comprehend how I’d forgotten about the big meeting that would get me be promoted.
“I went for a walk, and I…” I turned, walking faster in the direction of the Gammon building. There was no chance I’d get there on time now, but I’d try. “And I was lost in my thoughts.”
“Fine. But get your ass over to the Gammon building.” He groaned. “ Now .”
I ran, weaving through the traffic to get there before it was too late.